Roosevelt Hits Nazi Racial Theories, Uprooting of People from Homes

Without directly naming Hitler, President Roosevelt denounced the Nazi theories of racial supremacy today in his speech before the Governing Board of the Pan-American Union.

“We of this hemisphere,” he said, “have no need to seek a new international order. We have already found it. This was not won by hysterical outcries or violent movements of troops. We did not stamp out nations, capture governments or uproot innocent people from the homes they had built. We did not invent absurd doctrines of racial supremacy or claim dictatorship through universal revolution.”

Stressing that whatever touches one nation in the Western Hemisphere touches them all, he said: “We have only asked that the world go with us in the path of peace, but we shall be able to keep that way open only if we are prepared to meet force with force if challenge is ever made.

“Today we can have no illusions. Old dreams of universal empire are again rampant. We hear of races which claim the right of mastery. We learn of groups which insist they have the right to impose their way of life on other nations.”

Foreseeing the downfall of the use of force, the President said: “The value of truth and sincerity is always stronger than the value of lies and cynicism. No process has yet been invented which can permanently separate men from their hearts and consciences or can prevent them from seeing the results of their ideas as time rolls by. You cannot make men believe that a way of life is good when it spreads poverty, misery, disease and death. Men cannot be everlastingly loyal unless they are free.”

German Charge d’Affaires Hans Thomsen, who had announced he would be at the Pan-American meeting to hear the President, failed to appear. The Ambassadors of Japan and Soviet Russia also failed to attend.