Washington, May 28.
The United States yesterday was placed on a war footing when President Roosevelt formally proclaimed a state of unlimited national emergency for the nation.
The epic proclamation was countersigned by Mr. Cordell Hull, Secretary of State, A world which had been waiting for the President's declaration of policy was informed that "an unlimited national emergency confronts this country which requires that its military and naval aid and civilian defences be put on a basis of readiness to repel any and all actions or threats of aggression directed toward any part of the Western Hemisphere."
Huge Axis Objectives President Roosevelt's proclamation, which was delivered separately from his "fireside" address, said that a Succession of events makes it plain that Axis objectives are not confined to those nations avowedly at war, "but include the overthrow throughout the world of the existing democratic order and world-wide domination of peoples' economies through destruction of all resistance on land, sea and in the air."
United States' indifference, the proclamation said, would be perilous. Common prudence requires that we should pass from peace-time authorize ations 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 pre-datary incursion by foreign agents into our territory and society, The proclamation called on all citizens engaged in defence production "to give precedence to needs of the nation, to the end that the system. of government that makes private enterprise possible may survive.
President Roosevelt called on loyal workmen as well as employers fo "merge their lesser differences in the larger effort to insure survival of the only kind of government which recognizes the rights of labour or capital.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.