Remarks to a Group of Methodist Ministers from Illinois.

IT IS a pleasure to welcome you here on the White House lawn today. I hope the next time you come the building will be all finished so that you can take a look at the inside of it. They have been working on it for about 3 1/2 years now, and it is nearing completion. It will not fall down this time, when it is finished.

It is a great pleasure to me to meet you gentlemen, as I have done on nearly every occasion when you have been here, because with all that public which you meet, whose morals and welfare you are interested in improving, it is the thing that makes the country great. There is no other country in the world, with the possible exception of Great Britain, Canada, and Australia, that has the religious privileges that we have here in this country. We have the right to think and act and believe as we please, and the voluntary contribution which you make to the moral uplift of the country is what really makes this the greatest republic in the history of the world. And it is the greatest republic in the history of the world.

Our effort, and the things that we are striving for, is peace, and the welfare of every country as well as our own in the world. We have no ambitions for territory. We have no colonial ambitions. All we want to see is to see the world a peaceful place in which to live, and then to help people help themselves.

That is what your missionaries have been doing ever since missionaries have been in existence, trying to help people to help themselves.

Well now, that is what the ambition of the Government of the United States is, to help people help themselves. And in that way we help ourselves, because when they are improved in their living standards, when they are improved in their moral tone, and when they are improved in their religious life, it can't do anything but be helpful to this great Republic of ours.

Now, that is the ambition that we have in view, striving always for nothing but peace in the world. And with your help, and your prayers, we can get it.

Thank you very much.