State of the Union AddressesRoosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano)
History
State of the Union Addresses
Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano)
Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
The inability to get the needed nurses for the Army is not due to any
shortage of nurses; 280,000 registered nurses are now practicing in this
country. It has been estimated by the War Manpower Commission that 27,000
additional nurses could be made available to the armed forces without
interfering too seriously with the needs of the civilian population for
nurses.
Since volunteering has not produced the number of nurses required, I urge
that the Selective Service Act be amended to provide for the induction of
nurses into the armed forces. The need is too pressing to await the outcome
of further efforts at recruiting.
The care and treatment given to our wounded and sick soldiers have been the
best known to medical science. Those standards must be maintained at all
costs. We cannot tolerate a lowering of them by failure to provide adequate
nursing for the brave men who stand desperately in need of it.
In the continuing progress of this war we have constant need for new types
of weapons, for we cannot afford to fight the war of today or tomorrow with
the weapons of yesterday. For example, the American Army now has developed
a new tank with a gun more powerful than any yet mounted on a fast-moving
vehicle. The Army will need many thousands of these new tanks in 1945.
Almost every month finds some new development in electronics which must be
put into production in order to maintain our technical superiority--and in
order to save lives. We have to work every day to keep ahead of the enemy
in radar. On D-Day, in France, with our superior new equipment, we located
and then put out of operation every warning set which the Germans had along
the French coast.
If we do not keep constantly ahead of our enemies in the development of new
weapons, we pay for our backwardness with the life's blood of our sons.
The only way to meet these increased needs for new weapons and more of them
is for every American engaged in war work to stay on his war job--for
additional American civilians, men and women, not engaged in essential
work, to go out and get a war job. Workers who are released because their
production is cut back should get another job where production is being
increased. This is no time to quit or change to less essential jobs.
There is an old and true saying that the Lord hates a quitter. And this
Nation must pay for all those who leave their essential jobs--or all those
who lay down on their essential jobs for nonessential reasons.
And--again--that payment must be made with the life's blood of our sons.
Many critical production programs with sharply rising needs are now
seriously hampered by manpower shortages. The most important Army needs are
artillery ammunition, cotton duck, bombs, tires, tanks, heavy trucks, and
even B-29's. In each of these vital programs, present production is behind
requirements.
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