State of the Union AddressesRoosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano)
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State of the Union Addresses
Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano)
Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
I do not wish to give the impression that all mistakes can be avoided and
that many disappointments are not inevitable in the making of peace. But we
must not this time lose the hope of establishing an international order
which will be capable of maintaining peace and realizing through the years
more perfect justice between Nations.
To do this we must be on our guard not to exploit and exaggerate the
differences between us and our allies, particularly with reference to the
peoples who have been liberated from Fascist tyranny. That is not the way
to secure a better settlement of those differences or to secure
international machinery which can rectify mistakes which may be made.
I should not be frank if I did not admit concern about many situations--the
Greek and Polish for example. But those situations are not as easy or as
simple to deal with as some spokesmen, whose sincerity I do not question,
would have us believe. We have obligations, not necessarily legal, to the
exiled Governments, to the underground leaders, and to our major allies who
came much nearer the shadows than we did.
We and our allies have declared that it is our purpose to respect the right
of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live
and to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have
been forcibly deprived of them. But with internal dissension, with many
citizens of liberated countries still prisoners of war or forced to labor
in Germany, it is difficult to guess the kind of self-government the people
really want.
During the interim period, until conditions permit a genuine expression of
the people's will, we and our allies have a duty, which we cannot ignore,
to use our influence to the end that no temporary or provisional
authorities in the liberated countries block the eventual exercise of the
peoples' right freely to choose the government and institutions under
which, as freemen, they are to live.
It is only too easy for all of us to rationalize what we want to believe,
and to consider those leaders we like responsible and those we dislike
irresponsible. And our task is not helped by stubborn partisanship, however
understandable on the part of opposed internal factions.
It is our purpose to help the peace-loving peoples of Europe to live
together as good neighbors, to recognize their common interests and not to
nurse their traditional grievances against one another.
But we must not permit the many specific and immediate problems of
adjustment connected with the liberation of Europe to delay the
establishment of permanent machinery for the maintenance of peace. Under
the threat of a common danger, the United Nations joined together in war to
preserve their independence and their freedom. They must now join together
to make secure the independence and freedom of all peace-loving states, so
that never again shall tyranny be able to divide and conquer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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