August 15, 1935

Will Rogers, (November 4, 1879 to August 15, 1935) the American humorist, had a radio show, and this is an excerpt from one edition dealing with politics and European alliances.

Europe has a thing that America always falls for and ...that's the thing when they tell us they want our moral leadership.... Our moral leadership is almost like telling an old man that he's got sex appeal...the minute Europe tells us we got moral leadership, ....why we just lay back like an old cat at the fire, and purr...but these are the same guys that still tell us we're Uncle Shylock and Money Grabbers and ill-mannered and boastful people...only we won the war...Really I don't know which they're sincere in.

This was part of a Janury 27, 1935 broadcast collected in The Papers of Will Rogers: The Final Years, August 1928-August 1935, (2006). This volume was co-edited by Steven K. Gragert , the archivist of the Will Rogers Memorial Museum, located in Rogers' birth state of Oklahoma.

The book transcribes this talk, first broadcast about six months before the Alaska plane crash that killed him, on August 15, 1935.