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The
Quarantine Speech was given by U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on October 5, 1937, in
ChicagoChicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, calling for an international "quarantine of the aggressor nations" as an alternative to the political climate of American neutrality and non-intervention that was prevalent at the time. The speech intensified America's isolationist mood, causing protest by non-interventionists and foes to intervention. No countries were directly mentioned in the speech, but it was interpreted as referring to
JapanJapan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
,
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, and
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. Roosevelt suggested the use of economic pressure, a forceful response, but less direct than outright aggression.
Public response to the speech was mixed. Famed cartoonist
Percy CrosbyPercy Leo Crosby was an American author, illustrator and cartoonist best known for his popular comic strip Skippy. Adapted into movies, a novel and a radio show, Crosby's creation was commemorated on a 1997 U.S. Postal Service stamp...
, creator of the Skippy strip and very outspoken Roosevelt critic, bought a two-page advertisement in the
New York Sun to attack it. It was also heavily criticized by
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newspapers and
Robert R. McCormickRobert Rutherford "Colonel" McCormick was a member of the McCormick family of Chicago who became owner and publisher of the Chicago Tribune newspaper...
of the
Chicago TribuneThe Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
, but several subsequent compendia of editorials showed overall approval in US media.