Tenth of June

The Presidential train raced south through the rich red -amp; green foothills of Virginia. Inside, President Roosevelt made the last few changes in the speech of a day that sped into history. One hour before his train left Washington, Benito Mussolini declared war on Great Britain and France.

A light rain began as the train neared Charlottesville. The President relaxed; grave and pale when he entered the train, the decision that he had made seemed to strengthen him. It had been a week of swift decision: he announced the release by executive order of Navy planes which, to be resold to the Allies, were flown at once to Buffalo, en route to Canada; by the same device he had made available more than 500,000 Lee-Enfield rifles, machine guns, ammunition, 755. But the great strain of the week had been his last-minute efforts to prevent Mussolini's attack. He smiled and waved when the crowd at the Charlottesville station hailed his arrival. Then, through the streets of quiet Charlottesville, he drove to the Memorial Gymnasium of the University of Virginia, to don his cap amp; gown and face the graduating class to deliver his speech of the tenth day of June.

It was a fighting speech, more powerful and more determined than any he had delivered since the war began. It was a speech of decision, with none of the ambiguities that had marked his words on neutrality. It was eloquent: "On this tenth day of June, 1940, in this university founded by the first great American teacher of democracy, we send forth our prayers and our hopes to those beyond the seas who are maintaining with magnificent valor their battle for freedom." It was specific in its promise of aid: "In our American unity ... we will extend to the opponents of force the material resources of this nation, and, at the same time, we will harness and speed up the use of those resources in order that we ourselves in the Americas may have equipment and training equal to the task of any emergency and every defense." But it was most telling and it drew most applause in its condemnation of the dictatorial way of life-the way of force, of "deliberate contempt" of moral values, of treachery and double-dealing, the way that had come to its great climax in the assassin lunge of Italy upon stricken France. Three months ago, said the President, Mussolini had sent him word that Italy was determined to prevent the spread of war to the Mediterranean. The U. S. Government had concurred, had offered to approach Britain and France-about Italy's territorial claims, about the creation "when the appropriate occasion arose-quot; of a stable world order through reduction of arms and the establishment of a more liberal international economic order. "The Government of Italy has now chosen to preserve what it terms its free dom of action." No listener who heard the contempt in the President's voice could doubt that for him that freedom of action meant only the freedom to murder. But unexpected was the line that swept through the U. S. when Franklin Roosevelt broke away from his prepared address: "On this tenth day of June, 1940, the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor."The U. S. had taken sides. Ended was the myth of U. S. neutrality: "Let us not hesitate-all of us-to proclaim . . . victory for the gods of force and hate would endanger the institutions of democracy in the Western World . . . the whole of our sympathies lie with those nations which are giving their life blood in combat against those forces." Ended was the Utopian hope that the U. S. could remain an island of democracy in a totalitarian world: "Such an island represents to me and to the overwhelming majority of Americans today a helpless nightmare of a people without freedom, a people lodged in prison, handcuffed, hungry, and fed through the bars from day to day by the contemptuous, unpitying masters of other continents." Ended was the vacillating talk about the value of aiding the Allies; nothing remained now but to get on with the job.

The President spoke for the nation: "The program unfolds swiftly and into it will fit the responsibility and the opportunity of every man and woman to preserve our heritage in days of peril. I call for effort, courage, sacrifice, devotion. Granting the love of freedom, all of these are possible. And the love of freedom is still fierce and steady in the nation today."

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