Battle Is In Our Hands, The (1943)

Jer Jero josa beat the Battle of Jero and the walls come humbling down Jero Jero Jero J the Battle of Jero and the walls come tumble in Jero Jero J the ble of Jero and the walls come tumbling down Josh the Battle of Jero Jero Jero Jos the Battle of Jero and the walls come tumbling [Music] the wheel way up in the middle of the air e Saw the Wheel way in the middle of the air and the Little Wheel run the faith big wheel run by the grace of God is wheel in a wheel way in the middle of the air now you never can tell what a hypocrite will do way in the middle of the air he lie about me and he lie about you in the midle of the josa beat the Battle of Jero Jero Jero Joshua beat the Battle of Jero and the walls come a tumbling down now tell me brother Pilgrim tell me where are bound you're bound for dear old Canan to that Enchanted ground Josh beat the Battle of Jero Jero Jero Josh beat the Battle of Jero and the walls come [Music] [Laughter] tbling all over the world the walls are tumbling down for this is the battle for the world the battle for a world free from want a world to talk in you can say what needs to be said a world to say your own prayers in a world free from the fear of tumbling walls all this battle is in our hands the hands of the people the way it comes out is up to us we know pretty well now that it won't be easy we know that when they told us it meant Blood Sweat and Tears that when they said that they set a mouthful it will be tough but we are willing to pay that price because now we know that this is our fight the walls kept falling the battle kept coming closer now we are sure it is the fight of us people we will pay the blood and the sweat and the tears because they are the cash we are using to buy a better world when it's all over we want our kind of world only we want it to be even more our kind of world than it has been [Music] [Applause] oh a long time ago we saw that the bombs were getting closer and closer to our own walls we began to get ready for whatever was going to happen deep down we felt that those bombs in the long run were aimed at us people so we rolled up our sleeves and put on the jumpers and the overalls spot on our hands and hurried to the job then War Began coming to A Thousand quiet countrysides the jobs were there to do and we lined up to get the chance to do them not just for more dough or easier work but because we knew that there was hard going ahead for the many many things that we mean when we say the word democracy we lined up for strange new jobs of war in the countrysides of Missouri and Illinois of Massachusetts and Virginia and California The Towering cranes came to the cusa valley of Alabama the big grading machines came the steam shovels came there weren't any more tree frogs at night at least not so you could hear them there weren't enough roads now and the covered bridges were the wrong kind of bridges $75 million worth of powder plant was coming and that my friends is a lot of powder plant a shell loading plant was coming and an Ammunition Depot a big army camp was getting even bigger war was coming in a thousand ways war was coming all over the valley war was coming so a lot of us had to move the plants and the camp needed land they needed thousands of Acres more than 50,000 Acres when the nation took the land some of us went to work with the others who were building the plants building and building and some of us went away to other Farms where the cotton and the corn had grown up to the cabin doors even the roads from last year's plantings were going everywhere people were building and building building making the walls of democracy [Music] strong at last the bombs falling on the other side of the oceans had made us put our machines to work building the kind of world that we wanted for the old world was dying not dying in newspaper headlines anymore but dying in front of our own eyes Jos the Battle of Jero Jero Jero josua fit the Battle of Jero and the walls come tumbling down Joshua the Battle of Jero Jero Jero Josh the Battle of Jero and the walls come a tumbling down up to the walls of A Jero he Mar with a spear in hand go below them Rams HS of Joshua cried cu the battle lamb in my hand then the lamb Ram sheep BS begin to blow trumpet begin to sound Joshua commanded to chill and to shout and the walls come tumbling down Joshua feat the Battle of Jero Jero Jero J the Battle of Jero and the walls come tumbling down Joshua beat the Battle of Jero Jero Jero Jos the ble of Jero and the walls come [Music] [Laughter] T the soldiers came to the valley too thousands of them pouring into the big army camp off the farms and out of the city ities the tanks and the big guns they needed came too they needed a lot of other things just like the workers and the farmers but first last and always they needed food boy how they did need food tons and tons of food they needed onions they needed potatoes they needed meat and always more people were needed to build places to eat to get the food to the soldiers and workers and Farmers to cook it for them to serve it to them now the valley was filling up with new kind of workers too they were strong clever workers more of us people who could do things with our hands and make the high strung machines work for us there were power saws in the Valley now and men to run them there were drill press operators there were riveters and more riveters and welders and Brick Layers now there was another Army backing up the one in uniform at the Army my Camp they were building and building building for the kind of new world they [Music] wanted they were building the walls of democracy up and up so high that they could never be torn down again anywhere [Music] everywhere were people building and building these walls they knew now which was their side in this fight and that the fight was going to be fought with cranes and cement buckets as much as with guns now the valley was bubbling with people and they needed places to sleep and work in as well as eat [Music] in it seemed for a while as if there could never be enough houses the back roads filled up with trailers and in the trailers were people more and more people people learning to live in a world that was changing it was all right with them they just made the trailers into homes [Music] they were still father mother and children still a family the change wasn't changing them it was the world that was changing and they were still the solid core of democracy but the changing was pretty fast and for some of us it was kind of tough for a while the open air theater letters were thrown up quick so we could have some fun now and then the bunk houses spread up and down the valley and still there weren't enough and all the time we kept needing more and more food from farms all over the country just like we had come from ourselves to build something the country needed new people flowed into the valley they brought new ways of saying hello and new ways of saying goodbye new thoughts and ideas came too the unions came and the farmers who had gone to work in the plants joined up some of them didn't like it at first but they found soon that the unions were just another way of working [Music] together the crowds flowed in and around the little town streets like Tides the tides of B battles a long way off washing on streets where last year the boys played marbles in the dust the cars swirled in and out in the morning and again at night and the parking lot spread out over the little streets and into the [Music] farmlands there was lots of money everywhere more money than the valley had seen in a long long time and everybody wanted to spend it it was boom times again all right and everybody was happy to be working again and doing all right and getting a job done that his country needed to get done [Music] [Music] n [Music] but back of the broom times and the money was the memory of 1917 the war came to the valley then and the boys poured off the Valley Farms to fight in strange places just as they were pouring off the farms in Massachusetts and Illinois in California 1917 in them was 1917 in the prod a valley too for the valley had pyite and boite and graphite mines and the country needed those things for its guns and its Soldiers the mines ran at home while the soldiers fought far away for almost the first time since the Civil War there was plenty of money the money flowed in just like somebody had turned on a spigot and let it run [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the all the time the boys were over there in the mud and dust and smoke there was plenty of money in the valley then the Armistice came and the war was won and the spigot was turned off well it went on for a while the big time went on for a while and the big years that build themselves up afterwards up and up till 1929 then came the bitter years the mines closed in the valley The Vines grew over them and the bushes hid them till now you have a hard time finding what's left even to take pictures of the crumbling pillars it was a strange time there were the bulging payrolls and then the bread lines the peoples rolling out of the Cities onto the Farms the people rolling off the Farms onto the roads the money flowed out of the valley still the people didn't know exactly why one day or one week or one month there was plenty of money the next day or week or month it wasn't there anymore but the people were still there and the land was still there it wasn't the first time it had happened and they knew something to do the same thing [Music] they went back on the land and in a little while they weren't as fat as they had been and the land wasn't as fat either the money had flowed out and once again there was cotton to get credit with and K to eat and to feed to the pigs and cows that was an awful long time ago in a way but most of us remember we don't want it to happen [Music] again after this war we are going to try to keep it from happening over again it will take a lot of thinking and working we will have to give up some things we like to get other things things we like even more but we are ready and willing we've learned something we have learned that a government is just people pulling together in a big team the way a Cooperative dairy farm is people pulling together in a small way in the Valley now there is a pattern of order a pattern built of the sweat and the strain and the confusion there are good houses for the people and good food for them we had seen how democracy was powerful because it meant people working together to build something that was where the money for the new houses came from and where the muscles to build them came from people working together keeps a dairy running keeps the barns clean picks good cows gets the cows milk cools the milk and gets it to people to drink and we had seen a thousand other small ways where people working together could grow and make things better and bigger than all of them could if each worked by himself people working together can get the machines that will make a bigger crop of sorghum and bigger crops of hay we had learned that people working together could win the battles of Peace as well as of war that government is just the way people have of pulling together that that's all democracy is anyway we had found out that that was where the power came [Music] from we had seen the shiny silent massive generators gr out of the hills and streams and we knew it was because we had pulled together in making them we knew now that there was nobody who wasn't needed that from now on every man's brain and muscle ought to be working for democracy and that when democracy used all of us for all of us the power was grow and grow for that matter we know that at bottom that's what the shooting is all about now we know too that it won't just happen that we've got to fight for a better world and that we've got to plan for it the patterns must be drawn now for that world we know that there's no excuse for any other kind of world now with the power waiting there ready for us to use our own objectives are clear the objective of Smashing the militarism imposed by Warlords upon their enslaved peoples the objective of liberating the subjugated Nations the objective of establishing and securing freedom of speech freedom of religion freedom from want and Freedom From Fear everywhere in the world we shall not stop short of these objectives nor shall we be satisfied merely to gain them and then call it a day I know that I speak for the American people and I have good reason to believe that I speak also for all the other peoples who fight with with us when I say that this time we are determined not only to win the war but also to maintain the security of the peace that will follow when our enemies challenged our country to stand up and fight they challenged each and every one of us and each and every one of us has accepted for himself and for his Nation that we of the United Nations are not making all this sacrifice of human effort and human lives to return to the kind of world we had after the last World War we are fighting today for security for progress and for peace not only for ourselves but for all men not only for one generation but for all generations we are fighting to cleanse the world of ancient evils ancient ills