Tuesday, October 29, 1940
Stations
JFK was in the Bay Area and listened to his Joe Kennedy, Sr.’s 9 P.M. EST radio address broadcast over 114 stations of the Columbia Broadcasting System. Ostensibly “sponsored” by Rose Kennedy and the nine Kennedy children, it was Joe, Sr.’s way of arguing his position that America should stay out of the war and a defense of his much criticized performance in the Court of St. James’s … by way of an endorsement of FDR for re-election.
During the lengthy speech, Kennedy managed a plug for Jack’s book Why England Slept,
“… it is true that a democracy such as our is difficult to rally when it is neither desperate or frightened. England had the same experience. Even after it was learning that Germany was ‘arming to the teeth.” England proceeded confidently but leisurely to the task of getting prepared.”
[253, p. 486]