In talking to the working staff assembled to meet the delegates on Friday afternoon, Senator Austin stressed the real achievements of the U.
I am sure he gave us all a renewed sense of the value of perspective, of patience and of firm determination. Well, Senator Taft seems to have made a great discovery. We all of us eat too much in this country. Unlike one of our elder statesmen, who was reported to have said that high prices are due to over-export, Mr. Taft, as I understand yesterday's announcement, believes that high prices are due to greater prosperity here and therefore greater home consumption.
I would be extremely glad if I could be sure that the third of the nation which used to be ill-fed, ill-clothed and ill-housed is now getting at least all that it wants to eat. I hate war. It is not new and it is not order. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.
Freedom of worship Freedom from want Freedom from fear. Explore This Park. They all have a particularly disastrous result on all fixed income groups. And I hope you will remember that all of us in this Government represent the fixed income group just as much as we represent business owners, workers, and farmers. This group of fixed income people includes: teachers, clergy, policemen, firemen, widows and minors on fixed incomes, wives and dependents of our soldiers and sailors, and old-age pensioners.
They and their families add up to one-quarter of our one hundred and thirty million people. They have few or no high pressure representatives at the Capitol. In a period of gross inflation they would be the worst sufferers. If ever there was a time to subordinate individual or group selfishness to the national good, that time is now. Disunity at home—bickerings, self-seeking partisanship, stoppages of work, inflation, business as usual, politics as usual, luxury as usual these are the influences which can undermine the morale of the brave men ready to die at the front for us here.
Those who are doing most of the complaining are not deliberately striving to sabotage the national war effort. They are laboring under the delusion that the time is past when we must make prodigious sacrifices- that the war is already won and we can begin to slacken off.
But the dangerous folly of that point of view can be measured by the distance that separates our troops from their ultimate objectives in Berlin and Tokyo—and by the sum of all the perils that lie along the way. Overconfidence and complacency are among our deadliest enemies. Last spring—after notable victories at Stalingrad and in Tunisia and against the U-boats on the high seas—overconfidence became so pronounced that war production fell off. In two months, June and July, , more than a thousand airplanes that could have been made and should have been made were not made.
Those who failed to make them were not on strike. They were merely saying, "The war's in the bag- so let's relax. That attitude on the part of anyone—Government or management or labor—can lengthen this war. It can kill American boys. Let us remember the lessons of In the summer of that year the tide turned in favor of the allies. But this Government did not relax.
In fact, our national effort was stepped up. In August, , the draft age limits were broadened from to The President called for "force to the utmost," and his call was heeded. And in November, only three months later, Germany surrendered.
That is the way to fight and win a war—all out—and not with half-an-eye on the battlefronts abroad and the other eye-and-a-half on personal, selfish, or political interests here at home. Therefore, in order to concentrate all our energies and resources on winning the war, and to maintain a fair and stable economy at home, I recommend that the Congress adopt:. The tax bill now under consideration by the Congress does not begin to meet this test.
For two long years I have pleaded with the Congress to take undue profits out of war. This should apply to necessities only; and will require public funds to carry out.
It will cost in appropriations about one percent of the present annual cost of the war. This expires June 30, , and if it is not extended well in advance, the country might just as well expect price chaos by summer.
We cannot have stabilization by wishful thinking. We must take positive action to maintain the integrity of the American dollar. These five measures together form a just and equitable whole. I would not recommend a national service law unless the other laws were passed to keep down the cost of living, to share equitably the burdens of taxation, to hold the stabilization line, and to prevent undue profits. The Federal Government already has the basic power to draft capital and property of all kinds for war purposes on a basis of just compensation.
As you know, I have for three years hesitated to recommend a national service act. Today, however, I am convinced of its necessity. Although I believe that we and our allies can win the war without such a measure, I am certain that nothing less than total mobilization of all our resources of manpower and capital will guarantee an earlier victory, and reduce the toll of suffering and sorrow and blood.
I have received a joint recommendation for this law from the heads of the War Department, the Navy Department, and the Maritime Commission. These are the men who bear responsibility for the procurement of the necessary arms and equipment, and for the successful prosecution of the war in the field. They say:. In such a time there can be no discrimination between the men and women who are assigned by the Government to its defense at the battlefront and the men and women assigned to producing the vital materials essential to successful military operations.
A prompt enactment of a National Service Law would be merely an expression of the universality of this responsibility. National service is the most democratic way to wage a war. Like selective service for the armed forces, it rests on the obligation of each citizen to serve his Nation to his utmost where he is best qualified. It does not mean reduction in wages. It does not mean loss of retirement and seniority rights and benefits.
It does not mean that any substantial numbers of war workers will be disturbed in their present jobs. Let these facts be wholly clear. Experience in other democratic Nations at war—Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand- has shown that the very existence of national service makes unnecessary the widespread use of compulsory power. National service has proven to be a unifying moral force based on an equal and comprehensive legal obligation of all people in a Nation at war.
There are millions of American men and women who are not in this war at all. It is not because they do not want to be in it. But they want to know where they can best do their share. National service provides that direction. It will be a means by which every man and woman can find that inner satisfaction which comes from making the fullest possible contribution to victory.
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