Biggest national event of last week was the dedication of Chicago's new Centennial Bridge (see p. 61). Standing on a platform on the south plaza of the bridge looking down into the faces of as many Chicagoans as could cram the new drive, Dedicator Franklin Roosevelt, homing from the West, tossed his chin in air and cried: "It is because the people of the United States under modern conditions must, for the sake of their own future, give thought to the rest of the world, that I, as the responsible executive head of the nation, have chosen this great inland city and this gala occasion to speak to you on a subject of definite national importance."
The amiable citizens who had gathered to hear the President speak a few words in praise of their fine new piece of public works, soon found to their surprise that they were about to hear a stirring speech on international affairs. Before the President had reached his peroration, more astute members of the crowd realized that they had been chosen to hear the first announcement of a new U. S. foreign policy.
Moral Indignation. Slowly and solemnly driving home his points, Franklin Roosevelt proceeded:
"The present reign of terror and international lawlessness began a few years ago. It began through unjustified interference in the internal affairs of other nations or the invasion of alien territory in violations of treaties, and has now reached a stage where the very foundations of civilization are seriously threatened. . . .
"Without a declaration of war and without warning or justification of any kind, civilians, including women and children, are being ruthlessly murdered with bombs from the air.
"In times of so-called peace, ships are being attacked and sunk by submarines without cause or notice. Nations are fomenting and taking sides in civil warfare in. nations that have never done them any harm. Nations claiming freedom for themselves deny it to others.
"Innocent peoples and nations are being cruelly sacrificed to a greed for power and supremacy which is devoid of all sense of justice and humane consideration."
Thus with a vigorous push Franklin Roosevelt undertook to turn the scales of public opinion, scales that for weeks had maintained a queazy balance between moral indignation at ruthless international aggression in Spain and China and a feeling that the U. S. must not soil the spirit of peace by taking even a moral stand. To add weight to the push, he quoted from James Hilton's Lost Horizon a grim passage describing what the world may have in store for it:
"Perhaps we foresee a time when men, exultant in the technique of homicide, will rage so hotly over the world that every precious thing will be in danger, every book and picture and harmony, every treasure garnered through two millenniums, the small, the delicate, the defenseless—all will be lost or wrecked, or utterly destroyed." Having gone so far he promptly went further.
Cracked Foundation. "The peace-loving nations must make a concerted effort in opposition to those violations of treaties and those ignorings of humane instincts which today are creating a state of international anarchy and instability from which there is no escape through mere isolation or neutrality. . . .