Remarks to Employees at the Department of the Interior.

Mr. Secretary, and ladies and gentlemen:

I want to emphasize what the Secretary has said--the fact that this is the last department I have visited does not indicate that it is the last in terms of the importance of your assignment and of my respect for you, those of you who have given so much of your lives to this Department.

I speak with particular feeling about this Department because I, of course, come from the West and although I have lived in most parts of the Nation--and not as much as I would have liked in the West, having come from the West, having known it as a Congressman and as a Senator and also as Vice President, having often spoken of the Western part of the country, its interests which are in many respects the responsibility of this Department--I have an especially close relationship with you.

I was interested to note, as I met some of the people before and as I hope to meet some of you later, that many I had known many years ago in that period when I had the opportunity to work with members of the Interior Department.

As I complete this round of visits to the departments, I want to do here what I have done at every one of the visits: I want to say first a word about your Secretary.

I say this not simply because he had nice things to say about me--after all, he has no choice. The Senate has to give its consent, but I do the picking.

So I do want to say, however, that in speaking of Secretary Hickel and of telling you why I selected him for this post, that his performance since that selection has borne out, I believe, my decision and the reasons for it.

I knew and you know that filling the post of Secretary of the Interior is not easy. It is not easy in any department, but perhaps in this one, as much as in any and in more than most, it is necessary to take positions at times that will not be agreed with by many very honest people who have reached a different conclusion because they start with different attitudes toward the problem.

I could go down the list of issues in which people are divided as far as the Department of the Interior is concerned.

I know, for example, going back to the time when I was a California Congressman and then a California Senator, how the States of California and Arizona had arguments about water. They are still having arguments about water. And how also with regard to the development of our resources, our oil resources, water resources, and others, that men and women very honestly taking a point of view were in sharp disagreement. Somebody had to make the decision.

So when I picked the Secretary of the Interior, I knew that I would have to find a man, first, who had courage; second, who was an honest man; and, third, a man--and this was one of the things that attracted me to the new Secretary--who had a real love for the land in the deepest sense of the word.

I think Secretary Hickel has demonstrated under fire that he has courage, that he is an honest man, and I know that he loves the land, this whole land, and loves it much.

I got that impression not simply from seeing him here in Washington as you have, but seeing him in his home State of Alaska and to hear him talk, as he does, about that State and of its resources and of all the possibilities of its development in the future, not just its development for industrial purposes, but its development in the sense of the environment, the beauty of the land, the opportunity for people to come there and live there and enjoy it. I knew from that that he was a man who would understand all of these varying interests that must be reconciled within this Department.

S% under his leadership, I am sure we are going to have a great era of progress and a great era of responsibility as far as the Interior Department is concerned.

Now, a second point I want to make has to do with your responsibility. And it allows me to impose upon you one of my favorite quotations and one that I often rise.

Edmund Burke, a great Irish-English philosopher, often used to say that when we speak of patriotism we must look to its root phrases which develop the word. And literally patriotism, when you translate it, means love of country. Then he went on to say that if we are to love our country, our country must be lovely.

I don't think there is any better way to describe the mission of this Department. We all, I know, have a deep feeling of patriotism for this Nation. We all have a deep feeling and sense of history about this Nation, and that feeling of patriotism comes from that.

But if we are to command from the younger generation coming along, and from people generally, that deep feeling of pride and patriotism which we all want, we have to do everything that we can to make our country lovely so that people will love this country and love it very deeply.

They will love this country even when it has some unlovely characteristics. There is no question about that. But how much we can do, how much you can do, as we look to the future 10 years, 90 years, down to the end of this century, how much we can do to see that the America that is built will be a new America, a new America in terms not only of the tremendous concentration of population in our cities-and I have spoken to that point in visits to various departments--how we must plan now for transportation and housing and all of the other areas which will determine the character of our cities in the future, which will be one and a half times as big as they are 15 years from now, but we must also think of the character of that great part of America that is called rural America, the part that you mainly deal with, our water, our land, our resources, everything that really makes America a lovely country, one that gives you a feeling as you move out through the western part of this Nation and up to Alaska and out to Hawaii, a feeling of patriotism, of love of country that goes beyond simply seeing the flag, that goes beyond simply reading our history, that recognizes that we are fortunate to live in a country that was so richly blessed as this country has been blessed with natural resources.

Having said all of that, I realize that I have not decided any of those tough problems you have to work with: making the decisions between whether you develop resources or conserve them.

And I know that sometimes we can talk about conservation and development going along together.

These are decisions that you will have to make, decisions that the Secretary will have to make, decisions on which he will have to advise me.

But in the final analysis, I know that we are all working toward the same goal: to see to it that this great and rich land, more richly blessed when we look at it in terms of our natural resources than any land on earth--and we are fortunate to have it that way--but that this great and rich land will develop in the years ahead, will develop the resources that will enable us to be the best fed and the best clothed and the best housed people in the world, but that will also retain for the generations to come those great areas of beauty and also an environment, clean air, pure water, which will be one that our children will want to live in.

And I can think of no more exciting responsibility than that. So much of that action is right here. We often hear that the action is in the cities and there is a lot of action there; and some would say today that the action is in the universities, and certainly there is a lot of action there.

But there is a lot of action, too, in this Department. I don't need to tell you from what your Secretary went through in his confirmation and also the various decisions that you will be making.

I simply want you to know that knowing what your responsibilities are, knowing what effect your decisions are going to have on the face of America in the years ahead, I don't know of any department that will have more of an effect on what kind of country we are going to have than the Department of Interior.

I wish you well. And in wishing you well, I want to add one further point. I not only wish well those that I have brought to Washington as members of the new administration team, but also those who serve in the career service, on civil service, those who are here through administrations, those who sometimes are taken for granted, and those without whose support we will be unable to carry out the mission that we have.

I have respect for those who have dedicated their lives to public service. I have spent most of my life actually, my adult life, working in one capacity or another in a public service capacity.

But in speaking of those who are here in the career service, I want you to know that your Secretary, all of those who have been appointed by the new administration depend upon you, and we will appreciate your support and in turn you will have our support, our support for a strong career service which must go on and give continuity to this Government in the years ahead.

Would you pass that message on right down the line? As I came down the halls here, it was very touching to see people gathered in some of the halls and the secretaries and stenographers and others put their hands out. They wanted to shake hands and say hello and the rest.

I thought of how, perhaps for some of them, their jobs must be very routine and sometimes very baring--you know, getting out that last draft of a statement or going through the boring form mail that you have to get out, and all the other things. And if you would just let them know that we in this administration appreciate every person who works in it, because it takes not only the top people that are in this room. You know better than I that we need the cooperation and the support of all of those down 'the ranks who can, by the quality of their job, make ours that much better.

So with that, I wish you, Mr. Secretary, the very best. You have spoken about whether you are going to be last or first and I can say the spirit that you have will never be last, and it could well be first.

Thank you.