The United Nations will take measures, if necessary, to prevent the use of French territory in any part of the world for military purposes by the Axis powers. However, we are now greatly concerned lest those who have recently come to power may seek to force the brave French people into submission to Nazi despotism. Our policy has been consistent from the very beginning. Throughout the Nazi occupation of France, we have hoped for the maintenance of a French Government which would strive to regain independence, to reestablish the principles of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," and to restore the historic culture of France. Recently we received news of a change in government in what we used to know as the Republic of France-a name dear to the hearts of all lovers of liberty- a name and an institution which we hope will soon be restored to full dignity. But the situation there is receiving very careful attention. In the Mediterranean area, matters remain on the surface much as they were. These Russian forces have destroyed and are destroying more armed power of our enemies-troops, planes, tanks, and guns-than all the other United Nations put together. On the European front the most important development of the past year has been without question the crushing counteroffensive on the part of the great armies of Russia against the powerful German Army. American war planes, manned by Americans, are flying in actual combat over all the continents and all the oceans. American troops have taken stations in South America, Greenland, Iceland, the British Isles, the Near East, the Middle East and the Far East, the continent of Australia, and many islands of the Pacific. We have had no illusions about the fact that this is a tough job-and a long one.Īmerican warships are now in combat in the North and South Atlantic, in the Arctic, in the Mediterranean, in the Indian Ocean, and in the North and South Pacific. We have stepped up our war production on a scale that is testing our industrial power, our engineering genius, and our economic structure to the utmost. Since then we have dispatched strong forces of our Army and Navy, several hundred thousand of them, to bases and battle fronts thousands of miles from home. And yet our war efforts had done little to dislocate the normal lives of most of us. For the two years prior to that attack this country had been gearing itself up to a high level of production of munitions. It is nearly five months since we were attacked at Pearl Harbor.
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