Franklin D. Roosevelt: Remarks at the White House Correspondents' Dinner - March 4, 1944

[The following is a FirstDraft -- a machine-generated transcript by our AI, Margaret. She's good, but neither perfect nor human. There will likely be a handful of errors. Please check any quotes against the primary video source. Thank you.]

Gentlemen, please remain in your seat until the president has left the hall and before he leaves. You've got a good night. Word for it. Gentlemen, this is off the record. The President of the United States.

[Inaudible] and my colleagues of many conferences. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me a very wonderful evening of relaxation and a pleasure. A wonderful show that we've had left me with only one thought. We have the White House Correspondents Association. They still have something to do to entertain our fellow citizens. I think that if Dave Sarnoff were to come and teach us how to do it, we can have one of our conferences on the air.

In order, the public might enjoy our conferences as much as I do. I've got these parties. Take me back many, many years. When George O'Connor let us tonight, it took me back to the days when he and I, after a late unpleasantness between the North and the South, were first elected to the House of Representatives. George and I became old, old friends as we remained ever since, and a certain excellent place on Pennsylvania Avenue near the foot of Capitol Hill and far removed from the other end of Capitol Hill.

When he taught me how to sing long, I never looked back. That was the beginning. I had to be in Washington. And that's when. That's why I've come back so often since. Carried me back to the days of Uncle Ted when there was no White House Correspondents Association, when there were a few people who drifted in occasionally. And Uncle Ted had his favorites. You don't know about it too young.

But he did. And he carried me back these many, many years when there were so many of you that I had to build a new West Wing to the White House. And so the years have gone by. I am very happy to have been with you tonight. I wish that everybody could come to these parties and that also we could translate some of our parties or not the kind with white ties and white west caps and the stuff that, you know, I mean, scripture.

If we could translate our parties, because these are peculiarly our parties to some of the front way down to the Southwestern Pacific and up in the Aleutians and across the ocean on the other side to Italy and Sicily and England, we've had some wonderful examples of great service out of uniform in this war. Bob Hope, the most popular American with the armed forces overseas today.

And the good people who every day are going to the camp and the hospitals in this land. And on the fighting front, we are grateful to them and we are grateful to the other hero, Ray Mack. We are not with us this year and many others who come back and tell us about things and who, when they're on the other side, write the kind of stories that make people more than any other thing.

I think realize what a warrior. And so I am going to ask your permission, your president and your ex-president, to let me ask you to drink a little toast. A toast to the armed forces of the United States Army, Navy and Marine, and especially to those men who are serving at all the fighting fronts today. Gentlemen of the armed forces. The armed forces.

[Inaudible] Good night, gentlemen. Thanks for being with us.