US Presidency
1940

Such an island represents to me and to the overwhelming majority of Americans today a helpless nightmare of a people without freedom the nightmare of a people lodged in prison, handcuffed, hungry, and fed through the bars from day to day by the contemptuous, unpitying masters of other continents. It is natural also that we should ask ourselves how now we can prevent the building of that prison and the placing of ourselves in the midst of it. Let us not hesitate all of us to proclaim certain truths. Overwhelmingly we, as a nation and this applies to all the other American nations are convinced that military and naval victory for the gods of force and hate would endanger the institutions of democracy in the western world, and that equally, therefore, the whole of our sympathies lies with those nations that are giving their life blood in combat against these forces.