Remarks to Delegates to the Sixth Annual American Legion "Boys Nation."

I UNDERSTAND that you have had a very satisfactory meeting here. The Senator from Wyoming was telling me about the time you gave him with your questions, and one thing and another, and of your interest in government. He also told me that you voted statehood for Alaska and Hawaii, and that pleased me immensely.

I hope that you do have some educational interest in your Government. I think you have, or you wouldn't be here, because the time is going to come when responsibility for the operation of your Government--national, State and local--will be in your hands.

It is to your interest to know something about the basis on which our system is founded--the greatest in the history of the world, I think--the most satisfactory government in the history of the world. It is rather cumbersome and unwieldy, on account of the fact that its functions are separate. We have the executive, who carries out and enforces the laws. We have a court that sits as an arbiter between litigants. And we have a legislative branch of the government that is supposed to--and does--make the laws under which we live. And that is all founded, as you all know, on the Constitution of the United States, the greatest document of government, I think, that has ever been written in the history of the world.

It gives me a lot of pleasure to receive you young men here this morning, and I hope you will go home with a better idea of how your Government functions, and what it really means to you as an individual.

Government is an intangible thing. Government is what you make it. Government is what the people themselves want, under our system, because they have the right to elect officials, and if officials don't behave in a local community, they have the right to recall them. They don't have any right to recall the President, but they do in some States have the right to recall their public officials.

I appreciate your being here, and hope you have enjoyed yourselves, and I hope you will go home and tell the rest of the young people in your community just what you have learned.