Address at the City Hall in Providence, Rhode Island

Mr. Chairman, Governor Roberts, distinguished guests:

It is a pleasure for me to be with you this morning. I remember very, very well this meeting out here in 1948. I received a most cordial welcome and the beautiful part about it was that welcome also meant that I was going to be elected President of the United States. I appreciate the cordiality of your welcome. Nothing could equal it. It makes me feel that maybe I am making a contribution to the welfare of the country, when people turn out in these numbers to hear what I have to say.

I remember when I was here before.

It was just a week before the election, and it was just about this time of day. And I expect a lot of you folks were out here at that time, too, and you treated me then as you are now. I don't think I ever had a more cordial welcome in that whole campaign.

I brought you some good news that morning. I told you just what was going to happen on election day.

What I told you then turned out to be just about right, despite the fact that a lot of people at that time thought I was talking through my hat. Those people had a great surprise the day after the election of 1948.

Now, I will tell you something about what is going to happen this year. We're going to win another great victory for the Democratic Party and for the American people on November 4th.

As usual, you Democrats of Rhode Island are going to be right up there at the head of the procession.

As our candidate for President this year, we have one of the ablest men ever nominated for that office--Adlai Stevenson.

He has made a great record as Governor of Illinois. His character and his experience qualify him to fill the most important political office in the world today--the Presidency of the United States.

I know he has won your admiration by the intelligent and forthright manner in which he has been discussing the issues of this campaign.

Unfortunately, he is the only candidate for President who has enough respect for your intelligence to talk sensibly to you about the issues.

His Republican opponent makes no secret of the fact that he is trying to play on your emotions, instead of appealing to your commonsense. And he has sunk pretty low in that emotional campaign, as I'm going to prove to you.

The Republican candidate for President is a professional soldier. We are entitled to assume that the one thing he understands is war.

Now, I have taken steps to see to it that he is kept informed during this campaign about the situation in Korea. I have seen to it that he gets regular top secret reports from the Central Intelligence Agency.

I wanted him to have all the facts on the Korean situation, so that he could be guided by them--so he wouldn't say anything he didn't mean, as a result of being in the dark about what was going on.

For one thing, I didn't want him to make any mistakes in the heat of the campaign that might harm the United States--and the United Nations--in their efforts to defend the free world against Communist aggression.

I honestly believed that he would refuse to play politics with our foreign policy-especially that part of it which involves the sacrifice of our American boys in Korea. But I was wrong about that.

I was bitterly disappointed a few days ago when the Republican candidate for President told the people of the United States a cruel and deceitful thing.

You remember what he said. He said we ought to pull our soldiers out of the fighting in Korea and let the South Korean army fight the Red Chinese hordes alone.

That sounded like a promise, and he meant it to sound like a promise. It sounded like something he would do right away. But it was just an empty campaign speech to get votes.

I know what his words sounded like to the mothers and fathers of this country. They sounded like words of hope, of relief and comfort from worry and heartache.

That's what made them so cruel. The Republican candidate for President held out a false hope to the mothers of America, in an effort to pick up a few votes. That is a most contemptible thing to do.

It was irresponsible, because the Republican candidate knows that we cannot pull our troops out of Korea now. We can't do it unless we are willing to say to Stalin: "We quit--you win."

And we are not going to quit Korea or anywhere else when it comes to resisting Communist aggression.

Now, my friends, the Republican candidate knows as well as I do that for 18 months we have been training South Korean troops day and night. We have been training them to take over more and more of the fighting out there.

We have built up and are building a strong Korean army. They are a fine fighting force, as they have proved in the recent battles for White Horse Hill.

And we ought to remember that those brave South Koreans are not only fighting for their own freedom from Communist aggression. They are fighting to help protect the freedom over all the world, including the United States.

Now, my friends, the Republican candidate for President also knows that as long as the Communists are throwing all they can into the fight, the South Koreans cannot stand up against the entire Chinese Red Army.

No top military commander in Korea ever believed that they could, and the General who is running for President on the Republican ticket doesn't believe it either.

He knows better--and when he talks about pulling out of Korea, he is deliberately playing partisan politics with something that ought to be above partisan politics.

We are doing everything that can be done to bring the fighting in Korea to an honorable conclusion.

One of your own Rhode Island citizens has been working with me to bring that about. You should be very proud of the fine service he has given to our country. He has been our Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, he is now representing our country in the United Nations. His name is John Muccio.

We have been trying to end the fighting in Korea on terms which will not encourage aggression somewhere else. No matter what the Republican candidate says, we shall not engage in appeasement.

To do that would be to take the sure road to world war III.

The one thing I have been working for above everything else is to avoid another world war and to help bring about a secure peace in the world. This fight for peace has many aspects.

The United Nations resistance against armed aggression in Korea is one aspect.

The fight for peace also includes our program to build up our own national defense and the aid we are giving to our allies to strengthen them for our common defense.

I am sorry to say that the representatives of the Republican Party in Congress have resisted those programs and have voted to cripple them time after time.

And while their candidate for President once supported me in my work for peace, he is talking now just exactly like the Old Guard isolationist Republicans talk in Congress.

There is another aspect of our work for world peace which is very important.

That is our effort to develop friendship and understanding between the people of the United States and the freedom-loving people elsewhere in the world.

That is more difficult than it should be because we have on our books immigration laws which discriminate against people born in most of the countries of Europe.

Our immigration laws are still based on the system of National Origins Quotas, which was first passed during a Republican administration in 1924.

That system was set up on the false theory that people born in the countries of southern or eastern Europe do not make desirable citizens in our country.

There was never any sense in that. It was based entirely on prejudice. And it makes even less sense in the light of the present-day conditions in the world than it did when it was first passed.

Right today, there are many people in southern and eastern Europe who want to come to this country, and who would enrich our national life. But we can't let them in because of the old 1924 law which sets up a standard of national origin, instead of individual worth.

This year I asked the Congress to modify our laws to let some of these people come in. But instead of doing that, they passed a bill which does nothing for this emergency problem in Europe. And they reenacted that old National Origins Quota System.

Senator Green and Senator Pastore, and your two Representatives, Aime Forand and John Fogarty, worked side by side with me to get a better immigration law. Now the Republicans in Congress were almost solidly opposed to us.

The new law that was passed by the Congress is just as unfair to the people of southern and eastern Europe as the old one was. I vetoed it, and the Republicans in the Senate voted 4 to 1 to pass it over my veto.

Then, in July, both parties held their national conventions.

The platform adopted at the Democratic convention pledges our party to work against the unfair and unjust features of the present law. It pledges us to get a decent law in its place. I have already appointed a commission to study the operation of the present law and to report to me before the next Congress. The Democratic Party intends to get rid of those provisions in our immigration laws that discriminate against the Italians and the Poles and the Greeks and other people of eastern and southern Europe.

But in the Republican platform, my friends, you won't even find the word immigration anywhere; and the Republican candidate for President has said he's not very familiar with the subject. And friends, there are a lot of other subjects he is not familiar with, too. And whatever you do, don't forget those Republican votes in the Congress.

All in all, it's perfectly clear that you'd have nothing to hope for in the way of a better immigration law from the Republican Party.

If you think that law ought to be changed, and made fair and just, you'd better vote for the party that is the party of the people-and that is the Democratic Party.

Now, I haven't any doubt about how you people of Rhode Island are going to vote next month.

I know that you want to have a national administration that will continue to work for peace and justice in the world and for prosperity and progress at home.

I know you want to vote for the repeal of the Taft-Hartley law, which is penalizing every textile worker in New England.

I know you want to have a President in the White House who is for the people, and who is not just a front for special privilege.

The way you can get these things is by rolling up the biggest majority in history for Adlai Stevenson and John Sparkman, and the whole Democratic ticket.

You have a fine delegation in Congress.

I am glad that Rhode Island is going to send Aime Forand and John Fogarty back to the House of Representatives. And as President, Stevenson will need their help.

Now a President is in a bad way when he has a balky and contrary Congress. I know, for I am speaking from experience. I had a most bulky Congress, which I used to get reelected on; but I don't want President Stevenson to start out with that kind of Congress.

And you're going to keep John Pastore in the Senate. In the less than 2 years that he has been in Washington, he has voted on more than 300 questions affecting the health, welfare, and security of our Nation. And he has always voted on the side of the people. That's a record of devotion to duty of which he and you can be proud.

I am also glad to know that my friend, Dennis Roberts, is going to remain in office for another term. I expect I may come back here to visit you sometime when I get out of a job. I won't be President then, so it will be especially pleasant to have a friend in the Governor's Mansion.

I started out my acquaintance with Rhode Island with the Governor of Rhode Island as my friend. He is now the senior U.S. Senator from Rhode Island--Theodore Francis Green. And I have just sent him to the United Nations as one of the representatives of this great Government of ours.

Now, as to your great Governor Roberts here, I will have another friend in the mansion here that I can get a square meal, when I don't have a job.

Now, I want to tell you that I think this is one of the most important elections in our whole history. Our future and the future of the world will be largely shaped by what we do in the next 4 years.

We cannot risk turning this country over to the Republican Party, with its long record of obstruction and reaction. We cannot risk having a Republican President who knows nothing about the problems of civilian government.

That's why you have a duty to yourselves. You yourselves are the Government, if you exercise your power to vote. It is you, by the Constitution of the United States, who control your local, State, and National Governments; and when you don't exercise your franchise, if you get bad government, you have nobody to blame for it but yourselves.

Now, the reason I am going up and down the country is not for anything for myself. The Democratic Party has done for me everything that can be done for any one man and I am trying to be grateful by going out and showing the people just exactly what the issues in this campaign are. Then I want them to think. I want them to do their own thinking. I want them, then, after they have thought of the matter, after they have studied the records of the Republicans in Congress--and that's all you have to go by, on what the Republicans will do and the record of the Democrats in Congress. You will go to the polls, if you do that, on election day, and you will send Adlai Stevenson to the White House, and we will have 4 more years of the best government in the world.