March on, America! (1942)

Carleton Young: Narrator

Quotes 

• Narrator : We've run out of history, we're up to - now. So let's take stock, let's add things up, let's take a look at America these last 10 years. Well, we've built the tallest buildings in the world: monuments to business - *big* business. We have long bridges spanning whatever waters we wanted to cross; roads and highways a million miles all over America. Tractors make plowing easy for the farmer, and crops? Say, we had to plow them under once, didn't we? Oil derricks crown the shafts that tap down deep into nature's storehouse. On our own Great Lakes the rich ore is boated off to the mill, and factories drone with the ceaseless hum of industry. We have 137 million people: they speak 30 languages. We have 50,000 alters of all religions. We are still governed by The Constitution. Our Bill of Rights is still working for the people. We have kept faith with the pilgrims, with the signers of the Declaration of Independence, with Washington at Valley Forge, with Lincoln at Gettysburg.

• [last lines] 

  Narrator : Well that's it fellow Americans, that's what's happened up to now. And when the future histories of these United States is written, let it be recorded that during these times we proved ourselves worthy of those before us who fought and died that we might have the sacred birthright of freedom. They shall not have died in vain. Let the spirit of '76 be the spirit of today. March on America!

• [first lines] 

  Narrator : This is a story we've written ourselves, a story we're writing today: it's the story of America. The oppressed, the persecuted, the weary unbow their heads and lift their eyes in hope as this great symbol of liberty welcomes them to our shores.

• Narrator : At first, with stoic patience, the Indians watched the white men inhabit their hunting grounds. Then, with distrust and alarm, Indians on the warpath! When that cry rang out, the colonists gathered up their families and all else they could take with them and hurried off to a stockade. But, all this was part of the job that had to be done in this land that had to be settled so a nation could be born. And after awhile, the Indians knew the white men would always be here, even when the last Indian was gone. So, they made peace or moved farther west.

• Narrator : This was no war of foreign aggression, but, people against people, brother against brother. Both the North and the South believed their cause to be just. Final victory fell to the North. But, the people at home had little heart for jubilation. They were only thankful that the weary trouble was at an end.

• Narrator : One hundred thousand people moving to the West. No magnet of gold promise beckoned them on; their deep wagon ruts were marking the path of Empire. People looking for room to stretch out, looking for land to settle on. The Indians, watching from hidden places. The spinning wagon wheels retold the old story. The white man will build a campfire on your hunting ground. Then, he'll build a house. Then, a fence - to keep you out!

• Narrator : The Indian massacres wrote chapters of horror in the story of the West! But, the lusty, bustling Western towns, springing up in a hundred places, confirmed the end of the Indian Wars.

• Narrator : Descendent of an old Dutch family, Teddy was as American as Yankee Doodle.

• Narrator : The century was growing up when Woodrow Wilson became President. His years in office were overshadowed by the great human sacrifice that was World War Number One.

• Narrator : Over There. The doughboys had their first taste of battle in Cantigny. Château-Thierry and Belleau Wood knew their courage and their suffering. Then came Saint-Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne. The Yanks were brave! They had the stuff!

• Narrator : We have it to do all over again. A fight to make this world a better place to live in. Where a man may govern himself and live a life he set himself to live. The treacherous Japs, the greedy power-drunken Nazis, Mussolini with a dagger in one hand and holding onto Hitler's coattail with the other, these men and their armies must think we Americans are a weak race, void of memory, without pride, without honor, have no love of our own priceless liberty. Then, they should read our history well!

• Narrator : Why, look here Japs and Germans and all your stooges, we fought for our way of life before and we'll do it again every time and we'll *win* every time. You can't beat us. The U.S.! You can't! A people where there's so much to fight for as we have!

• Narrator : We're on the march and we're getting tougher every day!

• Narrator : Working at the factories, punching the time clock for Victory, marching side-by-side or flying wing-to-wing, in this the biggest fight we've ever had on our hands.