Franklin Roosevelt's Speech in Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Newfound Gap -- September 2, 1940 at the Dedication Ceremony of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Here in the Great Smokies, we meet today to dedicate these mountains, streams and forests to the service of the millions of American people. We are living under governments which are proving their devotion to national parks. The governors of North Carolina and of Tennessee have greatly helped us, and the secretary of the Interior has today ready for dedication two more parks -- Kings Canyon in California and the Olympic National Park in the state of Washington -- and soon, we hope, will have a third, the Big Bend park in Texas.

There are trees here that stood before our forefathers came to this continent; there are brooks that will run as clear as on the day the first pioneer cupped his hand and drank from them. In this park, we shall conserve the pine, the redwood, the dogwood, the azalea, the rhododendron, the trout and the brush for the happiness of the American people.

The old frontier that put the hard fibre in the American spirit, and the long muscles on the Americana back, lives and will live in these untamed mountains to give future generations a sense of the land from which their forefathers hewed their homes.


Dangers Were Many
That hewing was hard. The dangers were many. The rifle could never be far from the axe. The pioneers stood on their own feet, got their own game and fought off their own enemies. In time of incident or misfortune, they helped each other. In time of Indian attack, they stood by each other. Today we no longer face Indians and hard and lonely struggles with future -- but also -- we have grown fit in many ways.

If we are to survive, we cannot be soft in a world in which there are dangers that threaten Americans -- dangers far more deadly than were those the frontiersmen had to face.

The earth has been so diminished by the airplane and the radio that Europe is closer to America today than was one side of these mountains to the other side when the pioneers toiled through a primeval forest. The arrow, the tomahawk, and the scalping knife have been replaced by the airplane, the bomb, the tank, and the machine gun. Their threat is as close to us today as was the threat of the frontiersmen when hostile Indians were lurking on the other side of the gap.

Therefore, to meet the threat -- to ward off these dangers -- the Congress of the U.S. and the chief executive are establishing by law the obligation inherent in our citizenship to serve our forces for defense through training in many capacities.

It is not in every case easy or pleasant to ask men of the nation to leave their homes and women of the nation to give their men to the service of the nation. But the men and women of America have never held back even when it has meant personal sacrifice on their part if that is sacrifice for the common good.


Must Prepare Beforehand
The greatest attack that has ever been launched against freedom of the individual is nearer the Americas than ever before. To meet that attack we must prepare beforehand -- for preparing later may and probably would be too late.

We must prepare in a thousand ways. Men are not enough. They must have arms. They must learn how to use those arms. They must have skilled leaders -- who in turn must be trained. New bases must be established to enable our fleet to defend our shores. Men and women must be taught to create the supplies that we need. And we must counter the agents as Governor Hoey has said, of the dictators within our country.

There is, moreover, another enemy at home. That enemy is the mean and petty spirit that mocks at ideals, sneers at sacrifice and pretends the American people can live by bread alone. If the spirit of God is not in us, and if we will not prepare to give all that we are to preserve Christian civilization in our own land, we shall go to destruction.

It is good and right that we in all this should conserve these mountain heights of the old frontier for the benefit of the American people. But in this hour we have to safeguard a greater thing: The right of the people of this country to live as free men. Our vital task of conservation is to preserve the freedom which our forefathers won in this land, and the liberties which were proclaimed in our declaration of independents and embodies in the constitution of the United States.

In these centuries of American civilization, greatly blessed by the bounties of nature, we succeeded in attaining liberty in government and liberty of the person. In the process, in the light of past history, we realize now that we committed excesses which we are today seeking to atone for.


Destroyed Much of Heritage
We used up and destroyed much of our natural heritage just because that heritage was so bounteous. We slashed our forests, we used our soils, we encouraged floods, we over-concentrated our wealth, we disregarded our unemployed -- all of this so greatly that we were brought rather suddenly to face the fact that unless we gave thought to the lives of our children and grandchildren, they would no longer be able to live and to improve upon our American way of life.

And so in these later years, we have tried sincerely and honestly to look ahead to the future years. We are trying at least to attain employment for all who would work and can work, and to provide a great assurance of security throughout life for the family.

From hard experience we know that that process is a long one, but most of us realize that if we can continue our effort without serious setbacks, the ideals of the American way of life can and will be attained by working everlastingly for the good of the whole and not for any one privileged group.

So, from within our own borders, liberty through democracy can, I believe, be preserved in future years -- if we want to preserve it.

But there is a second danger -- a danger from without. I hope, for example, that one hundred years from now the Great Smoky Mountains National Park will still belong in practice, as well as in theory to the people of a free nation. I hope it will not belong to them in theory alone and that in practice the ownership of this park will not be in the hands of some strange kind of government puppet subject to some kind of an overseas overlord. I hope the use of it will not be confined to people coming hither on government specified days and on government directed tours. I hope the trees will not be slaughtered by the axe in order that a government may conduct wars of aggression against other nations. I hope that roads and paths and trails will still be built in the cause of the liberty of recreation, and not confined to the ulterior purposes of a war machine controlled by an individual or an oligarchy.


Danger at Last Recognized
That there is a danger from without is at last recognized by most of us Americans. That such a danger cannot longer be met with pitchforks and squirrel rifles or even with the training or the weapons of the war of 1917 and 1918 is equally clear to most of us Americans.

It is not a change from the American way of life to advocate or legislate a greater and a speedier preparedness. It is a positive protection to the American way of life. You and I know that in the process of preparing against danger we shall not have to abandon and we will not abandon the great social improvements that have come to the American people in these later years. We need not swap the gain of better living for the gain of better defense. I propose we retain the one and gain the other.

But to conserve our liberties will not be easy. The task will require the united efforts of us all. It will require sacrifices from us all.

The pioneers survived by fighting their own fight and by standing together as one man in the face of danger. If we, their descendants, are to meet the dangers that threaten us, we too must be ready to fight our own fight and stand together as one man. In hours of peril the frontiersmen, whatever their personal likes or dislikes, whatever their personal differences of opinion, gathered "together in absolute unity for defense. We, in this hour, must have absolute national unity for total defense.

What shall we be defending? The good earth of this land, our homes, our families -- yes, and far more. We shall be defending a way of life which has given more freedom to the soul and body of man than ever has been realized in the world before, a way of life that has let men scale whatever heights they could scale without hurting their fellows, a way of life that has let men hold up their heads and admit no master but God.


Way of Life Menaced
That way of life is menaced. We can meet the threat. We can meet it in the old frontier way. We can forge our weapons, train ourselves to shoot, meet fire with fire, and with the courage and the unity of the frontiersmen.

It is our pride that in our country men are free to differ with each other and with their government, and to follow their own thoughts and express them. We believe that the only whole man is a free man. And we believe that in the face of danger, the old spirit of the frontiersmen which is in our blood, will give us the courage and unity that we must have.

We need that spirit in this hour. We need a conviction, felt deep in us all, that there are no divisions among us. We are all members of the same body. We are all Americans.

The winds that blow through the wide sky in these mountains -- the winds that sweep from Canada to Mexico, from the Pacific to the Atlantic -- have always blown on free men. We are free today. If we join together now -- men, women and children -- and face the common menace as a united people, we shall be free tomorrow.

And so, to the free people of America, I dedicate this park.




Copy provided by Great Smoky Mountains National Park.