The United States Of America

The Constitution And Democracy

Four Freedoms
Four Freedoms, a formulation of American post-World War II hopes made by President ROOSEVELT  in his State of the Union address of Jan. 6, 1941. Speaking eleven months before the United States officially entered the war, Roosevelt set forth the Four Freedoms in these words: "The first is freedom of speech and expression--everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way--everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want--which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants--everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear--which, translated into world terms, means a worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor--anywhere in the world."

Taken in the abstract these were the kind of principles with which few could argue, but as a basis for practical policy making they were more vague than Woodrow WILSON 's famous Fourteen Points. Even as vague principles the Four Freedoms were quickly modified. The Atlantic Charter, the first public statement of joint Anglo-American war aims made by Churchill and Roosevelt (Aug. 14, 1941), referred to freedom from want and fear, but made no mention of freedom of worship, and freedom of speech was included only inferentially.

Some contemporaries claimed that the Roosevelt administration had avoided any reference to religious freedom out of deference to the Soviet Union, which had just entered the war against Germany. American officials asserted that the omission was an "oversight," and in the United Nations Declaration of Jan. 1, 1942, signed by Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, and the other Allies, freedom of religion was specifically mentioned, along with the remaining freedoms, in spite of Russian preference for the phrase "freedom of conscience."

In practice, the Four Freedoms proved valuable primarily as a wartime slogan. Designed initially for public consumption and lacking any common meaning accepted by all the Allies, they became increasingly meaningless in the light of wartime political realities. They then served only to highlight the harsh and unpleasant compromises made by the peacemakers in 1945.

Warren F. Kimball
Rutgers University