Address at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis

I certainly do appreciate this most cordial welcome--in Kansas City or St. Louis, my second home city, let us say. You know, I have been receiving some wonderful letters from all over the country since this tour of mine started on the 27th day of September. There have been something over 10,000 of them. And they run--believe it or not--nearly five to one in favor of what I have been trying to do.

I am exceedingly sorry that the mayor can't be here tonight, but his doctor has him under control. For once he is obeying the doctor's orders. He said he was going to listen, and he will probably get a better idea of what I am saying.

I finished my 1948 campaign here in St. Louis, and you gave me an ovation like this--and we won. Now I have come to the end of the campaign--18,500 miles--and this is number 211 speech.

We are going to win again this time. We are going to win for Adlai Stevenson.

We are going to win with Adlai Stevenson and John Sparkman. We are going to send Stu Syrnington to the Senate, from the great State of Missouri, and we are going to elect Phil Donnelly Governor, and we are going to elect the whole Democratic ticket. We are going to win for the policies that have made our country prosperous--the policies that have given every man better opportunities, and saved the free world from communism.

We are not going to let the Republican Old Guard hide behind the glamor of a five-star general, and take the Government away from the people.

We are not going to let the special interests and the snollygosters take over this country to run it for their private profit.

Don't let anybody tell you a different story. I have been campaigning back and forth across the country for a Democratic victory. I have talked to the voters, and they have been talking to me. And I do not believe they are going to turn the clock back. The people of this country know the difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party--and the Republicans can't fool them. They know that the Democratic Party runs the Government for the interests of the average man--and that means prosperity. They know that the Republican Party would run the country for the interests of the bankers, the profiteers, and the special privilege boys. That has one final result-sooner or later it means depression, failing farm prices, and unemployment.

'This year I am not asking for votes for myself. Long ago, shortly after I was inaugurated in 1949, I decided that I ought not to run for office. The Presidency is the most responsible and one of the most difficult jobs in the world. It is the greatest office in the history of the world. And I speak advisedly when I say that. I have given my country the best that is in me. I have made mistakes. I have made mistakes, of course, and who has not?--but I am proud of the things I have tried to do. I am proud of what my administration has accomplished for the people of this great country.

I was strongly urged to run again. But there were many unfinished things that I wanted to help carry through to completion. I would have liked to continue my part in the struggle of the free nations for peace in the world. We have made great strides in bringing the free nations of the world together in a common enterprise, to preserve the great values of our civilization. I believe our efforts to build the defenses of the free nations, and to strengthen their economic life and social order are showing real results. I think the scales of power are beginning to shift in our favor, in this struggle with communism. I believe sincerely that the world will emerge from the shadow of aggression and fear, into the bright sunlight of lasting peace.

I really believe we are facing the greatest age in history. How I wish I could be 18 instead of 68! The next half century will see undreamed of marvels for humanity I would have liked to see through to final victory. But I knew there were many men in my party who are well qualified to lead this Nation.

So I decided not to run again.

The Democratic Party chose as its presidential candidate one of the ablest and most distinguished public servants in our national life, the Governor of Illinois, Adlai Stevenson.

He has put on a campaign that has made all of us proud and made us certain that we nominated the right man to be President of the United States.

Now the Republicans this year have put on a strange and fearful campaign.

In 1948 they campaigned on the basis of the public opinion polls. Their strategy was, "We can't lose, so why make anybody mad." So they didn't say anything except "unity."

This year, they were desperate. So they adopted a new type of campaign that is run like an advertising campaign to sell a brand of soap. This Republican brand of soap hadn't sold for 20 years, so they made a new wrapper for their old product--a wrapper with five silver stars on it. They had new slogans, they hired cheerleaders, they had confetti distributed in advance, they gave the kids balloons, they bought spot commercials, such as this: "Switch to our brand of soap." They said, "It will solve inflation, deflation, civil rights, depressions--and that inferiority feeling of being a Republican out of office. One application will wash away all your troubles."

But, my friends, it's the same old GOP soap. It isn't good for anything, and it never was--and the people are not going to be fooled into buying it again.

Of course, the Democrats don't care what campaign techniques the Republicans use. The Democrats are going to win, because we have based our campaign on the issues--the real bedrock issues: how to keep our country prosperous, how to provide better income, better homes, more opportunity, more security--how to hold back communism, how to achieve world peace. The Republicans don't want to fight on these issues that really concern the people. They know they have a bad record on these issues--and they know the voters know it, too. So they always want to talk about something else.

They start out by running against "regimentation" and by crying "socialism." They go on a fresh crusade to rescue the American people from the terrible condition of slavery they say we are in. And when it turns out that the voters don't want to be rescued, and that they prefer to be, as the Republican candidate for President said, "mired in the mud of New Deal prosperity"--why then the Republican tune always changes to "me too."

Then, they say they've been for the New Deal and the fair Deal all along. But how do they vote in Congress ? Of course, they're for social security, they say. They even want to improve it. But how do they vote in Congress? Why they vote against the whole idea every time they get a chance.

Of course, they're for labor unions, so they say, just before election. Of course, they're for farm price supports now. Why they'd like to see the farmers get 100 percent parity now, just before election.

And their candidates were indignant when their voting record was exposed. How could anybody think they are not for all these things now? They beat their breasts, they weep crocodile tears, they give their personal pledges two or three times a day, to keep the New Deal and the fair Deal and make them better--just before election.

Now listen to this. You remember Eugene field? He said:

"Most all the time, the whole year round, there ain't no flies on me,
But jest 'fore Christmas I'm as good as I kin be!
So wash yer face and brush yer hair,
And mind your P's and Q's."
Jest 'fore election I'm Fair Deal as sure as sure can be.
And when they's company, don't pass yer plate for pie again.
Jest 'fore Christmas I'm as good as I kin be.
I'm a-thinking of the things I'd like to see upon the tree.
Just 'fore election I'm fer the people as strong as strong can be.

That's the way they sing, all the time.

Well, I am sure I don't know how anybody ever got the idea that the Republicans were against the New Deal and the fair Deal unless it was by listening to their speeches in Congress, and reading their votes in Congress. And I don't know what they're so mad with us about. We didn't put all those skeletons in their closet. We didn't make them 'vote against improving social security, we didn't make them vote for the Taft-Hartley law, we didn't make them vote against rent and price control, we didn't make them vote against stable farm price supports. That was all their own idea-it wasn't ours.

I don't know why the Republican candidate for President gets so excited when we tell the truth about these things. I hope he is in favor of social security. That would be a grand conversion in his views since 1948, when he said security could be had easily by going to jail. Now he shakes my confidence when he turns right around and says he is just the same now as he was in 1948, and has not changed one bit. I wish he would stop being so indignant, and tell us calmly what his views really are, and when and why he changed them, if he ever did.

Then there is this hue and cry about his wanting to cut the soldiers' pay. He has been going around the country accusing the Democrats of saying that he wants to cut soldiers' pay. For a long time this puzzled me. I never said he wanted to cut the soldiers' pay. I never heard that he had any such idea. But recently I found out the reason for his excitement. Back in 1948 he testified before a committee of Congress that he thought draftees should not receive any pay except cigarette money. Now that, my friends, was his own idea; it wasn't mine. I don't think anyone would have guessed it if he hadn't kept bringing it up. But he doesn't have to get so indignant about it.

All he has to do is to say his views on the subject have changed, since he became the candidate for President.

It really is wonderful how a Republican's views will change and broaden temporarily under those circumstances.

Now another element in this strange and wonderful campaign is the press of the country. Most of the daily newspapers in this country are Republican. Only about 10 percent of the circulation is Democratic.

Governor Stevenson has called this the one-party press. The two-party system is all right for the common people, but not, apparently, for the publishers of newspapers. They don't see any threat to our political system in having almost all the newspapers on one side.

But this campaign has brought out another fact about the press. The publishers may be mostly Republican, but the working newspapermen-like m o s t working people throughout the country--are for Stevenson. That is true of the newspapermen on my train. That is true of the newspapermen on the Stevenson train, and it's true especially on the train of the Republican candidate for President.

Now I want to say a word to these newspapermen, especially the ones who have been going around the country with me. Boys, when I take out after the one-party press, that doesn't include you. It only includes your publishers--and you and I can agree that they are not too bright, anyway. You fellows are all right in my book. And I mean it.

There are a few publishers I want to compliment, too. There is one in this town. The St. Louis Post Dispatch and I have at last managed to agree on one thing--and that is the election of Adlai Stevenson. You don't know how much satisfaction it gives me to have converted that paper to do right just once.

Then there is another element in the Republican campaign, and that is really a shocking and terrifying thing.

Americans have no more precious possession than the Bill of Rights. Those few paragraphs in the Constitution of the United States were the product of centuries of struggle by mankind against tyranny. They are a code of conduct for men in public life everywhere to assure that, no matter what happens, America will remain a land of freedom, of liberty, and of justice.

But, my friends, eternal vigilance is still the price of liberty. There is no assurance that the ideals embodied in our Bill of Rights will survive, if there is a determined effort by men in positions of leadership to snuff them out.

A powerful group of men in the Republican Party is now determined to rise to power through a method of conduct as hostile to American ideals as anything we have ever seen. This method has come to be known as McCarthyism.

This method tries people by accusation and slander instead of evidence and proof. It destroys reputations by repeated utterance of gigantic falsehoods. It spares neither the lowly Government clerk nor men of the towering stature of Gen. George Catlett Marshall.

This new method of American politics has already been used with a terrifying degree of success. It defeated the distinguished Senators Tydings, of Maryland, and Thomas, of Utah, in 1950, and helped to defeat several others.

Now, for the first time, it is being used in a presidential election. The Republican candidate for Vice President has made it his stock in trade in this campaign. Senator McCarthy himself was the featured speaker at the Republican convention, and was provided a national radio and television hookup in this campaign, to see if he could do to Governor Stevenson what was done to Senators Tydings and Thomas.

I would have expected the Republican candidate for President to be against this kind of thing. I would have expected him to defend the name of his old friend and benefactor, George Marshall, against those detractors. But he did not do it. Instead, he just uttered a few generalities about the American tradition of justice. And he went on to say that Senators McCarthy and Jenher were on his team and should be reelected. And he himself has been using the same kind of innuendo, and distortion in his own speeches.

My friends, we must get rid of McCarthyism. The Bill of Rights, in my opinion, is the most important part of the Constitution of the United States. We must save it, and in order to save it, McCarthyism must be wiped off the map. In order to do that, we must defeat the presidential candidate who has embraced its authors, tolerated it, and sought to benefit by it.

The Republican candidate has also embraced the isolationist leaders of the Republican Party. And together they have made our foreign policy an issue in this campaign.

Of course, all the Republicans you talk to will tell you that isolationism is dead. No Republican candidate, nowadays, will get up and make a speech telling us that we ought to withdraw behind the oceans and ignore the rest of the world.

But the Old Guard Republicans will vote against military aid for free nations who are friends of ours. They will vote against foreign economic aid--which is just as important as military aid. They will vote against point 4--which costs us very little but is one of the strongest weapons against Communist subversion.

They will vote slashes in our national defense budget. They will vote against the reciprocal trade laws. All the time, they go on loudly proclaiming that isolationism is dead.

Now the Republican candidate for President, when he is in the States of these Old Guardsmen, talks as they do. When he goes into the States of Republicans of the internationalist persuasion, he talks just the other way. It's hard to tell where he stands.

It's bard to tell where he stands on anything. He's a Dixiecrat in South Carolina. He's a Shivercrat in Texas. He's an isolationist in Illinois. And he's an internationalist in Michigan when he goes into the State where Senator Vandenberg used to live.

But no matter what his personal convictions are, if the Republicans win this election, these Old Guard isolationist leaders will hold the key positions in Congress.

A vote for the Republicans is a vote for a Taft-controlled Congress. That would mean such a hacking and chopping at our own defenses and the defenses of the free world as we have never seen before. Our country would be weakened. Communism would feed and grow fat on what the isolationists would whack out of our budget.

We would have the ultimate irony of a general who stood for the defense of the free world, when he was in uniform, presiding over the liquidation of our foreign policy. That's awful!

Indeed, his campaign tactics have already begun to undermine our unity in the struggle against communism, even before the election.

Knowing very well that the Communist aggression was an unprovoked and deliberate crime, he has nevertheless tried to create the impression that it was somehow the fault of the American Government.

Knowing very well that success in this struggle in Korea is essential to the whole effort of the free world against communism, he has talked about it as if it were a distant conflict which was no real concern of ours.

Knowing that we cannot withdraw our troops without the collapse of the front and giving up all we have fought for, he raises false hopes that he can bring our soldiers home promptly, and without appeasement.

Knowing very well that tremendous strides have been made in creating a tough South Korean army of 400,000 men, yet he suggests that his old friends and colleagues in the armed services have been delinquent in this task, and careless of the lives of American soldiers.

I am happy to report to you tonight that this loose and pernicious talk has not weakened the morale of our soldiers in Korea one bit. They know what this fight is about, even if the Republican candidate doesn't. They know how important it is to see it through to a victorious solution.

One of our great newspapers--which is supporting the General in this campaign, recently asked our soldiers in Korea what they thought of his plan for their withdrawal. Did they think that they should be held in reserve while the newly trained Koreans did all the fighting? They did not. They express admiration for their Korean allies, but they know the Koreans cannot yet hold the line alone.

Listen to what Sergeant first Class James Shatto of Purdin, Mississippi, said about that, and I quote the Sergeant: "We can't get out now--it wouldn't work. It cost us thousands of casualties to take Old Baldy. Damned if we want to see them get it back for nothing." There speaks a fighting soldier.

And Corporal Harvey D. Jones, of Crumpier, West Virginia, said this is a United Nations war, and that the United States is obligated to share in the fighting and not remain in the rear and let others do the dirty job.

Our younger officers over there, when they were interviewed, had one short word to describe the Republican candidate's proposal. That word was "Politics."

There you have the voice of our brave young men, who know they are fighting not only in the cause of their country, but in the cause of mankind as a whole. There you have the spirit that makes a real living thing out of the United Nations, and spells the inevitable downfall of communism.

We should listen to these voices tonight. There is in them the wisdom of courage, and the hope of a new day for the world.

These men, these young officers, these sergeants and corporals and privates, know why they are fighting in Korea. They know what the stakes are there, even if our Republican candidates do not.

My friends, I tell you that the conduct of the Republican candidate for President in this campaign has been a sore disappointment to me. I knew him; I trusted him. At one time, I thought he was qualified to be President. I thought I knew what he stood for. But since he has gone into politics, he does not seem to be the same man. I am saddened very much by this. I never thought I would have to defend the foreign policy of this country, and the morale of our armed services, against the attacks of this man. Former commander in chief of the Allied forces in World War II, former Chief of Staff--I appointed him. Former commander and organizer of the free world's forces against Communist aggression--and I appointed him to that, too.

Now, as he campaigns in New York, the General says he has not changed. But if he hasn't changed, he displays a side of his character I didn't know existed.

I cannot but conclude that it would be disastrous for us to elect as President a man who shows so great a willingness to do the purely expedient thing, in matters that vitally concern our national survival. We cannot expect him, now, to control and reshape his party to serve our national welfare. He has surrendered his moral authority over that party.

Fortunately, my friends, we do not have to elect him.

We can elect the Democratic candidate for President--Adlai Stevenson of Illinois.

Governor Stevenson has a real understanding of what has made this country great, and he has the qualities of leadership that will mean to us an even greater future.

He has really shown his courage and dedication to duty by leaving his campaign in its closing phase and going back to straighten out a serious and dangerous prison revolt in his own State. He went back. He killed the revolt, without the loss of a life. It was a courageous thing to do. If he had failed, you would have read a lot about it in the hostile press, you can be sure of that. It was the sort of forthright, honest action that you can expect from Adlai Stevenson when he becomes President of the United States.

I know that you, as voters, want to. defeat communism and prevent another world war. You want to continue the domestic policies that will assure prosperity. You want methods of conduct in public life that will preserve and develop the ideals of democracy and civil liberty. For all these reasons, we must elect Adlai Stevenson President of the United States November the 4th.