Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
The lives of millions of veterans and war workers will be greatly affected
by the success or failure of our program of war liquidation and
reconversion. Their transition to peacetime pursuits will be determined by
our efforts to break the bottlenecks in key items of production, to make
surplus property immediately available where it is needed, to maintain an
effective national employment service, and many other reconversion
policies. Our obligations to the people who won the war will not be paid if
we fail to prevent inflation and to maintain employment opportunities.
While our peacetime prosperity will be based on the private enterprise the
government can and must assist in many ways. It is the Government's
responsibility to see that our economic system remains competitive, that
new businesses have adequate opportunities, and that our national resources
are restored and improved. Government must realize the effect of its
operations on the whole economy. It is the responsibility of Government to
gear its total program to the achievement of full production and full
employment.
Our basic objective--toward which all others lead--is to improve the
welfare of the American people. In addition to economic prosperity, this
means that we use social security in the fullest sense of the word. And
people must be protected from excessive want during old age, sickness, and
unemployment. Opportunities for a good economy and adequate medical care
must be readily available. Every family should build a decent home. The new
economic rights to which I have referred on previous occasions is a charter
of economic freedom which seeks to assure that all who will may work toward
their own security and the general advancement; that we become a
well-housed people, a well-nourished people, an educated people, a people
socially and economically secure, an alert and responsible people.
These and other problems which may face us can be met by the cooperation of
all of us in furthering a positive and well-balanced Government program--a
program which will further national and international well-being.
II. THE FEDERAL PROGRAM
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
I. FOREIGN POLICY
The year 1945 brought with it the final defeat of our enemies. There lies
before us now the work of building a just and enduring peace.
Our most immediate task toward that end is to deprive our enemies
completely and forever of their power to start another war. Of even greater
importance to the preservation of international peace is the need to
preserve the wartime agreement of the United Nations and to direct it into
the ways of peace.
Long before our enemies surrendered, the foundations had been laid on which
to continue this unity in the peace to come. The Atlantic meeting in 1941
and the conferences at Casablanca, Quebec, Moscow, Cairo, Tehran, and
Dumbarton Oaks each added a stone to the structure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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