James Holland

What's really interesting is he does the more technical bit

in the informal press conference and the cozy fireside chat, and then does the high morals when he does his State of the Nation address to Congress on the 6th of January 1941, which was the opening speech that we started this episode with.

And I think that's really, really interesting that he does it in that order.

And, of course, in this fireside chat, it is the line where he says, you know, if we want America to stay out of the war, which we do, which I'm absolutely not going to do, but I'm saying we are, then we must harness our industrial power to assist the Allies.

And what we can do is we can create lots of jobs and money in America.

We'll make us rich on it.

But we must be the great arsenal of democracy.

So that's when he says those immortal words.

That phrase emerges on that speech, that fireside chat, the 29th of December, 1940.

And I think the three speeches together are really, really important.

Yeah.

So you've had the kind of the dangle of lend-lease in the press conference in the middle of December.

Then you have the fireside chat.

Then you have the State of the Nation address.

What's really interesting is that State of the Nation address was written by him.

He wrote it himself.

And one of his aides says, you know, this is all well and good, but are the people of Arkansas going to care about what happens about the Javans in Java, for example?

Yeah.

And FDR replies, I'm afraid they'll have to be.

The world is getting so small that even the people in Java are getting to be our neighbors now.