A hastily-typed transcript -- I've thought about this speech often since I first saw it. It sometimes feels to me like it changes tenor part way through, but it always leaves me thinking about the things we choose to fight for, and the fight itself.
I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another -- human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there's room for everyone, and the good earth is rich, and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much, and feel too little.
More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life would be violent, and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together -- the very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all. Even now, my voice is reaching millions throughout the world. Millions of despairing men, women, and children. Victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. For those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon is us but the passing of greed. The bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people, and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Soldiers, don't give yourself to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think, or what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon-fodder! Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men! Machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate, only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers, don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of st. luke it is written, the kingdom of god is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful! To make this life a wonderful adventure! Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite!
Let us fight for a new world, a decent world, that will give men a chance to work, that would give youth a future, and old age a security! By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie, they do not fulfill that promise, they never will! Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people. Now let us fight, to fulfill that promise! Let us fight, to free the world! To do away with national barriers. To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance, let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all mens' happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!