Roosevelt Renews Attack on Dictatorships in Radio Talk for Lehman

President Roosevelt renewed his attack on dictatorships Friday night in the course of a radio broadcast urging re-election of Governor Herbert H. Lehman and other Democratic nominees. He said, in part:

“In other lands across the water the flares of militarism and conquest, terrorism and intolerance, have vividly revealed to Americans for the first time since the revolution how precious and extraordinary it is to be allowed this free choice of free leaders for free men. . . . But we cannot carelessly assume that a nation is strong and great merely because it has a democratic form of government. We have learned that a democracy weakened by internal dissension, by mutual suspicion born of social injustice, is no match for autocracies which are ruthless enough to repress internal dissension.

“Democracy in order to live must become a positive force in the daily lives of its people. It must make men and women whose devotion it seeks feel that it really cares for the security of every individual; that it is tolerant enough to inspire an essential unity among its citizens; and that it is militant enough to maintain liberty against social oppression at home and against military aggression abroad. . . .

“As of today, fascism and communism and old-line Tory Republicanism — are not threat to the continuation of our form of government. But I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, Fascism and Communism, aided, unconsciously perhaps, by old-line Tory Republicanism, will grow in strength.”