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And we, it appears, have built a world which is very hard for children: a world full of war and rumors of war; a world which has not conquered disease. Stamp out one, and there's another hissing its way into public attention, like one of a nest of snakes.

Have you ever considered what it is to be a child, looking back on your own childhood, regarding for a moment, as impartially as you can, the childhood of your children, your grandchildren, the children of your friends? Stop and think about it for a moment. A child, growing up, learning the hard way -- you can't inherit wisdom and experience, any more than you can be born walking and talking -- a child, the most vulnerable creature on earth, learning that there is so much more to the world than four walls and a root, and arms which harbor him and a voice which commiserates with childish grief. A child who must fight his way through the common ailments of childhood, who is subject to danger on all sides, from accident, from the carelessness of his elders or his own inexperience, who must grow and learn and be strong; who must become aware of suffering and loss, of poverty and of fear, who must learn to love, with the mind as well as with the instinct.

Childhood is difficult enough as it is, and dangerous enough, without its constant exposure to disease. And this disease especially.

To run, to play, to shout; to be active, rich, or poor; to swim, whether in a public or private pool, or on a public or private beach; to feel the handle of the bat, solid in your obedient hands, and to listen for the sweet sound which tells you you have connected with the ball; to dance over a tennis court, or to the sound of music; to ride, whether it be on a fine saddle horse from a clean stable, or the swaybacked work horse in the farmer's field; to walk, to feel the wind in your face; to swoop down a hill on skis, to take a bellywhopper on a sled; to skate ... in short, to be perfectly coordinated, with limbs that obey you, with muscles that are sound. This is childhood's birthright.

But for the children who have had infantile paralysis, for the children who are yet to have it -- and do you realize that among them may be your children or my children? -- this birthright is forfeit, it has been repudiated; it, suddenly, does not exist.

I have been in the children's wards of great hospitals, I have been in orthopedic hospitals, I have seen children on the streets, I have sat with a neighbor's child who someday may learn to walk -- a little. I have seen with my own eyes incredible patience, the patience of children. And patience is unnatural to childhood and youth. It should not be learned then, not, as it were, in one swift, undreamed of, ghastly lesson. It does not belong, it is for the old, and the tired, and the wise.

We are a great country. We have great resources. We are an impulsive and generous people. But when disaster overtakes any section of these United States, or indeed when, no matter where, there is catastrophe, the people of this country are ready with their sympathy and help. But infantile paralysis is not a flood or a famine, it is not a fire or an earthquake. It cannot come to us in great roaring headlines, as a terrific shock; it does not speak to us with the voice of radio or the news-reel, or enlist our aid by means of the still camera. It is simply-always with us. A national disaster, if you like, but one that makes no bid for sympathy by sensational suddenness, or by its uniqueness. It does not crash, so to speak, into our lives with the force and terror of a burning airship or a falling airplane. It is simply here. . . .

It is never really quiet. There are interludes when it does not stir -- much; and then, always, the interval, in which it stirs, actively.

It is your continuous calamity and it is mine. When you help build this protection against it, when you help arm the soldiers who will fight it, you are protecting yourself and your children and your children's children. You are building for the present, and for the future.

Someday there will be clean cities, and there will not be slums. Someday there will be serums, vaccines -- whatever they will term them. Someday there will be enlightened parents, as now there are ignorant parents. Someday there will be immunity, and the children of that era will walk with straight limbs, will run and play and laugh and be free of that invisible, that crippling, devastating playmate.

Then there will be no more wheelchairs and braces, no more iron lungs, no more teaching patience to children who have hardly learned more than impatience, so new are they to living.

We cannot free the children of the future from all the hard lessons they may learn. We cannot protect them, I suppose, against the insatiable greed of mankind, which has never learned its lesson. But we can increase their chances of growing to manhood and womanhood, straight and strong.

It is, of course, perfectly true that in many instances this disease strikes lightly. But why should it strike at all? It is also true that in innumerable cases the handicaps left in its wake have been overcome, in greater or lesser degree. But why, in the name of heaven, should any child be handicapped?