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爐邊談話 Fireside Chat

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富蘭克林·羅斯福/Franklin Roosevelt

富蘭克林·羅斯福(1882—1945),美國第三十一、三十二任總統,美國曆史上唯一蟬聯四屆(第四屆未任滿)的總統。羅斯福在20世紀的經濟大蕭條和第二次世界大戰中扮演了重要的角色,被學者評為美國最偉大的三位總統之一。

My friend,

This is not a fireside chat on war. It is a talk on national security; because the nub of the whole purpose of your president is to keep you now, and your children later, and your grandchildren much later, out of a last-ditch war for the preservation of American independence and all of the things that American independence means to you and to me and to ours.

Tonight, in the presence of a world crisis, my mind goes back eight years to a night in the midst of a domestic crisis. It was a time when the wheels of American industry were grinding to a full stop, when the whole banking system of our country had ceased to function.

I well remembered that while I sat in my study in the White House, preparing to talk with the people of the United States, I had before my eyes the picture of all those Americans with whom I was talking. I saw the workmen in the mills, the mines, the factories; the girl behind the counter; the small shopkeeper; the farmer doing his Spring plowing; the widows and the old men wondering about their life' s savings.

I tried to convey to the great mass of American people what the banking crisis to them in their daily lives.

Tonight I want to do the same thing, with the same people, in this new crisis, which faces America.

We met the issue of 1933 with courage and realism. We face this new crisis—this new threat to the security of our nation—with the same courage and realism.

Never before since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock has our American civilization been in such danger as now.

For on September 27, 1940—this year—by an agreement signed in Berlin, three powerful nations, two in Europe and one in Asia, joined themselves together in the threat that if the United States of America interfered with or blocked the expansion program of these three nations—a program aimed at world control—they would unite in ultimate action against the United States.

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