TRIBUTE TO THE UNITED STATES 
 
Original Broadcast June 5, 1973   CFRB, Toronto, Ontario
listen to the original broadcast at "The Americans" - Original Script
[requires RealAudio player]


The Americans
Widespread but only partial news coverage was given 
recently to a remarkable editorial broadcast from 
Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television 
commentator. What follows is the full text of his 
remarks as printed in the Congressional Record:

"The United States dollar took another pounding on German, 
French and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest 
point ever known in West Germany. It has declined there by 
41% since 1971 and this Canadian thinks it is time to speak 
up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly
the least-appreciated people in all the world.

As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, 
I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtse. Well, 
Who rushed in with menand money to help? The Americans did, 
that's who.

They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the 
Ganges and the Niger. Today, the rich bottom land of the 
Mississippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar 
to help. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, 
were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured 
in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of 
those countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining 
debts to the United States.

When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the
Americans who propped it up and their reward was to be insulted 
and swindled on the streets of Paris. And I was there. I saw that.

When distant cities are hit by earthquakes, it is the United States 
that hurries into help... Managua Nicaragua is one of the most recent 
examples. So far this spring, 59 American communities have been 
flattened by tornadoes. Nobody has helped.

The Marshall Plan... the Truman Policy... all pumped billions upon 
billions of dollars into discouraged countries. And now, newspapers 
in those countries are writing about the decadent war-mongering Americans.

I'd like to see one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion 
of the United States dollar build its own airplanes.

Come on... let's hear it! Does any other country in the world have a 
plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tristar or the 
Douglas 10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all international 
lines except Russia fly American planes? Why does no other land 
on earth even consider putting a man or a women on the moon?

You talk about Japanese technocracy and you get radios. 
You talk about German technocracy and you get automobiles. 
You talk about American technocracy and you find men on the moon, 
not once, but several times ... and safely home again. 

You talk about scandals and the Americans put theirs right in the 
store window for everybody to look at. Even the draft dodgers are 
not pursued and hounded. They are right here on our streets in Toronto, 
most of them... unless they are breaking Canadian laws... are getting 
American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend here.

When the Americans get out of this bind... as they will... who could blame 
them if they said 'the hell with the rest of the world'. Let someone else buy 
the bonds, let someone else build or repair foreign dams or design foreign 
buildings that won't shake apart in earthquakes.

When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down 
through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania
Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an 
old caboose. Both of them are still broke. I can name to you 5,000 times 
when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble.

Can you name to me even one time when someone else raced to the 
Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San
Francisco earthquake.

Our neighbours have faced it alone and I am one Canadian who is damned 
tired of hearing them kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their
flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their noses at the 
lands that are gloating over their present troubles.

I hope Canada is not one of these. But there are many smug, self-righteous 
Canadians. And finally, the American Red Cross was told at its 48th Annual
meeting in New Orleans this morning that it was broke.

This year's disasters... with the year less than half-over... 
has taken it all and nobody... but nobody... has helped."


Stand proud, America!