April 15, 1939, he said that the only excuse for war was "self-evident home defense... does not mean defense thousands and thousands of miles away."In June 1939, he received King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain at the White House when they made an unprecedented visit to the United States three months before war began in Europe. On October 26, 1939, almost two months after the start of the European war, he described as "one of the worst fakes in current history" protests against "sending the boys of American mothers to fight on the battlefields of Europe”. On November 4, 1939, after his fourth appeal to Congress in a year, neutrality legislation was revised to permit "cash and carry" shipments of arms to belligerents.On June 10, 1940, when Belgium and Holland had capitulated, the British army had fled from Dunkirk and France was collapsing, he described Italy's declaration of war as a stab in the back of France. On June 20 he enrolled the erstwhile Republicans, Frank Knox and Henry L. Stimson, in his cabinet as secretaries, respectively, of Navy and War, in order to further his third-term aspirations and suggest coalition support of his war policy.During June, he stripped American arsenals to re-equip the British army, which had abandoned its arms at Dunkirk. On August 28, Roosevelt mustered the National Guard into federal service.14 On September 2, 1940, by executive decree, he transferred fifty American destroyers to Britain for rights to bases in British possessions in the Western Hemisphere. On September 16, he signed the first peacetime conscription bill in America's history, under which 42 million men were enrolled October 16 for military duty.At Boston, October 30, 1940, campaigning for the third term, he assured parents, "I have said this before, but I shall say it repeatedly and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."On November 8, 1940, after his re-election, he allocated half of A...
