This speech was delivered at a time when the military forces of Germany and
Japan enjoyed a series of victories over seemingly weakling democratic nations.
By early 1941, the German Reich had spread throughout most of Western Europe,
while the Japanese Empire covered vast areas of the South Pacific.
The shocking collapse of noble, civilized nations resulted in a creeping
erosion of confidence in the future of democracy. To some observers it appeared
that Fascism and militarism might be the wave of the future and that democracy
with all its inherent problems was in serious decline.
In his third inaugural speech, President Franklin Roosevelt turned his
attention to this growing misconception and attempted to rally Americans,
reminding them of their roots and rekindling the spirit of democracy.
Mr. Chief Justice, my friends:
On each national day of inauguration since 1789, the people have renewed
their sense of dedication to the United States.
In Washington's day the task of the people was to create and weld together a
nation.
In Lincoln's day the task of the people was to preserve that Nation from
disruption from within.
In this day the task of the people is to save that Nation and its
institutions from disruption from without.
To us there has come a time, in the midst of swift happenings, to pause for a
moment and take stock--to recall what our place in history has been, and to
rediscover what we are and what we may be. If we do not, we risk the real peril
of isolation, the real peril of inaction.
Lives of nations are determined not by the count of years, but by the
lifetime of the human spirit. The life of a man is three-score years and ten: a
little more, a little less. The life of a nation is the fullness of the measure
of its will to live.
There are men who doubt this. There are men who believe that democracy, as a
form of Government and a frame of life, is limited or measured by a kind of
mystical and artificial fate that, for some unexplained reason, tyranny and
slavery have become the surging wave of the future--and that freedom is an
ebbing tide.
But we Americans know that this is not true.
Eight years ago, when the life of this Republic seemed frozen by a fatalistic
terror, we proved that this is not true. We were in the midst of shock--but we
acted. We acted quickly, boldly, decisively.
These later years have been living years--fruitful years for the people of
this democracy. For they have brought to us greater security and, I hope, a
better understanding that life's ideals are to be measured in other than
material things.
Most vital to our present and to our future is this experience of a democracy
which successfully survived crisis at home; put away many evil things; built new
structures on enduring lines; and, through it all, maintained the fact of its
democracy.
For action has been taken within the three-way framework of the Constitution
of the United States. The coordinate branches of the Government continue freely
to function. The Bill of Rights remains inviolate. The freedom of elections is
wholly maintained. Prophets of the downfall of American democracy have seen
their dire predictions come to naught.
No, democracy is not dying.
We know it because we have seen it revive--and grow.
We know it cannot die--because it is built on the unhampered initiative of
individual men and women joined together in a common enterprise--an enterprise
undertaken and carried through by the free expression of a free majority.
We know it because democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the
full force of men's enlightened will.
We know it because democracy alone has constructed an unlimited civilization
capable of infinite progress in the improvement of human life.
We know it because, if we look below the surface, we sense it still spreading
on every continent--for it is the most humane, the most advanced, and in the end
the most unconquerable of all forms of human society.
A nation, like a person, has a body--a body that must be fed and clothed and
housed, invigorated and rested, in a manner that measures up to the standards of
our time.
A nation, like a person, has a mind--a mind that must be kept informed and
alert, that must know itself, that understands the hopes and the needs of its
neighbors--all the other nations that live within the narrowing circle of the
world.
And a nation, like a person, has something deeper, something more permanent,
something larger than the sum of all its parts. It is that something which
matters most to its future--which calls forth the most sacred guarding of its
present.
It is a thing for which we find it difficult--even impossible--to hit upon a
single, simple word.
And yet we all understand what it is--the spirit--the faith of America. It is
the product of centuries. It was born in the multitudes of those who came from
many lands--some of high degree, but mostly plain people, who sought here, early
and late, to find freedom more freely.
The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history. It is
human history. It permeated the ancient life of early peoples. It blazed anew in
the middle ages. It was written in Magna Carta.
In the Americas its impact has been irresistible. America has been the New
World in all tongues, to all peoples, not because this continent was a new-found
land, but because all those who came here believed they could create upon this
continent a new life--a life that should be new in freedom.
Its vitality was written into our Mayflower Compact, into the Declaration of
Independence, into the Constitution of the United States, into the Gettysburg
Address.
Those who first came here to carry out the longings of their spirit, and the
millions who followed, and the stock that sprang from them--all have moved
forward constantly and consistently toward an ideal which in itself has gained
stature and clarity with each generation.
The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty
or self-serving wealth.
We know that we still have far to go; that we must more greatly build the
security and the opportunity and the knowledge of every citizen, in the measure
justified by the resources and the capacity of the land.
But it is not enough to achieve these purposes alone. It is not enough to
clothe and feed the body of this Nation, to instruct to inform its mind. For
there is also the spirit. And of the three, the greatest is the spirit.
Without the body and the mind, as all men know, the Nation could not
live.
But if the spirit of America were killed, even though the Nation's body and
mind, constricted in an alien world, lived on, the America we know would have
perished.
That spirit--that faith--speaks to us in our daily lives in ways often
unnoticed, because they seem so obvious. It speaks to us here in the Capital of
the Nation. It speaks to us through the processes of governing in the
sovereignties of 48 States. It speaks to us in our counties, in our cities, in
our towns, and in our villages. It speaks to us from the other nations of the
hemisphere, and from those across the seas--the enslaved, as well as the free.
Sometimes we fail to hear or heed these voices of freedom because to us the
privilege of our freedom is such an old, old story.
The destiny of America was proclaimed in words of prophecy spoken by our
first President in his first inaugural in 1789--words almost directed, it would
seem, to this year of 1941: The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and
the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered ...
deeply, ... finally, staked on the experiment intrusted to the hands of the
American people.
If you and I, if we in this later day, lose that sacred fire--if we let it be
smothered with doubt and fear--then we shall reject the destiny which Washington
strove so valiantly and so triumphantly to establish. The preservation of the
spirit and faith of the Nation does, and will, furnish the highest justification
for every sacrifice that we may make in the cause of national defense.
In the face of great perils never before encountered, our strong purpose is
to protect and to perpetuate the integrity of democracy.
For this we muster the spirit of America, and the faith of America.
We do not retreat. We are not content to stand still. As Americans, we go
forward, in the service of our country, by the will of God.
Franklin D. Roosevelt - January 20, 1941
留言列表
