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Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 1882-1945

"The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt"


Britain, Russia, China and the United States and their Allies
represent more than three-quarters of the total population of the
earth. As long as these four nations with great military power
stick together in determination to keep the peace there will be no
possibility of an aggressor nation arising to start another world
war.
But those four powers must be united with and cooperate with all
the freedom-loving peoples of Europe, and Asia, and Africa and the
Americas. The rights of every nation, large or small, must be
respected and guarded as jealously as are the rights of every
individual within our own republic.
The doctrine that the strong shall dominate the weak is the
doctrine of our enemies--and we reject it.
But, at the same time, we are agreed that if force is necessary to
keep international peace, international force will be applied--for
as long as it may be necessary.
It has been our steady policy--and it is certainly a common sense
policy--that the right of each nation to freedom must be measured
by the willingness of that nation to fight for freedom. And today
we salute our unseen Allies in occupied countries--the underground
resistance groups and the armies of liberation. They will provide
potent forces against our enemies, when the day of the counter-
invasion comes.
Through the development of science the world has become so much
smaller that we have had to discard the geographical yardsticks of
the past.


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