Remarks at Fifth Annual Republican Women's National Conference.

OF COURSE it is a very great privilege for me to come and meet with you once again this morning.

Some of you reminded me this is your fifth meeting. I have been privileged to attend them all. I like to feel that I am coming, as Bertha Adkins expressed it, to discuss family problems with a family that has a reason for existence only as it can serve this nation better.

We look to the future, because whatever is past is past. I believe the song says "Que Sera Sera." But as we look at that future, I think you have heard enough of budgets--of the exact reason why money must be spent, why the cost is so high, why the cost of a tank is so high or any other article purchased by the government.

As a matter of fact, you remember these things in your own budgets. I have been talking recently to several heads of great American corporations. Each one tells me that his 1957 budget is ahead--is increased over its 1956 budget--and 1958 over 1957. They have said to me-and with some surprise--that we are a growing company.

And I said, "What do you think America is?"

"Oh, you are right."

"Well," I said, "how much did your budget go?"

They gave me an average running from six to ten percent. I said: "Ours are up three and a half percent."

They said: "Why aren't you bragging about it?"

Well now, actually, we are not bragging about it. But what we are saying, ladies, is that there are certain things in this world that we procure by sacrifice. Those are the things that are most important to us. We sacrifice for our children. We sacrifice for the future of America. We sacrifice for peace, so that we won't have to sacrifice our sons.

What we should demand from government and from everybody in a place of authority, is that those sacrifices are so organized, so watched, so carefully implemented, that we do not uselessly squander our substance for any reason. We must identify the things we must have, whether it is in the matter of foreign affairs to make certain there will be no war--whether it's a matter of services we need at home in order that all of us may prosper better.

Whatever it is, let us decide what we need and cheerfully make the sacrifices to get it, but make certain, at the same time, that there is no looseness, no squandering, no racketeering, no lining of pockets while this goes on.

For my part, I hope that every agency of government--'indeed every private citizen and every organization such as this--will watch the people in power. People are human. They make errors. We read about them every day in the papers--in investigations. Human weakness has brought about situations that probably could have been discovered earlier if we were all as watchful as we should be.

I welcome it. I hope you will continue it with jaundiced eyes.

Now of course I always have a peculiar satisfaction in addressing women. This is not only because there are more women than men and therefore more voters, but because I always insisted that I believe women bring to politics the enthusiasm and the idealism which men often forget. I think perhaps it is their concern for their children, the raising of good children in a proper atmosphere, the thinking of the good life ahead for them. Women comprehend spiritual, intellectual and material development. That is the reason they bring idealism--and I may say, this country needs it.

For this reason this government, this administration, has tried hard to bring women--more and more women--into government, into positions of governmental responsibilities.

This morning I am happy to announce a change of one in our own family. I have raided the organization that Meade Alcorn and Bertha Adkins head. Ann Wheaton is coming over--this is another first in the White House--to be in the Press Office as Jim Hagerty's associate.

Because of this faith in women and in their beliefs, I am confident that you are going to do your part to help build a just and lasting peace, to help America create and maintain a healthy economy with prosperity widely shared and to help make America a better, finer place for our children and children's children to live.

Belief in those three simple facts are, I think, the reason you are here and why you are doing such fine work.

Now ladies, I could go over the record of this Administration for the past four years in a great many things. Some of them you know. Some you may have forgotten.

Take the cutting of the budget. We cut it down by ten billion dollars and put back in the hands of the people seven billion dollars in tax cut money.

There is accomplishment after accomplishment.

I say again, we are not concerned with the past except as it is a guide for the future. We are not concerned in finding fault with anybody of any party in the past for what they did. We turn our faces to the front. We nail the flag to the mast for a safer and more secure and more peaceful world than ever. And we stick with it. We take all other objectives and throw them aside.

This does not mean that each of us must discard his own responsibilities to his family, to his community. Of course he must not. But the point is that if we have one over-riding objective, then all other things are accomplished in such a manner that they make the accomplishment of our great objective easier-more sure.

I believe that under God, this country can continue to lead the way to peace in the world and a more prosperous, ever-growing, ever-developing America--developing intellectually, spiritually, and materially.