Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes
The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man or one party or one nation. It must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world.
Roosevelt, Franklin D. "Address to Congress on the Yalta Conference." 1 Mar. 1945. The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 13, Harper & Brothers, 1950, p. 586.
Historically, this quotation seems like an endorsement of motherhood, but it was an extremely important statement at the time. Eisenhower was convinced to run for the Presidency as a Republican in order to stop Senator Robert Taft and the conservative, isolationist, right wing of the Republican Party. These Republicans opposed American support of the United Nations. Eisenhower won the Republican nomination, then the general election, and clearly announced to the country and the world, that the moderate wing of the Republican Party was in control and the United Nations was an important part of our foreign policy.
At the time, Fascist Germany and Japan were aggressively attacking other nations who were trying to mobilize to stop their Fascist ideas of world domination. In America, unlike after WWII, many of the Republican Party Leaders were then isolationists and were adamant that we should not expand our military capability. They wanted to spend no more money on defense. ER and her husband wanted to increase defense spending to increase our military readiness and provide arms to England, China and others who were trying to defend against the Axis. They were castigated as ‘War Mongers’ by the isolationists. ER went to the people to explain that without spending on military strength, there would be no peace. Ironically, the conservative forces who criticized Mrs. Roosevelt as a war monger for building up our military, after WWII when the Cold War began, they criticized her for not being enough of a hawk and not sufficiently supporting the military and aggressive foreign policies.
Harding however made no effort to ever implement any such association in his tenure.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. A member of the Democratic Party, he won a record four presidential elections and became a central figure in world events during the first half of the 20th century. Roosevelt directed the federal government during most of the Great Depression, implementing his New Deal domestic agenda in response to the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. As a dominant leader of his party, he built the New Deal Coalition, which defined modern liberalism in the United States throughout the middle third of the 20th century. His third and fourth terms were dominated by World War II, which ended shortly after he died in office.
