| TO THE ARMED
FORCES
OF THE UNITED STATES
President Roosevelt Greets
Fighting Men
On All Fronts Through First Yank Issue,
Calls Them ‘Delegates of Freedom.’
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
May 28, 1942
To you fighting men of our armed
forces overseas your Commander in Chief sends greetings in this, the first issue of your
own newspaper.
In Yank you have established a
publication which can not be understood by your enemies. It is inconceivable to them that
a soldier should be allowed to express his own thoughts, his ideas and his opinions. It is
inconceivable to them that any soldiers -- or any civilians, for that matter -- should
have any thoughts other than those dictated by their leaders.
But here is the evidence
that you have your own ideas, and the intelligence and the humor and the freedom to
express them. Every one of you has an individual mission in this war -- this greatest and
most decisive of all wars. You are not only fighting for your country and your people --
you are, in the larger sense, delegates of freedom.
Upon you , and upon your
comrades in arms of all the United Nations, depend the lives and liberties of all the
human race. You bear with you the hopes of all the millions who have suffered under the
oppression of the war lords of Germany and Japan. You bear with you the highest
aspirations of mankind for a life of peace and decency under God.
All of you well know your
own personal stakes in the war: your homes, your families, your free schools, your free
churches, the thousand and one simple, homely little virtues which Americans fought to
establish, and which Americans today are fighting to extend and perpetuate throughout this
earth.
I hope that for you men of
our armed forces this paper will be a link with your families and your friends. As your
Commander in Chief, I look forward myself to reading Yank -- every issue of it -- from
cover to cover.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Volume 1 Number 1 page 2
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