PROCLAMATION OF UNLIMITED NATIONAL
EMERGENCY
May 27, 1941
[Department of State Bulletin, May 31, 1941.]
(Proclaiming That an Unlimited National Emergency
Confronts This Country, Which Requires That Its Military,
Naval, Air and Civilian Defenses Be Put on the Basis of
Readiness to Repel Any and All Acts or Threats of Aggression
Directed Toward any Part of the Western Hemisphere.)
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA
A Proclamation
WHEREAS on September 8, 1939 because of the
outbreak of war in Europe a proclamation was issued declaring
a limited national emergency and directing measures "for
the purpose of strengthening our national defense within the
limits of peacetime authorizations",
WHEREAS a succession of events makes plain that
the objectives of the Axis belligerents in such war are not
confined to those avowed at its commencement, but include
overthrow throughout the world of existing democratic order,
and a worldwide domination of peoples and economies through
the destruction of all resistance on land and sea and in the
air, AND
WHEREAS indifference on the part of the United
States to the increasing menace would be perilous, and common
prudence requires that for the security of this nation and of
this hemisphere we should pass from peacetime authorizations
of military strength to such a basis as will enable us to
cope instantly and decisively with any attempt at hostile
encirclement of this hemisphere, or the establishment of any
base for aggression against it, as well as to repel the
threat of predatory incursion by foreign agents into our
territory and society,
NOW, THEREFORE, I, FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT,
President of the United States of America, do proclaim that
an unlimited national emergency confronts this country, which
requires that its military, naval, air and civilian defences
be put on the basis of readiness to repel any and all acts or
threats of aggression directed toward any part of the Western
Hemisphere.
I call upon all the loyal citizens engaged in production
for defense to give precedence to the needs of the nation to
the end that a system of government that makes private
enterprise possible may survive.
I call upon all our loyal workmen as well as employers to
merge their lesser differences in the larger effort to insure
the survival of the only kind of government which recognizes
the rights of labor or of capital.
I call upon loyal state and local leaders and officials
to cooperate with the civilian defense agencies of the United
States to assure our internal security against foreign
directed subversion and to put every community in order for
maximum productive effort and minimum of waste and
unnecessary frictions.
I call upon all loyal citizens to place the nation's
needs first in mind and in action to the end that we may
mobilize and have ready for instant defensive use all of the
physical powers, all of the moral strength and all of the
material resources of this nation.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF I have hereunto set my hand and caused
the seal of the United States of America to be affixed.
DONE at the City of Washington this twenty-seventh day of
May, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and forty-one,
and of the Independence of the United States of America the
one hundred and sixty-fifth.
[SEAL]
FRANKLIN D ROOSEVELT.
By the President:
CORDELL HULL
Secretary of State