Address in Madison Square Garden, New York City

General Kilpatrick, Mr. Roosevelt, Judge Morhouse, my fellow Republicans--and Independents, and there must be a lot here, because they say there aren't many Republicans--and friendly Democrats--my fellow citizens:

Now, the first thing I would like to say this evening, is to bring to you a suggestion for New York State with respect to its actions on November 6th.

First, I would deeply hope that you send back to the Congress your Republican contingent--and add to it materially.

And may I say a special word about Jack Javits. My friends, I know that some people have tried to impugn his loyalty. Some have called him a wild-eyed radical, and others lately, I see, have said he was a stick-in-the-mud reactionary.

I wonder if I could give you a few words of what I feel about Jack Javits. I have known him for some years. I have served with him in Washington. I have found him a man dedicated to his country, devoted to his duty, and wrapped up in his public service. So I would hope that throughout the length and breadth of this great State, from one corner to all the others, that on November 6th, every friend of his--every friend of mine--everybody who believes as he does, in good, clean government, will turn out and give him such a blazing majority that he will go to Washington inspired by your action, uplifted in spirit, to do a job for you--for the country--and for peace.

And may I remark, with your permission, that if I were privileged tonight to speak also in your sister State of Connecticut, as I am privileged to speak here, I would speak of Senator Bush in exactly the same words.

Now first of all, I feel great, largely because of the way you have greeted me. But tonight I am reminded, my friends, of the time when last we met here in the Garden four years ago.

It is a happy memory--of friendships born and action pledged. It is something more: it is a wise and necessary remembrance. For it inspires us to measure the distance we have come from that day--to this.

Now these, I believe, have been four years of memorable meaning.

Four years ago, we wandered wearily in the darkness of a drifting war. And we tensely awaited--wherever it next might strike--the sharp and sudden thrust of some new Communist military attack.

We watched--within our nation--the dreary decline of political morality--and we wondered for how long a government could effectively lead the free world when it no longer commanded the pride of its own people.

We anxiously marked--in our economy--the rising menace of inflation.

And we were dismayed that--in our society--the advance of civil rights, for all sections, in all areas of our country, could remain almost stalled on dead-center--while political orators spent their energy promising so much and doing so little.

And so tonight, my friends, comes the testing question: how much have we done to build an America of greater justice and dignity--in a world of greater hope for peace?

We have made some historic strides forward.

For example, we suffer--this night--no fearful suspense, awaiting news from any foreign battlefield calling our sons to danger and to death.

We await--this night--no chilling word of some new assault upon a free nation. We hear, instead, from the peoples of Eastern Europe, the solemn word--the solemn proof--that men who have once known the blessings of freedom will lay down their lives in its name. The people of Poland and of Hungary--indeed, of all Eastern Europe--they are men and women whom America has never forgotten--nor ever will.

We have witnessed--here at home--the restoration to our government of integrity and dignity.

We have welcomed--in our economy--an effective attack on inflation.

And we have discovered--in our society--the true way to advance the cause of civil fights: less oratory, and more action-never, may I say, my friends, on a partisan basis to claim political credit for a simple matter of American justice.

These, then, are a few of the true and telling signs of the America that we--and all our citizens--have been helping to build these past four years.

I have seen much of this America--as I have travelled across our land these last weeks. And it is a thing of spirit--a thing of splendor.

I have seen the faces of hundreds of thousands of our people, and they shine--especially the young--with hope and confidence.

I have seen the face of our land--soil, rivers and forests--their richness and their power conserved with care, developed with skill, by a people thankful for this bounty of a generous Providence.

And there are other great things that I have had no need to see--for I know them. I mean--all the rolling mills and open hearths, the smoking factory-stacks and flaming furnaces.

Tonight--even as we meet here--the glow of these furnaces and the light of these factories send their bright signals to the dark skies above. And they tell the world that 66 million Americans know--today--more secure and rewarding work than any people have ever known--anywhere in the world--anytime in history.

My friends, all this--all of us see. But how fantastically different it is from what we have lately been hearing.

We have been hearing the complaining chant of a chorus of apparently tireless partisan orators. This chorus sings a strange song--about a weak and fearful America.

And in this monotonous music the latest lament is that your present leadership has "no new ideas."

Now, my friends, if the Administration has no new ideas, then I suppose you don't, because you support it. So shouldn't we together examine this point just a bit?

Now, first of all, not every new idea is necessarily a good one. Four years ago, you will recall, our people were told that if they elected a Republican administration, disaster will overtake the land, we will have depression, prosperity will evaporate. And a little later, with Republicans in power and in their first move to remove stifling controls from the wages and services and rents that were afflicting the land, we were told in the most solemn tones that we were going to have run-away inflation, rising living costs, and finally new disaster. They were new ideas. But, were they really?

Now another thing. In 1953, we found a number of old ideas for whose energetic application the American people had waited all too long.

It is undoubtedly an old idea to reduce Federal spending and lower Federal taxes. But someone had to do it.

It is an old idea to reduce unemployment. But it has taken today's prosperity to reduce the unemployment rate to a level lower this last month than that in any peacetime September in the opposition's twenty years of rule.

And how--all action aside--how true is it that the opposition enjoys some monopoly on the invention of new ideas?

Was it they who inspired and launched the greatest highway building program in our history?

Was it they who proposed the program of Atoms for Peace?

Was it they who conceived our boldest proposal for disarmament, the Open Skies offer of mutual air-inspection?

Was it they who went to Panama for the first conference of Chiefs of State, in order to bind the Americas more closely together?

Now, my friends, I find nothing really new even in their political techniques for confusing public debate. Thus:

They charge your Government with indifference to the welfare of labor--but they are careful not to mention that labor's share of our national income stands today at its highest point in twenty years.

They charge your Government with excessive concern for big corporations--but they are careful not to mention that corporate profits after taxes since 1953 have represented a sharply lower share of our national income than during the seven postwar years of the preceding administration.

Possibly, though, one "new idea" has added to such political double-talk a new kind of spice--and this is the hit-and-run statement. They have charged this Administration, for example, with lending vast sums of money to a foreign government that they said built up the personal fortune of an exiled Latin American dictator. They were horrified, for they made only one mistake: they were sitting on their own powder keg when they lit that fuse. And what did they do when they learned it was their Administration that had made these loans? They fled from the scene-and they did so in headlong silence. They have raced out of sight--to bury this issue, no doubt, somewhere far, far down the high, high road.

Now, let us turn to matters more serious, my friends, indeed the gravest issue before us: our quest of peace.

There is, of course, nothing amusing when the opposition's political techniques are extended to world affairs.

They urge a vigorous and realistic policy towards the Communist empire--and they suggest that we begin, in our relations with the Soviet Union, by trusting our national safety to agreements that have no effective safeguards and no controls.

They urge a bold American defense of freedom--and they urge us to try achieving this by starting to plan to end our military draft.

I respond to such propositions with one firm belief. There is no political campaign that justifies the declaration of a moratorium on common sense.

As your President, I cannot and will not tell you that our quest for peace will be simple, or its rewards swift. This quest may, in fact, cost us much--in labor and in sacrifice.

And I do not doubt the will and the ability of America to meet this mighty responsibility with a memorable response.

But that response requires, most clearly, strength. For a weak nation can bring neither hope to its own people nor help to its friends. It can only seek mercy of its enemies.

This indispensable strength demands of us certain simple things, beyond the power of partisan polemics to obscure.

We need our military draft--for the safety of our nation. We cannot throw the full future military burden upon veterans who have already earned their own nation's gratitude--nor can we urge our allies to shoulder arms--while we throw ours to the ground.

We need--no less--the most advanced military weapons. And these must be proven to be the best in the world.

And we need, also, to reiterate--as we constantly do--America's instant readiness to lay aside all nuclear weapons--including their testing--when, but only when, we have sure safeguards that others will do exactly the same. And it is very important that we get this issue clear in our minds.

The compelling challenge before the world is not the matter of testing nuclear weapons--but of making impossible their use in any nuclear war. It is to this far greater purpose that all efforts of your Government have steadfastly been dedicated-through months and years of tireless negotiation, with both firm friend and potential foe.

In this mission of peace, we shall never rest--nor ever retreat. For I continue hopefully to believe that all nations can together find the road leading toward--not the illusion--but the reality of disarmament.

My fellow citizens, even as we have prospered and grown strong, yet we know that this is not enough. Man does not live by might alone. Nor are we content with pleasing contrasts between today and yesterday. We are concerned with the conquest of tomorrow.

We seek--first--the assuring of justice and dignity in our own society.

How do we propose to seek it?

We shall continue economic and fiscal policies that have helped generate our present prosperity. Soon there will be 70 million jobs for our people, marking another milestone in our eternal growth.

We shall continue expanding and improving all our programs for the benefit of the sick, the aged, and the disabled.

We shall--for the youth to whom the future belongs--build the schools they need.

We shall--with the next Congress--advance new programs to make more secure the future of our small businesses.

And we shall--with intelligence and sympathetic understanding-do all in our power to make more secure, for all citizens, their civil fights. And, as a special item of this matter, we shall seek, as we promised in our Platform, to assure women everywhere in our land equality of rights.

We shall vigorously lead the way to a review and revision of our immigration laws--to serve our own national interest, to promote understanding in the world, and to give new validity to America's role of leadership in this world.

My friends, all this is the work that all of us--you--your Congress, and your President must--and shall--advance in the next four years.

And we shall act with like vigor and purpose in the whole wide world.

We shall encourage, more persistently than ever, wider markets and rising living standards for all nations.

We shall go on steadfastly seeking safe and sound means for disarmament--so that history can never say that this generation left humanity to be crucified upon a cross of iron.

And we shall never seek escape from any toil or any sacrifice-that freedom demands of us. We know--above all things--that a people that values its privileges above its principles-soon loses both.

Thus will our spirit rule and direct our might.

And thus may we go on building this America of justice and strength, in a world of peace and of law.

Thank you, my friends, very much indeed.