Campaign Address, Philadelphia
By President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Recorded October 23, 1940

Mr. Chairman, my friends of Philadelphia:

Last July I stated a plain obvious fact, a fact which I told the national convention of my party that the pressure of national defense work and the conduct of national affairs would not allow me to conduct any campaign in the accepted definition of that term.

Since July, hardly a day or a night has passed when some crisis, or some possibility of crisis in world affairs, has not called for my personal conference with our great Secretary of State and with other officials of your Government.

With every passing day has come some urgent problem in connection with our swift production for defense, and our mustering of the resources of the nation.

Therefore, it is essential—I have found it very essential in the national interest—to adhere to the rule never to be more than twelve hours distant from our National Capital.

But last July I also said this to the Chicago Convention: "I shall never be loath to call the attention of the nation to deliberate or unwitting falsifications of fact," which are sometimes made by political candidates.

The time has come for me to do just that.

This night and four other nights, I am taking time to point out to the American people what the more fantastic misstatements of this campaign have been. I emphasize the words "more fantastic," because it would take three hundred and sixty-five nights to discuss all of them.

All these misstatements cannot possibly be what I called last July, "unwitting falsifications" of fact; many of them must be and are "deliberate falsifications" of fact.

The young people who are attending dinners in every State of the Union tonight know that they are already a part of the whole economic and social life of the nation. I am particularly glad to discuss with them—and with you—these misstatements and the facts which refute them.

Truthful campaign discussion of public issues is essential to the American form of Government; but wilful misrepresentation of fact has no place either during election time or at any other time. For example, there can be no objection to any party or any candidate urging that the undeveloped water power of this nation should be harnessed by private utility companies rather than by the Government itself; or that the social security law should be repealed, or that the truth-in-securities act should be abrogated.

But it is an entirely different thing for any party or any candidate to state, for example, that the President of the United States telephoned to Mussolini and Hitler to sell Czechoslovakia down the river; or to state that the unfortunate unemployed of the nation are going to be driven into concentration camps; or that the social security funds of the Government of the United States will not be in existence when the workers of today become old enough to apply for them; or that the election of the present Government means the end of American democracy within four years. I think they know, and I know we know that all those statements are false.

Certain techniques of propaganda, created and developed in dictator countries, have been imported into this campaign. It is the very simple technique of repeating and repeating and repeating falsehoods, with the idea that by constant repetition and reiteration, with no contradiction, the misstatements will finally come to be believed.

Dictators have had great success in using this technique; but only because they were able to control the press and the radio, and to stifle all opposition. That is why I cannot bring myself to believe that in a democracy like ours, where the radio and a part of the press—I repeat, where the radio and a part of the press-remain open to both sides, repetition of deliberate misstatements will ever prevail.

I make the charge now that those falsifications are being spread for the purpose of filling the minds and the hearts of the American people with fear. They are used to create fear by instilling in the minds of our people doubt of each other, doubt of their Government, and doubt of the purposes of their democracy.

This type of campaign has a familiar ring. It reminds us of the scarecrow of four years ago that the social security funds were going to be diverted from the pockets of the American workingman.

It reminds us of the famous old scarecrow of 1932, "Grass will grow in the streets of a hundred cities; a thousand towns; the weeds will overrun the fields of millions of farms."

The American people will not be stampeded into panic. The effort failed before and it will fail again. The overwhelming majority of Americans will not be scared by this blitzkrieg of verbal incendiary bombs. They are now calmly aware that, once more, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

I consider it a public duty to answer falsifications with facts. I will not pretend that I find this an unpleasant duty. I am an old campaigner, and I love a good fight.

My friends, the Presidency is not a prize to be won by mere glittering promises. It is not a commodity to be sold by high-pressure salesmanship and national advertising. The Presidency is a most sacred trust and it ought not to be dealt with on any level other than an appeal to reason and humanity.

The worst bombshell of fear which the Republican leaders have let loose on this people is the accusation that this Government of ours, a Government of Republicans and Democrats alike, without the knowledge of the Congress or of the people, has secretly entered into agreements with foreign nations. They even intimate that such commitments have endangered the security of the United States, or are about to endanger it, or have pledged in some way the participation of the United States in some foreign war. It seems almost unnecessary to deny such a charge. But so long as the fantastic misstatement has been made, I must brand it for what it is.

I give to you and to the people of this country this most solemn assurance: There is no secret treaty, no secret obligation, no secret commitment, no secret understanding in any shape or form, direct or indirect, with any other Government, or any other nation in any part of the world, to involve this nation in any war or for any other purpose.

The desperation of partisans who can invent secret treaties drives them to try to deceive our people in other ways. Consider, for example, the false charge they make that our whole industrial system is prostrate—that business is stifled and can make no profits.