MR. BLABBERMOUT

[Music] by order of the coast Interceptor command this station will now leave the air put out your lights this station will now leave the air the first night we heard that out here on the coast believe me the hair stood right up in our heads and the lights went out for the first time in this Century automobiles were gone from the streets pulled up with the headlamps out suddenly Los Angeles was a silent City and in the quiet we all felt kind of solemn as if we knew for the first time how the man felt who said a generation ago the lights are going out all over Europe God send they go on again in our time but the next day the sound came back like a shout news bulletins every few minutes on the radio conflicting headlines hitting the streets almost as fast and we all talked at once were there really enemy planes over last night or not everybody was hungry for information which brings us to the hero of this short picture everybody knows him he belongs to one of the largest families in the land there are thousands of him springing up like skunk cabbage shooting off his or her face in practically everybody's Neighborhood his name is blabbermouth and incidentally we think of him as a kind of a heel if you ask me where our Navy is it's down at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean that's where it is the jeets sunk every darn ship of it in H L why I tell you there's nothing at all to protect us anymore those Japs will be landing here any day now while 10 or 20,000 blabbermouths were sounding off over the land however there appeared in one Los Angeles newspaper an article that clearly foresaw the great danger in which blabbermouth could places if you were forced to stand ordeal by fire your only hope of Emer ing unburned would be to wear asbest clothes but to avoid being hurt by rumors no protective clothing will suffice instead we must carry a yard stick a standard of values to measure everything we see or hear for example our trembling tonsorial artist when he heard what the local blabber moth was saying in the first week after Pearl Harbor might have said to himself I know Japan has an excellent Navy many an American did underrate it that the Japanese Navy was Victor of round one wasn't a rumor but a solemn report from the president himself but even in our blackest hours these facts blazed out over the Pacific before the war started the combined fleets of the United States Great Britain and the Netherlands Indies had at least 16 battleships in the Pacific to the Japs 11 Japan had nine aircraft carriers as compared to our seven but the seven Allied carriers being larger ships could carry almost 100 planes more between them than could the nine smaller Jack ships the Allies had 61 Cruisers in the Pacific the Japanese had 49 the Allies had 163 destroyers in the Pacific Japan had 130 the Allies had 90 submarines in the Pacific Japan had 75 total for Japan 274 ships total for the United Nations 337 and to supplement all this the air arm of the Allied Fleet is 20 times as large as when World War II began 20 times as large and incidentally none of these figures include the vast potential strength of Russia's Pacific Fleet watchfully poised at Japan's back door but but despite these facts many a rumor boy still insists that our fleet was koed at Pearl Harbor the fleet that has since then littered the Australian Seas with flaming Japanese wreckage the fleet that is at this minute very busy [Music] indeed but of course mere statistics never baffle a true blabber deep down under the ground he burrows along still singing his mournful tune maybe so but you got to be prepared to fight a war like this one why my brother-in-law Wilbur you know the one with the egg-shaped head yeah well his girl heard a fell say that the Japs have stocked up on enough iron and oil and ammunition to fight a 20year war and now that they took Malia and the Dutch East Indies they've got rubber too [Music] it is not rumor but fact that Japan has for years accumulated a formidable stockpile by purchasing the discarded odds and ends of the world's junkyards by using the most ingenious Salvage methods imaginable she is able to convert this material along with the crude iron ore available from her own limited resources into a yearly production of 7 million tons of steel 7 million tons which is a lot of Steel the United States is producing 88 million tons which is more steel Japan produces aluminum too 24,000 tons annually the United States produces 400,000 tons and that means bombers that can shuttle over Japanese War factories in a long deadly stream then there is copper without which ammunition can neither be manufactured nor exploded Japan can actually produce 85,000 tons of copper a year while all we can turn out annually is 800,000 tons 10 times more the boys from Berlin Rome and Tokyo have 29% of the world's cold time the enemy swept into an oil field he found it a flaming ruin out of these devastated Fields will come very little oil for a long time very little to add to the A's share of just three % of the world's oil and although it is true Mr blabbermouth that the enemy now has access to the world's greatest source of rubber in Malaya and the Indies we have answers to that problem too first of all there is civilian sacrifice on a national scale with the family Horseless Carriage laid up in the garage while mother and dad develop muscles they haven't used for years thus helping to create the largest stockpile of natural rubber in American history for use on military vehicles then there's our infant industry of synthetic rubber which in one year will be 10 times what it was last year and added to these there are the tremendous resources placed at our disposal by our good neighbors of Central and South America potentially the richest source of rubber in the world and not only rubber but tin manganese Chrome Micah tungsten and Lead item for item ing the war materials temporarily won by the axis on the other side of the Pacific but when arithmetic begins to baffle our hero he turns to another rumor that has often swept over the entire world yes Homer yeah but like I was saying before that Jake called you over that article I was reading said those Nazis and Japs been training for this war ever since they was KNE high now how can people used to peace like we are ever expect to beat them we do all right yes Wang you're doing all right in your ancient land peace wasn't just political talk but a religion to steal a slice of your country was as easy as taking candy from a baby wasn't it you farmers of China they say that when the first Japanese planes flew over you you couldn't even comprehend what they were couldn't imagine the death that would plunge down on you and this was only yesterday yet you Chinese people the people of Peace learned your lesson so quickly that you made the Invader head spin moving your schools and factories Inland burrowing into your Rocky Mountains and out of your multitudes you could produce the leaders of War I Jang Kai Sheek is an oldfashioned he and his generals learned The Art of War when Hitler was still painting breweries and out of China's heart he molded an army and it is said that the Germans believed about the Russians just before it started to grow cold last winter that they were a nation of industrious slow-witted people that wouldn't know which end of the gun the bullet came out of but overnight the Russians turned from internal development of their country to devote all of their energies to its defense and overnight they smashed the most dangerous rumor in the world the one that said that the German military machine could never be stopped destroy one rumor though and two more will spring up sometimes the Lord forbid blabbermouth appears as the female of the species but my dear everybody knows the because he's just crawling with the cist or just the other day when I was shopping for a GLE I went into Mr Smith's delices and there was Mr schmi and that fat wife of his eating Sauer cloud in the back room just as bold as brass I just know they were up to something Mrs blabbermouth the yard stick of Common Sense reminds us that our own FBI had opportunity to learn a lesson from France and Norway and learn it well France had no such roundups of real fifth columnists as is shown in these news pictures we have had 3 years more than they had to get ready and there is no moment in the day or night that our FBI is not watching and ready to spring and did you ever stop to realize that compared to the fifth column that is fighting against the axis our traitors are just a bunch of amateurs take a look at the map where directly under the shadow of the swastika labors the fifth column that struggles and gives its blood for us Untold numbers of temporarily conquered checks Danes Norwegians Dutch belgians French yugoslavians and Greeks no aist conqueror but who does not admit the existence of this terrible hidden Army that forces him to tie up great forces of occupation throughout all Europe but despite Hitler's 100,000 spies he cannot even prevent our hidden allies from listening to secret radio messages no wipe out the big VES that spring out mysteriously wherever the Nazi Soldier passes us but alas alas do you know that there are millions who still believe in the secret weapon rumor Butch blabbermouth of course is a sucker for this yard hey Bill listen to this it says here in confusing stories that then DA got a new weapon can fly 432 mph can land on the water and make like a battleship with 16-in guns and on land can burrow underground like a mole holy smokes it shoots deadly radium Rays can kill a whole city just like that everything is right about the secret weapon story except that it just isn't true so far in this war authorized military observers have reported no mechanical nor physical secret weapons in use by either side but only new uses for old tricks parachute troops for example ined long ago right here in the United States and definitely no secret employing suicide units to attain briefly a particular objective or simply cutting down the Manpower of a submarine those Americans who Still Tremble at the secret weapon rumor have forgotten that most of the new weapons of war were thought up by Americans more than a century ago the Yankees got together and worked out a contraption that would go under the water tested it out until it actually worked and so invented the submarine it was in the United States in case you forgotten that was invented the first armored Battleship that Europeans claimed wouldn't even float and yet with these we changed the history of the world and not only did we develop the airplane itself but in 1923 we worked out a stunt called dive bombing with our school boys weaned on a million jalopies we happen to lead the world in mechanical ideas [Music] [Music] [Applause] there is however one secret Hitler weapon that is neither steel nor Vapor that moves faster than the swiftest airplanes and is a thousand times deadlier Wilber T blabbermouth here gets it like this I have it from sources of my own but uh our so-called allies are already beginning to gang up on us look at England for instance of course everybody knows that she'll fight to the last drop of American blood the only thing that they are interested in is that everybody else go out and fight the battles for them while they sit back and save their own skins and as for those Russian Bulls well they're just biting the time make a deal with Hitler and then stab Us in the back did you hear that Walter just wait till I tell the boys at the board meeting tomorrow ller for with propaganda like this Hitler very nearly destroyed the old world in Germany itself he used rumor first to set Capital against labor and labor against capital and this was the way bitter hatred was created between the Germans themselves until there was neither Free Labor free Capital nor freedom of any kind within the right everybody lost but Hitler learning the technique of rumor propaganda in his own country Hitler could use it at the time of the Munich pact to create distrust among all lives he could split the democracies away from Russia by selling them the dangers of Communism and the result the saddest chapter in all the history of free men Hitler has carefully laid plans to use exactly the same methods to create dissension in the United States today divide our loyalties and then conquer us but that is one thing that is not going to happen here brother blabbermouth and this is why we have not been stunned we have not been terrified or confused the militarists of berl and Tokyo started this war but the Mas anger forces of common Humanity will finish it they know that victory for us means victory for Freedom they know that victory for us means victory for the institution of democracy the ideal of the family the simple principle of common decency and Humanity our task is hard our task is unprecedented and the time is short we can well say that our men on the fighting fronts have already Pro that Americans today are just as rugged and just as tough as any of the heroes whose exploits we celebrate on the 4th of July when our enem challenged our country to stand up and fight they challenge each and every one of us and each and every one of us has accepted the challenge for himself and for his Nation well I don't know Mr big can talk all he wants to on the radio but I still heard that if we're going to oh [Music]