Craig Shirley - On Dec. 7th, It Was a Woman Who First Spoke to America

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Excerpted:

Craig Shirley - On Dec. 7th, It Was a Woman Who First Spoke to America

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Seventy-six years ago today, Eleanor Roosevelt spoke to a scared and hurt nation. On Sunday, December 7, 1941, the United States was unexpectedly attacked in Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Empire. Over two thousand American men and women were killed, and hundreds of planes were crippled. The Pacific Fleet – save for the aircraft carriers, which were miraculously not at Hawaii – was all but crippled as dozens of battle cruisers were destroyed.

First Lady Eleanor was the first to speak to the nation (even before her own husband), through a radio broadcast of her weekly program Over Our Coffee Cups, a sort of alternative to Franklin Roosevelt’s Fireside Chat. The address concerning the attack was short – only three minutes long – but it is one of the most important addresses of the twentieth century. With a calm and collected tone, she immediately reassured fellow Americans that the president was aware and was speaking to his Cabinet, State Department, and the military. Our government wasn’t running around helpless.

And neither, she assured, were the American people. “We the people are already prepared for action,” she said. “For months now the knowledge that something of this kind might happen has been hanging over our heads and yet it seemed impossible to believe, impossible to drop the everyday things of life and feel that there was only one thing which was important — preparation to meet an enemy no matter where he struck. That is all over now and there is no more uncertainty.” This was not a defeatist attitude of “all hope is lost” that many may have felt. This was not a call to lay in the sand. It was a call to stand up. It was a call to be American.

Read more at: https://townhall.com/columnists/craigshirley/2017/12/07/on-dec-7th-it-was-a-woman-who-first-spoke-to-america-n2419548