Chat on National Security, 12:29:1940

December 29, 1940, the White House, Washington, D.C. Now from the quiet diplomatic reception room, the President of the United States delivers the fireside chat on national defense which has been awaited with such interest by the nation and by the world.

Radios in Iowa and in Hawaii, Radios in Oregon and Wake Island, Radios throughout the United States in its possession. Radios in the Western Hemisphere, from Canada to the Argentine, are turned on tonight so so that the peoples of North and South America can hear President Roosevelt as he crystallizes the defense program of the United States.

The interest in the President's fireside chat is more than hemispheric. Columbia's correspondence in Great Britain, Germany and Japan reported tonight that those nations too would be listening for this address. So for Europe, CBS shortwave stations will relay translations or summaries in six languages.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. friends, this is not a fireside chat on war. It is a talk on national security because the nub of the whole purpose of your president is to keep you now and your children later and your grandchildren much later out of a last ditch war for the preservation of American

independence, and all of the things that American independence means to you and to me and to ours. Tonight, in the presence of a world crisis, my mind goes back eight years to a night in the midst of a domestic crisis. It was a time when the quills of American industry were grinding to a full stop when the whole banking system of our country had ceased to function.

I well remember that while I sat in my study in the White House, preparing to talk with the people of the United States, I had before my eyes the picture of all those Americans with whom I was talking.