Election Promises Should Be Kept
We Lack Leadership That Places America First
By Charles A. Lindbergh
Delivered at Madison Square Garden, New York Rally
Under the Auspices of the America First Committee
May 23, 1941

We are assembled here tonight because we believe in an independent destiny for America.  Such a destiny does not mean that we will build a wall around our country and isolate ourselves from contact with the rest of the world. But it does mean that the future of America will not be tied to these eternal wars in Europe. It means that American boys will not be sent across the ocean to die so that England or Germany or France or Spain may dominate the other nations.

An independent American destiny means, on the one hand, that our soldiers will not have to fight everybody in the world who prefers some other system of life to ours. On the other hand, it means that we will fight anybody and everybody who attempts to interfere with our hemisphere, and that we will do so with all the resources of our nation. It means that we rely on our own strength, our own ability and our own courage to preserve this nation and to defeat anyone who is rash enough to attack us. It means that we have faith that these United States of ours can compete in commerce or in war with any combination of foreign powers, and that we are no more afraid of the Europe of Germany than our forefathers were afraid of the Europe of France or England or Spain.

No Reason for Fear
We in America should have no reason to fear. With adequate leadership we can be the strongest and most influential nation in the world. No other country has as great resources. None is as easily defended. We lack only a leadership that places America first—a leadership that tells what it means and what it says. Give us that and we will be the most powerful country in the world. Give us that and we will be so united that no one will dare to attack us.

Our country is not divided today because we fear war, or sacrifice, or because we fear anything at all. We are divided because we are asked to fight over issues that are Europe’s and not ours–issues that Europe created by her own shortsightedness. We are divided because many of us do not wish to fight again for England’s balance of power, or for her domination of, Mesopotamia, or Egypt, or for the Polish Corridor, or for another treaty like Versailles. We are divided because we do not want to cross an ocean to fight on foreign continents, for foreign causes, against an entire world combined against us. Many of us do not think we can impose our way of life, at the point of a machine gun, on the peoples of Germany, Russia, Italy, France and Japan. Many of us do not believe democracy can be spread in such a manner. We believe that we are more likely to lose it at home than to spread it abroad by prolonging this war and sending millions of our soldiers to death in Europe and Asia.

Democracy is not a quality that can be imposed by war. The attempt to do so has always met with failure. Democracy can spring only from within a nation itself, only from the hearts and minds of the people. It can be spread abroad by example, but never by force. The strength of a democracy lies in the satisfaction of its own people. Its influence lies in making others wish to copy it. If we can not make other nations wish to copy our American system of government, we cannot force them to copy it by going to war.

Intolerance Seen Rising Here
On the contrary, if we go to war to preserve democracy abroad, we are likely to end by losing it at home. There are already signs of danger around us. We have been shouting against intolerance in Europe, but it has been rising in America. We deplore the fact that the German people cannot vote on the policies of their government–that Hitler led his nation into war without asking their consent. But, have we been given the opportunity to vote on the policy our government has followed? No, we have been led toward war against the opposition of four-fifths of our people. We had no more chance to vote on the issue of peace and war last November than if we had been in a totalitarian state ourselves. We in America were given just about as much chance to express our beliefs at the election last fall, as the Germans would have been given if Hitler had run against Goering.

This state of affairs should make every American–even the interventionists–stop and think before we plunge blindly into a second world war. There are many interventionists who actually believe that by going to war we can strengthen democracy throughout the world, and with it all the civilized virtues which we in this country support. Those people overlook our failure in the last war “to make the world safe for democracy.” They overlook the persecution and the intolerance which followed that war in Europe. They do not seem to realize that the elements they dislike in Germany lie beneath the surface of every nation; that they are here in America just as they are in Europe, and that nothing is as likely to bring them out as war–especially a prolonged war.

I opposed this war before it was declared because I felt it would be disastrous for Europe. I knew that England and France were not in a position to win, and I did not want them to lose. I now oppose our entry into the war because I do not believe that our system of government in America can survive our participation or our way of life can survive our participation.

Pleas to Interventionists
And here I address a plea to any interventionists who may be listening to me tonight. I ask them to consider what a prolonged war will bring. I ask them to consider what the last war brought to Europe–to Russia, to Italy, to Germany and now to France and England and even the smaller countries. I ask them to remember that we in America returned from that war with the loss of relatively few soldiers, but that now we face a war in which our losses are likely to run into the millions and in which victory itself is doubtful. I ask them to consider whether democracy, tolerance and our American way of life are likely to survive in such a struggle. Or may we not find conditions as bad or worse in America. After a war than they are in the dictatorships of Europe today? It is all very well to shout for war, to say that aggression must be stopped, that our ideals of democracy must be preserved all over the world. But when the shouting is over, then we will be faced with the reality of war. Someone must lay plans for invading Germany, for invading Japan, for invading possibly Russia, France, Italy and Spain as well. Someone must do the fighting; someone the dying. When we turn from sentiment and emotion to reality and action, the task we face is staggering. We find ourselves unprepared for war, about to enter an action that will require us to cross two oceans and to invade nations with a far greater population than ours, nations with armies that have been trained for years, armies that have been hardened by generations of warfare, armies that are larger now than ours can ever be. We find ourselves in a position where we would have to force landings on hostile coasts against the prepared positions of the strongest military powers in the world. Democracy is not likely to survive a conflict such as this will bring. Does anyone think that freedom can exist even in America if we are forced into such a war?