Message Supporting the Annual Membership Drive of the American National Red Cross.

BY EVERY MEANS that is available to the Chief Executive, I have for the past 3 years summoned every private and public agency to cooperate in making certain that no man, woman, or child of all our people should go hungry or cold through any lack of forehanded provision. The response of these agencies has been wholehearted and unanimous. Their support has come directly from the people, and in this the people have given a magnificent evidence of their warmth of human sympathy and their generosity toward their neighbors in distress. That has been one of the most heartening evidences of the soundness of our democracy.

In this situation the Red Cross has occupied a special and unique position. The Red Cross cannot properly be described as a private institution for it is legally a semiofficial organization and sentimentally it is the people's very own.

A thousand remembered associations of its magnificent human response to the cry of distress in emergency clusters around the name Red Cross. By natural growth it has become our great nationwide peacetime agency for meeting emergencies and distress. The people support it because their hearts and their purses created it.

In these past 3 years the Red Cross has responded to the needs throughout the Nation, and it has been nobly supported by the whole American people.

For these reasons, and speaking as President of the United States, I confidently appeal once more to the American people for unanimous and generous support to the American Red Cross enrollment campaign which begins tonight. The need exists and the heart of America will respond in generous measure.