There are millions of American men and women who are not in this war at all.  It is not because they do not want to be in it.  But they want to know where they can best do their share.  National service provides that direction.  It will be a means by which every man and woman can find that inner satisfaction which comes from making the fullest possible contribution to victory.

I know that all civilian war workers will be glad to be able to say many years hence to their grandchildren:  “Yes, I, too, was in service in the great war.  I was on duty in an airplane factory, and I helped make hundreds of fighting planes.  The Government told me that in doing that I was performing my most useful work in the service of my country.”

It is argued that we have passed the stage in the war where national service is necessary.  But our soldiers and sailors know that this is not true.  We are going forward on a long, rough road—­and, in all journeys, the last miles are the hardest.  And it is for that final effort—­for the total defeat of our enemies—­that we must mobilize our total resources.  The national war program calls for the employment of more people in 1944 than in 1943.

It is my conviction that the American people will welcome this win-the-war measure which is based on the eternally just principle of “fair for one, fair for all.”

It will give our people at home the assurance that they are standing four-square behind our soldiers and sailors.  And it will give our enemies demoralizing assurance that we mean business—­that we, 130,000,000 Americans, are on the march to Rome, Berlin, and Tokyo.

I hope that the Congress will recognize that, although this is a political year, national service is an issue which transcends politics.  Great power must be used for great purposes.

As to the machinery for this measure, the Congress itself should determine its nature—­but it should be wholly nonpartisan in its make-up.

Our armed forces are valiantly fulfilling their responsibilities to our country and our people.  Now the Congress faces the responsibility for taking those measures which are essential to national security in this the most decisive phase of the Nation’s greatest war.

Several alleged reasons have prevented the enactment of legislation which would preserve for our soldiers and sailors and marines the fundamental prerogative of citizenship—­the right to vote.  No amount of legalistic argument can becloud this issue in the eyes of these ten million American citizens.  Surely the signers of the Constitution did not intend a document which, even in wartime, would be construed to take away the franchise of any of those who are fighting to preserve the Constitution itself.