The First Lady of Radio (26 page)

There is one thing which I can tell you which is rather a personal incident, but which I think will indicate the general attitude of people throughout the country. When the news came of the bombing of Hawaii and [Civilian Defense] Director [Fiorello] La Guardia and I both realized that civilian defense on the West Coast would, at once, become a more urgent question than it had been in the past, we decided to leave last Monday night for the West Coast. Our purpose, of course, was to find out what we in the central office in Washington could do to be useful to individual communities throughout the country. And we wanted to have an opportunity to meet with the state and local defense councils to see how plans which had long been made would be put into actual operation. We felt that if a good pattern was laid down in one part of the country, it would be helpful to us in stimulating similar activity in other places.

We found a condition which was not surprising. Like many other communities throughout the country, plans had been made, but very few citizens had felt any compulsion to agree to new taxes in order to actually put themselves on a war basis. We are a peace-loving people and have never wanted war. And it has been almost impossible to feel that we should prepare ourselves for that eventuality. Now that it has arrived, a change has come overnight in the psychology of all of our people.

In Phoenix, Arizona, after the [false] broadcast about the air raid on San Francisco the night before, two boys leaning over a fence at the airport looked at me quite casually in the early morning hours and said, “You're on your way to a dangerous part of the country, Mrs. Roosevelt.”
There was evident envy in their voices. The old spirit of adventure hasn't left our people.

The first meeting of the local and state defense councils which we attended in Los Angeles impressed upon me some very simple things. I think we need to get every region of the country to publicize at once, in every possible way, the simple things which every citizen needs to know. For instance, what constitutes an air-raid warning. These warnings should be uniform throughout the country, because as people move around they should not have to discover what new signals mean. What constitutes an all-clear signal. What are the things you do in your own home—immediately, today—to ensure the least discomfort in a blackout even if you think you're not going to have any blackout. It will do no harm to prepare and put on a test to be sure that you can comply with the rules if you have to. There should be one room in every house where there can be light without it shining through. This can be achieved by hanging a black curtain through which light cannot shine over the window. If you cannot buy that kind of black cloth, you probably have old curtains or even a rug which you can adapt to this purpose. Perhaps that room should be the kitchen, since you may have to cook and you cannot do that in the dark. Almost everything else can be done without light. Remember that even a match is visible from the outside and can be a guide for a plane in the air.

Learn certain definite things. Stay in the house. Pick out the safest place for the family. Do not stay near the windows. Know where your young children are at all times. Make your plans for them in an emergency, so that neither you, nor they, can be taken by surprise. Do this in conjunction with school authorities. Do not feel that tomorrow is time enough. Do whatever you have to do today.

I spent Tuesday evening at Occidental College in Los Angeles. It is among the first colleges to establish a war council, set up just as a city's defenses should be. Students and faculty are assigned to all the
occupations and services which they would undertake in any locality. Our colleges have an important role to play in training our young people for whatever jobs they have to do on leaving college. I was very happy to have this opportunity to meet with representatives of student bodies of many colleges in the vicinity of Los Angeles, and to sense the fine spirit among the young people, who desire to be of service as soon as called in a military way, but, immediately—now—in civilian defense, wherever they may be. One boy, who has been rejected by the draft board for physical disability, came up to me and asked what other occupations were open because he felt he must be of service. He asked, “Would there be any government jobs in minor positions where I could be of use?” I'm sure he is typical of all our young people. This question seemed to me something which the colleges should explore immediately, for they could prepare boys physically unfit for Army service in other ways where they would undoubtedly be very much needed.

It was in Dr. Remsen Bird's living room at Occidental College that a group of us listened to the president's [Fireside Chat]. I could visualize the scene in Washington, and I agreed fully with one of the guests who said to me afterwards that he liked the calm acceptance of disaster, the conviction of a long, hard strain ahead, and the quiet assurance which rang out in that voice. It came to us clearly, like a vital personality across the radio waves, saying, “In the end, the people of the United States will win out, and decency and civilization
will
continue in this world.”

On Wednesday, I went to San Diego by train because the weather made flying impossible. We met with the defense council and I had a very short visit with our son John, who is on active duty in the Navy. His wife had been ill, and I do not think her recovery is helped by the fact that all of her own family are in Hawaii and she has had no word from them. It was on the train Wednesday morning that I read our first war-casualty list. It's many long years since I scanned those lists, and I know with what anxiety many people through the country have waited, and
continue to wait, to be finally saddened by the certainty of the loss of some member of their family or friends. Those of us who lived through the last war have been picturing what this meant to all the people in the belligerent countries for many months past, and now it will be a part of our daily existence. It is impossible for the president or for me to personally tell each and every family how deeply we sympathize in what they are going through. But if any one of you listening have lost some near relative or friend, I want to say to you how much I hope that you will cherish, with pride, the memory of the soldier or sailor who dies in action. In some way, bitter as the loss may be, you may be helped to bear it by thinking that he has joined the long procession of men through the ages who have fought to preserve humanity and freedom.

Director La Guardia and I separated in Los Angeles. He went directly to San Francisco, while I went to San Diego. Thursday I spent with the defense councils of San Francisco and the metropolitan area. One thing has come out of this experience—namely, the realization that the two sides of civilian defense, the protective and the volunteer participation, must work together. They meet and overlap at so many points. Air-raid wardens, for instance, are the focal point of much of the protective work. In preparation for an air raid, they must use, however, all the community services available for the people of the area. The air-raid wardens take training under the Army or the police force, but they must choose assistants from the people working in the various community services. Otherwise, they cannot build up strong defenses to keep the kind of morale which will stand up under a long strain.

The civilian-defense volunteer bureaus, which are under the local defense councils, are the center of the community, and feed to every community the needed volunteers for both sides of the work, choosing those best suited to do whatever kind of work is needed. These bureaus must be prepared to find the answer to every question asked by civilians, to provide training for people who desire it, to see that no need of the
community goes unfulfilled because of not being able to find the right person to do the job.

Friday we spent in Portland, and went to Seattle that night. We drove from Seattle to Tacoma on Saturday for a civilian defense council meeting, and today we leave for home. It has been a joy to be here, for even a short while, with my children. In every place, I've found the Red Cross well organized and fully prepared to meet the demands which may be made on them. In preparation for any eventuality, they must of course expand and increase their supplies. So I hope that everyone in the country will make some contribution to the new $50 million war relief campaign which is now on. Give as much as you can so you can have the satisfaction of knowing that you have done your share to alleviate the suffering of your fellow citizens.

In closing, I want to remind you that tomorrow, December fifteenth, is Bill of Rights Day. I was to have spoken from New York City on a radio broadcast in celebration of this extremely important occasion. The president will speak to the nation tomorrow evening, and so I need not emphasize what this day and this celebration means to us as a people. I do want to urge each and every one to get out a history book and read the Bill of Rights. For in it, there are principles which we must live up to during these trying times if we are to preserve our freedoms. Every American citizen, regardless of race or creed or color, has a share in these rights, and it is the duty of every one of us to preserve them. Because if we allow them to become meaningless for any of our citizens, they will become meaningless for all of us.

31.

“Preparedness for War”

Over Our Coffee Cups
, presented by the Pan-American Coffee Bureau

December 21, 1941

ER: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. There is one thing about the American people when any emergency arises. It seems to spur them on to greater activity, and the more difficult the task may be, the more ready they are to meet the situation. I imagine that is a trait common to all virile people. I've noticed many times that there are people who lose interest in anything the minute it becomes easy to accomplish but who will work untiringly as long as the problem before them is challenging. Perhaps this is a trait of the American people as a whole.

In any case, the realization that we are actually at war and that we have a tremendous problem to solve—because we are completely making over the trend of thought which the majority of our people has built up for the past twenty years—does not seem to faze us in any way. Instead of being cast down, we seem to feel that this is a challenge to our
ability to adapt ourselves and still not give up the main objectives for which we've been working through the past twenty years.

A short time ago, I am sure the vast majority of the people in this country hoped that we would not get into the war. If we faced the disagreeable fact that we probably would have to come in at some point, we did not think of it in concrete terms, neither as war with Japan nor as war with Germany and Italy. If anyone said we might go to war with Japan, the attitude was always that we would be so superior to the Japanese that poor little Japan would be wiped off the map. We were very cocky. Or perhaps we were just ignorant. In any case, it has the same effect, because it lulled us into a state of mental and spiritual unpreparedness. So remote did it all seem that we never faced what a victory for the Axis powers might mean, even if it was only a victory in Europe, with Europe dominated by the Axis powers and their ideas.

What would it mean to us to have, just across the Atlantic, a whole continent of people who did not believe in private industry, who did not believe in trade unions, who did not believe in the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? At least, they would not be allowed to express their beliefs if they retained them. There would be a whole continent of people subservient to the idea that the state is paramount and that their führer, whoever he may be, is next to God, in fact, practically takes His place. And that, by right of birth and ancestry, their race should rule the world. Ideas spread, and it would not take very long for these ideas to cross the ocean. We know how easily small groups of Fascists, Nazis, and Communists in this country have influenced the thinking of some of our citizens, and yet we lulled ourselves to sleep with the idea that a whole continent could be bent on making these theories succeed, and we would be left to pursue
our
interests and develop
our
friendships with
our
neighbors on
this
side of the ocean, untouched and uninfluenced.

We look back now, and this frame of mind seems incredible.
Suddenly, the Japanese planes flew over Hawaii and our other island possessions, and it gave to the American people an entirely new realization of what the world in the future, dominated by Axis methods and ideas, would really be like. And overnight, we were a people welded together, no longer divided; one great united people for the period of the struggle.

Nothing exemplifies this more clearly than the Industrial Labor Conference, which met this past weekend and which was addressed by the president at its opening session. He said to these gentlemen that he has asked them to come together to help win the war, as they were as important in this effort as the men in military uniform. The president further said that two moderators would preside over the group, one from the executive and one from the legislative branch of the government, and that he hoped they would achieve a complete agreement and, above all, speed. He wanted as much speed in turning out materials in the defense industries as he expected from the armed forces of the nation. Fortunately for us, we are geographically very well located. Our territory is so great that it is hard to concentrate on aerial attacks in the way which has been done in England, on such cities as London, Plymouth, Manchester, or Glasgow, Scotland. Production has got to rise in this country to tremendous heights, because we have the ability to produce, and at greater speed than any other nation in the world. The president talked to management, as well as to the workers.