From a reader:
Wow. I just found this audio recording of Roosevelt campaigning for the 1920 election. Has Obama been spending time in the LOC sniffing the FDR vinyls? Then again, the constant crisis mode via war is plainly evident here.
“It would be an unusual and much to be wished for thing if in the coming presentation of the issues a new note of fairness and generosity could be struck. Littleness, meanness, falsehood, extreme partisanship these are not in accord with the American spirit. I like to think that in this respect also we are moving forward.”
“I feel that our children will come to revere it [the war]… for the splendid unity of action which extended to every portion of the nation. It would therefore… confirm ill to our high standard if any person should in the heat of political rivalry seek to manufacture political advantage out of a nationally conducted struggle. We have seen things on too large a scale to listen at this day to trifles…”
“It is that same vision of the bigger outlook… which will I am sure lead us to demand that the men who represent us in the affairs of the our government shall be more than politicians. That they shall subordinate always the individual ambition and the party advantage to the national good.”
“Even if a nation entered the war for an ideal, so it has emerged from the war with the determination that this ideal shall not die. It is idle to pretend that the declaration of war of April 6, 1917 was a mere act of self-defense, or that the object of our participation was solely to defeat the military power of the central nations of Europe. We knew then as a nation, even as we know today, that success on land and sea could be but half a victory. The other half is not won yet. The cry of the French at Verdun, “They shall not pass” and the cheer of our own men in the Argonne, “We shall go through,” these were essential glories, yet they are incomplete. To them we must write the binding finish — it shall not occur again — for America demands that the crime of war shall cease.”