Sometimes forgotten

12/07/1941

Eleanor Roosevelt:

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, I am speaking to you tonight at a very serious
moment in our history. The Cabinet is convening and the leaders in Congress are meeting with the President. The State Department and Army and Navy officials have been with the President all afternoon. In fact, the Japanese ambassador was talking to the president at the very time that Japan's airships were bombing our citizens in Hawaii and the Philippines and sinking one of our transports loaded with lumber on its way to Hawaii.

By tomorrow morning the members of Congress will have a full report and be ready for action.

In the meantime, we the people are already prepared for action. For months now the
knowledge that something of this kind might happen has been hanging over our heads
and yet it seemed impossible to believe, impossible to drop the everyday things of life
and feel that there was only one thing which was important - preparation to meet an
enemy no matter where he struck. That is all over now and there is no more uncertainty.
We know what we have to face and we know that we are ready to face it.

I should like to say just a word to the women in the country tonight. I have a boy at sea
on a destroyer, for all I know he may be on his way to the Pacific. Two of my children
are in coast cities on the Pacific. Many of you all over the country have boys in the
services who will now be called upon to go into action. You have friends and families in
what has suddenly become a danger zone. You cannot escape anxiety. You cannot escape a clutch of fear at your heart and yet I hope that the certainty of what we have to meet will make you rise above these fears.
We must go about our daily business more determined than ever to do the ordinary things
as well as we can and when we find a way to do anything more in our communities to
help others, to build morale, to give a feeling of security, we must do it. Whatever is
asked of us I am sure we can accomplish it.

We are the free and unconquerable people of
the United States of America.

To the young people of the nation, I must speak a word tonight. You are going to have a
great opportunity. There will be high moments in which your strength and your ability will be tested. I have faith in you. I feel as though I was standing upon a rock and that rock is my faith in my fellow citizens.

Now we will go back to the program we had arranged......


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"We are the free and unconquerable people of the United States of America".

Are we?

.

Just something to really think about on this day.