Bulletin

President Roosevelt says the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor from the air.  

Secretary Hull speaks of Foreign Policy

The Secretary of State in an address at Washington, March 17, 1938, declared that the momentous question was whether the doctrine of force would once more become enthroned or whether the United States and other peaceful nations would work unceasingly to preserve law, order, morality, and justice as the bases of civilized international relations.

The Secretary said that the United States might, if it chose, turn its back on the whole problem and decline the responsibility of contributing to its solution. But he warned of what such a choice would involve. It would mean a voluntary abandonment of some of the most important things that had made us great; an abject retreat before the forces which we had consistently opposed throughout our whole national history. Our security would be menaced as other nations came to believe that through fear or unwillingness we did not propose to protect our legitimate interests abroad, but intended to abandon them at the first sign of danger. The sphere of all of our international relations would shrink until we stood practically alone among the nations, "a self-constituted hermit state". We would find it necessary to reorganize our entire social and economic structure, which would mean lower living standards, regimentation, and wide-spread economic distress.

All this, the Secretary said, would be done in order to avoid war. But, he asked, would this policy give any such assurance? He believed that reason and experience definitely pointed to the contrary. We might seek to withdraw from participation in world affairs, "but we cannot thereby withdraw from the world itself". Isolation, he declared, "is not a means to security; it is a fruitful source of insecurity".

Secretary Hull emphasized that for the sake of our own best interests we must maintain our influence in world affairs and our participation in efforts toward world progress and peace. Only by making our reasonable contribution to a firm establishment of a world order based on law "can we keep the problem of our own security in true perspective, and thus discharge our responsibility to ourselves".

Roosevelt begins his 2nd term as President

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt began his second term as 32nd President of the United States with his second inauguration held today at the White House.

For the first time the inauguration of the President was held on January 20, pursuant to the provisions of the 20th amendment to the Constitution. Having won the election of 1936 by a wide margin, and looking forward to the advantage of Democratic gains in the House and Senate, the President confidently outlined the continuation of his programs. The oath of office was administered on the East Portico of the Capitol by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes.

The inauguration took place at the Eat Portico of the White House. Vice President John Nance Garner also took his Oath of Office at the Inaugural Platform. This is the first time for this event as well.

President Roosevelt than proceeded to address the nation on its future. He also addressed the landslide victory that occurred on Election Day. Although some experts predicted a close race, Roosevelt went on to win the greatest electoral landslide since the beginning of the current two-party system in the 1850s, carrying all but 8 electoral votes. Roosevelt carried every state except Maine and Vermont. By winning 523 electoral votes, Roosevelt received 98.49% of the electoral vote, the highest percentage since 1820.

Here follows the entire content of President Roosevelt's inaugural Address which was broadcast on Radio.

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My fellow countrymen. When four years ago we met to inaugurate a President, the Republic, single-minded in anxiety, stood in spirit here. We dedicated ourselves to the fulfillment of a vision—to speed the time when there would be for all the people that security and peace essential to the pursuit of happiness. We of the Republic pledged ourselves to drive from the temple of our ancient faith those who had profaned it; to end by action, tireless and unafraid, the stagnation and despair of that day. We did those first things first.

Our covenant with ourselves did not stop there. Instinctively we recognized a deeper need—the need to find through government the instrument of our united purpose to solve for the individual the ever-rising problems of a complex civilization. Repeated attempts at their solution without the aid of government had left us baffled and bewildered. For, without that aid, we had been unable to create those moral controls over the services of science which are necessary to make science a useful servant instead of a ruthless master of mankind. To do this we knew that we must find practical controls over blind economic forces and blindly selfish men.

We of the Republic sensed the truth that democratic government has innate capacity to protect its people against disasters once considered inevitable, to solve problems once considered unsolvable. We would not admit that we could not find a way to master economic epidemics just as, after centuries of fatalistic suffering, we had found a way to master epidemics of disease. We refused to leave the problems of our common welfare to be solved by the winds of chance and the hurricanes of disaster.

In this we Americans were discovering no wholly new truth; we were writing a new chapter in our book of self-government.

This year marks the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Constitutional Convention which made us a nation. At that Convention our forefathers found the way out of the chaos which followed the Revolutionary War; they created a strong government with powers of united action sufficient then and now to solve problems utterly beyond individual or local solution. A century and a half ago they established the Federal Government in order to promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to the American people.

Today we invoke those same powers of government to achieve the same objectives.

Four years of new experience have not belied our historic instinct. They hold out the clear hope that government within communities, government within the separate States, and government of the United States can do the things the times require, without yielding its democracy. Our tasks in the last four years did not force democracy to take a holiday.

Nearly all of us recognize that as intricacies of human relationships increase, so power to govern them also must increase—power to stop evil; power to do good. The essential democracy of our nation and the safety of our people depend not upon the absence of power, but upon lodging it with those whom the people can change or continue at stated intervals through an honest and free system of elections. The Constitution of 1787 did not make our democracy impotent.

In fact, in these last four years, we have made the exercise of all power more democratic; for we have begun to bring private autocratic powers into their proper subordination to the public’s government. The legend that they were invincible—above and beyond the processes of a democracy—has been shattered. They have been challenged and beaten.

Our progress out of the depression is obvious. But that is not all that you and I mean by the new order of things. Our pledge was not merely to do a patchwork job with secondhand materials. By using the new materials of social justice we have undertaken to erect on the old foundations a more enduring structure for the better use of future generations.

In that purpose we have been helped by achievements of mind and spirit. Old truths have been relearned; untruths have been unlearned. We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays. We are beginning to wipe out the line that divides the practical from the ideal; and in so doing we are fashioning an instrument of unimagined power for the establishment of a morally better world.

This new understanding undermines the old admiration of worldly success as such. We are beginning to abandon our tolerance of the abuse of power by those who betray for profit the elementary decencies of life.

In this process evil things formerly accepted will not be so easily condoned. Hard-headedness will not so easily excuse hardheartedness. We are moving toward an era of good feeling. But we realize that there can be no era of good feeling save among men of good will.

For these reasons I am justified in believing that the greatest change we have witnessed has been the change in the moral climate of America.

Among men of good will, science and democracy together offer an ever-richer life and ever-larger satisfaction to the individual. With this change in our moral climate and our rediscovered ability to improve our economic order, we have set our feet upon the road of enduring progress.

Shall we pause now and turn our back upon the road that lies ahead? Shall we call this the promised land? Or, shall we continue on our way? For “each age is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth.”

Many voices are heard as we face a great decision. Comfort says, “Tarry a while.” Opportunism says, “This is a good spot.” Timidity asks, “How difficult is the road ahead?”

True, we have come far from the days of stagnation and despair. Vitality has been preserved. Courage and confidence have been restored. Mental and moral horizons have been extended.

But our present gains were won under the pressure of more than ordinary circumstances. Advance became imperative under the goad of fear and suffering. The times were on the side of progress.

To hold to progress today, however, is more difficult. Dulled conscience, irresponsibility, and ruthless self-interest already reappear. Such symptoms of prosperity may become portents of disaster! Prosperity already tests the persistence of our progressive purpose.

Let us ask again: Have we reached the goal of our vision of that fourth day of March 1933? Have we found our happy valley?

I see a great nation, upon a great continent, blessed with a great wealth of natural resources. Its hundred and thirty million people are at peace among themselves; they are making their country a good neighbor among the nations. I see a United States which can demonstrate that, under democratic methods of government, national wealth can be translated into a spreading volume of human comforts hitherto unknown, and the lowest standard of living can be raised far above the level of mere subsistence.

But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.

I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.

I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago.

I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children.

I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions.

I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

But it is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you in hope—because the nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in it, proposes to paint it out. We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern; and we will never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

If I know aught of the spirit and purpose of our Nation, we will not listen to comfort, opportunism, and timidity. We will carry on.

Overwhelmingly, we of the Republic are men and women of good will; men and women who have more than warm hearts of dedication; men and women who have cool heads and willing hands of practical purpose as well. They will insist that every agency of popular government use effective instruments to carry out their will.

Government is competent when all who compose it work as trustees for the whole people. It can make constant progress when it keeps abreast of all the facts. It can obtain justified support and legitimate criticism when the people receive true information of all that government does.

If I know aught of the will of our people, they will demand that these conditions of effective government shall be created and maintained. They will demand a nation uncorrupted by cancers of injustice and, therefore, strong among the nations in its example of the will to peace.

Today we reconsecrate our country to long-cherished ideals in a suddenly changed civilization. In every land there are always at work forces that drive men apart and forces that draw men together. In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up, or else we all go down, as one people.

To maintain a democracy of effort requires a vast amount of patience in dealing with differing methods, a vast amount of humility. But out of the confusion of many voices rises an understanding of dominant public need. Then political leadership can voice common ideals, and aid in their realization.

In taking again the oath of office as President of the United States, I assume the solemn obligation of leading the American people forward along the road over which they have chosen to advance.

While this duty rests upon me I shall do my utmost to speak their purpose and to do their will, seeking Divine guidance to help us each and every one to give light to them that sit in darkness and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

- President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Americans question participation in 1936 Olympic Games

When the American Olympic Association met last week in Washington everyone knew it would be asked to do something about the status of German Jewish athletes and the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. When the meeting adjourned, many a delegate was still not clear as to exactly what he had done.

The question was first formulated in the annual convention of the Amateur Athletic Union at Pittsburgh, immediately preceding the Olympic meeting. There bald, white-fringed Gustavus Town Kirby took the floor. He recalled the meeting of the International Olympic Committee last June at Vienna, where German delegates promised not to exclude Jews from their teams. Since then, said Mr. Kirby, Jews had not only been barred from teams but by various Nazi rules had even been prevented from training. He offered a resolution calling upon the American Olympic Association to refuse to send a U. S. team to Berlin "unless the [German attitude] is so changed in fact as well as in theory as to both permit and encourage German athletes of Jewish faith or heritage to train, prepare for and participate in the Olympic Games of 1936." The resolution was loudly adopted. On to Washington marched the A. A. U.'s delegates.

Meanwhile the German Olympic Committee retorted that its Vienna pledge would be strictly observed, denied that any discrimination against Jewish athletes was contemplated. But the American Olympic Association had ample evidence of discrimination, not by Government decree but by Nazi-dominated athletic organizations. Boxing clubs banned Jews altogether. In hockey, Jews were removed from the first three teams. According to the Ullstein Vossische Zeitung, Jews were to be excluded from tennis "but individual clubs could retain members belonging in old established families."

Nevertheless the cautious American Olympic Association was not to be stampeded into adopting the A. A. U.'s "boycott" plan. Against fiery old "Gus" Kirby stood equally fiery Brigadier-General Charles H. Sherrill, American member of the International Olympic Committee and onetime Ambassador to Turkey. Barked General Sherrill: "In its present form [this resolution] is a threat to Germany. I move it be amended so as to be a protest. . . ."

The resolution the A. O. A. finally adopted "expressed hope" that restrictions on Jewish athletes would be lifted before the time for preparing for the 1936 games so that U. S. teams "can and will be certified for competition under the Olympic standard."