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[HANDWRITING] ? Peoples hour

INTRODUCTION
Already the blood of nearly a million men, women and children has flown forever under the bridge of history.  Twentieth century history moves with seven league boots by the hour today.

The warring imperialists of Great Britain and France, after seeking for 7 months to make the so-called "phony war" into a "real" war against the Soviet Union, via Finland, are faced with the fact that German imperialism has broken the stalemate on the Western front, and let loose an inferno on the peoples of Europe.  The small nations of Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium have been sacrificed on the false altar of "protection."

Today, those who sold out the national interests of France by building up Hitler, by stabbing Spain, have signed a separate peace with Germany and Italy.  The people of France now reap the bitter fruit of betrayal by the Daladiers, Blums, Petains and Weygands.  Such a peace is [begin italics] not just [/italics].  It is the kind of peace which imposes the same solution as was imposed on the German people in the Versailles Treaty.

The betrayed French people must conduct a fight on two fronts-against their own rulers who have set up a military dictatorship against them and against the invaders of Germany and Italy.

A virtual dictatorship has been set up in Great Britain.  Reaction, led by the Roosevelt Administration, follows the reactionary path of France and Britain, which today vies with Germany as to degree of oppression of their peoples.  Roosevelt drives America to war, with locomotive speed.  "National defense" of America is being raised alarmingly at this time to prepare the ground for America's entrance into the war.  In all this development the Soviet Union stands firmly as the strongest force for peace in the world.

Only a few months ago, 500 million dollars needed to
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finance the America Youth Act for jobs and education for five million unemployed youth couldn't be found, but today 4 1/2 billion dollars have been found for armaments.

If soberly examined it becomes clear these huge sums are not for defense at all.  They are calculated to speed America's entry into war on the side of the Allies at the earliest possible moments.

From the Wall Street and Washington circles, coupled always with talk of "defense," is talk also of these places...Dutch West Indies...British and French West Indies...Mexico...Canada...South America...Greenland...British and French possessions in the Atlantic.  These are the far-flung colonial prizes, in which nearly 25 million Negroes live, which are making the yearnings of United States imperialism articulate, and for which they plan to plunge America into the arena of world war.

Who will pay for this mighty war machine?

The people, of course, but the "cost" is said by the President to be "minor."

[BEGIN PARAGRAPH ENCASED IN A QUESTION MARK] Already the trade unions are being made the main targets of these burdens.  And it is becoming clear that true defense demands greater safeguards if the rights of labor and the people are to be secured against the labor baiters who have found in the phrases of "defense" the ideal mask for their labor wrecking. [/PARAGRAPH ENCASED IN A QUESTION MARK]

It is for "defense" that the American people must accept the unbridled rule of the sweatshop, the stark miseries of unemployment, the cruelties of profiteering, the loss and wrecking of all the social gains they have won?  It is for "defense" that the voice of Labor and the people must be gagged by police terrorism, and a whole people imprisoned in the shackles of M-Day?

It is for "defense" that everyone who speaks of liberty and civil rights, for their own opinions, will be dubbed "Fifth Columnists" by the lynchers of American democracy, the real fifth column in America?

Anyone could be dubbed a "fifth columnist" if he or she protests the shameful sabotage of the Senate Committee against the passage of anti-lynching legislation!
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