1941 and Pearl Harbor

              WORLD WARD
Our destroyer, at the time, was in waters, which the Government of the United
States had declared to be waters of self-
defense, surrounding outposts of American
protection in the Atlantic.
In the North of the Atlantic, outposts
have been established by us in Iceland, in
Greenland, in Labrador and in Newfoundland. Through these waters there pass
many ships of many flags. They bear food
and other supplies to civilians; and they
bear materiel of war, for whic1 the people
of the United States are spending billions
of dollars, and which, by Congressional
action,they have declared V be essential
for the defense of our own land.
The United States destroyer, when
attacked, was proceeding on a legitimate
mission	
To be ultimately successful in world
mastery, Hitler knows that he must get
control of the seas. He must first destroy
the bridge of ships which we are building
across the Atlantic and over which we
shall continue to roll the implements of
war to help destroy him, to destroy all his
works in the end. He must wipe out our
patrol on sea and in the air if he is to do it.
He must silence the British Navy.
I think it must be explained over and
over again to people who like to think of
the United States Navy as an invincible
protection, that this can be true only if
the British Navy survives. And that, my
friends, is simple arithmetic.
For if the world outside of the Americas falls under Axis domination, the shipbuilding facilities which the Axis powers
would then possess in all of Europe, in the
British Isles, and in the Far East would be
much greater than all the shipbuilding
facilities and potentialities of all of the
Americas—not only greater, but two or
three times greater—enough to win. Even
if the United States threw all its resources
into such a situation, seeking to double
and even redouble the size of our Navy,
the Axis powers, in control of the rest of
the world, would have the manpower and
the physical resources to out-build us several times over.
It is time for all Americans, Americans
of all the Americas to stop being deluded
by the romantic notion that the Americas
can go on living happily and peacefully in
a Nazi-dominated world.
Generation after generation, America
has battled for the general policy of the
freedom of the seas That has been our
policy, proved time and time again, in all
our history.... Unrestricted submarine
warfare in 1941 constitutes a defiance—
an act of aggression—against that historic
American policy.
It is now clear that Hitler has begun
his campaign to control the seas by ruthless force and by wiping out every vestige
of international law, every vestige of
humanity.
His intention has been made clear. The
American people can have no further illusions about it.
No tender whisperings of appeasers
that Hitler is not interested in the Western
Hemisphere, no soporific lullabies that a
wide ocean protects us from him—can long
have any effect on the hard-headed, far-
sighted, and realistic American people....
This attack on the Greer was no localized military operation in the North Atlantic. This was no mere episode in a struggle
between two Nations. This was one deter-
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