reSee.it Video Transcript AI Summary
The speaker argues that the Roosevelt administration is the third powerful group pushing the country toward war, having used the war emergency to win a third presidential term, add unlimited debt, and justify restricting congressional power and adopting dictatorial procedures. The administration’s power and prestige, the speaker claims, depend on wartime conditions and on Britain, to whom the president attached his political future, at a time when many believed England and France could easily win. The danger, according to the speaker, lies in the administration’s subterfuge: while promising peace, it leads the nation into war without honoring its electoral platform.
In identifying the major agitators for war, the speaker names three essential groups: the British, the Jewish, and the administration; other groups are described as of secondary importance. The speaker contends that, once any one of these groups ceases agitating for war, the nation would face little danger of involvement. The speaker asserts that, when hostilities began in Europe in 1939, Americans showed no intention of entering the war and could not be easily asked for a declaration of war; nevertheless, the groups planned to entrap the United States into war by disguising foreign war as American defense, gradually drawing the country in, and creating incidents to force actual conflict, aided by propaganda.
The propaganda, the speaker claims, included theaters glorifying war, biased newsreels, newspapers and magazines engaging in antiwar advertising, and smear campaigns against intervention opponents. Those who opposed intervention were labeled fifth columnists, traitors, Nazis, or anti-Semites; people lost jobs for antiwar views; lecture halls opened to war advocates but closed to opponents, and a climate of fear was created. The nation was told that aviation would make the UK fleet invulnerable to invasion, and that extensive arms spending was needed for national defense, with the money flowing to aid Europe rather than strengthening the U.S. military. The speaker provides a specific example: in 1939, the U.S. was told to increase the Air Corps to 5,000 planes, then later that the United States should have at least 50,000 planes; yet, while fighting planes were produced, they were sent abroad, and the U.S. air corps remained under-equipped, with far fewer modern bombers and fighters than Germany could produce in a month.
According to the speaker, from its inception the arms program aimed to prosecute war in Europe more than to defend America, and the only thing preventing war was the rising opposition of the American people. The speaker contends that democracy and representative government are being tested as the nation stands on the verge of a war that would be unwinnable without a costly invasion, and asserts that it is not too late to stay out and to demonstrate that money, propaganda, or patronage cannot force a free and independent people into war against its will.