US Presidency
1932

We have developed, together with European nations, a worldwide economic conference with view to relieving pressure upon us from foreign countries, to increase their stability, to deal with the problems of silver, and to prevent recurrence of these calamities if it can be humanly done. 21. We have given American leadership in development of drastic reductions of armament in order to reduce our own expenditures by $ 200 million a year and to increase the financial stability of foreign nations and, above all, to relieve the world of fear and political friction. These are a part not all of the great and effective weapons with which we have fought the battle that has saved the American people from disaster and chaos. These weapons are still in action and advancing along the whole front to the restoration of recovery. I would call your attention to certain economic and social backgrounds of all these instrumentalities, that they are so constructed as to act through existing agencies, to avoid competition of the Government with private enterprise and responsibilities.