AMERICA, FREEDOMS BULWARh
TAREALLNEL
® fy LL safety and future security of
»
| every loyal citizen. Never in our
=3 history has our national security
been menaced as it 1s today. The time has
arrived when we must meet the menace of
masked attacks by those who would despoil
all we cherish,—our life, our freedom, our
peace, and the security of our homes.
When America was founded as a living
symbol of liberty, its radiance brightened
the four corners of the world. Our founders
hoped to blaze forever the way to greater
security and greater happiness. Through-
out the span of our national history the op-
pressed of all the world have looked to
America as the land of promise. Now, as
never before, our glorious flag is more
brilliant, because it towers over the last
beaming bulwarks of freedom and liberty.
Today this great bulwark is threatened.
The distant rumble of artillery, the deathly
clatter of the machine gun, the drone of the
dive bomber, and the detonation of the sub-
marine torpedo echo across the ocean in
ominous warning. Therefore, we who love
peace and security realize that we must do
every needful thing to preserve it. We
must answer the call of Americanism in this
hour of crisis. In the interest of seli-
preservation we should closely examine our
America to assure ourselves that the sacri-
fices and the achievements of the founding
fathers have not been betrayed.
We must insure that the girders of {ree-
dom remain strong and true. The struc-
tures of democracy must not be weakened
by the machinations of the renegades and
the termites who seek the protection of our
Stars and Stripes while they undermine our
temples of freedom and of liberty.
Vicious, subversive forces menace Amer-
ica through their activities of espionage,
sabotage, and implanting noxious seeds
of alien thought and life. It is not within
my provinee to reveal in intimate detail the
facts which are being disclosed through our
investigative activities. But I can tell you
that the danger of these un-American ac-
tivities is real and not imaginary. The
complaints of espionage, sabotage, and sub-
versive activities which are reaching the
FBI at an alarming rate point to the seri-
ousness of this problem and the need for
action.
The present task of America is to pre-
serve 1ts democratic traditions by a pro-
gram of preparedness which will meet and
repel any foe that would assail us, either
from within or without. To that end it is
imperative that no spy, saboteur, or propa-
gandist be allowed to lull our people into a
state of self-complacency, or to retard our
OCTOBER, 1942
gO
war program through their deliberate acts
of violence. When agents of foreign
ideologies scheme and plot through sabo-
tage to bring about chaotic conditions in
American industry, it is difficult for us to
understand the full import of their actions.
But we must be on guard against the effects
of their nefarious deeds, which could be far-
reaching and disastrous.
For more than a century and a half, this
country has demonstrated that the Ameri-
can way of living is the democratic wa
That such a system is perfect no one asserts,
but that it 1s workable has been definitely
proved in the crucible of time. Democracy
1s the result of the studied efforts of patri-
otically inspired men to bring about the
best type of government that can be
achieved for all peoples. That is why
America has always been an example and
an inspiration to the world. Beyond that,
democracy is the best form of government
that the ingenuity of man has yet created.
But now it is menaced by traitors who
pledge their allegiance to alien ways of
living, and threatened by those who fail to
obey the mandates of a democratic people
¥ Clyde Tolson,
left, FBI agent,
and J. Edgar
Hoover, Director,
FBI, as they ar-
rived at the Su-
preme Court
Building for the
trval of the eight
saboteurs.
By J. Edgar Hoover, Director,
Federal Bureau of Investigation
as reflected in their laws and institutions.
The best test of freedom is willingness to
obey the law and respect the rights of
others. A dangerous but well-organized
minority—our army of crime—defies the
guarantees of our national freedom every
minute of the day, for a serious crime 1s
committed every twenty-one seconds.
The criminal is in reality a revolutionist.
By his deeds he revolts against the laws of
the country, and his ranks are a fertile re-
cruiting ground for the emissaries of the
inquisitive isms, who, likewise in a state of
revolt, would mold a nation to the designs
of some faraway bloodthirsty dictator.
Where the only law extant is the jungle
code of tooth and claw, you have a condi-
tion exactly comparable to the code under
which a dictator fastens his fanglike
clutch upon the throat of a nation and
conquers it.
There is no difference between the ruth-
less dictator of the criminal underworld and
the highhanded political dictator of the
upper world. Both deal in avarice, in greed,
in the lust for power, in mass murder, and
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