Massive industrial production had turned the top soil of the Great Plains and the future of the nation to dust. We are fighting to save a great and precious form of government for ourselves and for the world. America was on the verge of losing its spirit. In our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up, or else we all go down, as one people. A quarter of a century ago we helped to save our freedom, but we failed to organize the kind of world in which future generations could live in freedom.
Opportunity knocks again.
There is no guarantee that it will knock a third time. As the war and Roosevelt's life were coming to an end, he returned to the theme of survival. It was more than a figure of speech. It was a confession of loving dependence. He was the one American who knew, or seemed to know, where the world was going.