Their purchases have totaled more than thirty-two
billion dollars. These are the purchases of individual men, women,
and children. Anyone who would have said this was possible a few
years ago would have been put down as a starry-eyed visionary. But
of such visions is the stuff of America fashioned.
Of course, there are always pessimists with us everywhere, a few
here and a few there. I am reminded of the fact that after the fall
of France in 1940 I asked the Congress for the money for the
production by the United States of fifty thousand airplanes that
year. Well, I was called crazy--it was said that the figure was
fantastic; that it could not be done. And yet today we are building
airplanes at the rate of one hundred thousand a year.
There is a direct connection between the bonds you have bought and
the stream of men and equipment now rushing over the English
Channel for the liberation of Europe. There is a direct connection
between your bonds and every part of this global war today.
Tonight, therefore, on the opening of this Fifth War Loan Drive, it
is appropriate for us to take a broad look at this panorama of
world war, for the success or the failure of the drive is going to
have so much to do with the speed with which we can accomplish
victory and the peace.
While I know that the chief interest tonight is centered on the
English Channel and on the beaches and farms and the cities of
Normandy, we should not lose sight of the fact that our armed
forces are engaged on other battlefronts all over the world, and
that no one front can be considered alone without its proper
relation to all.
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