Remarks in Kansas City at a Luncheon for the Press.

IT HAS BEEN a pleasure, of course, to be able to be with you at this luncheon. I have never before been able to attend, because of the business I always have when I am here. Everybody in Jackson County and Missouri and Kansas and adjoining States--Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Iowa--feels that because it is a good railroad center and an easy place to get to, and also an air center, that it is a good time to see the President when he is available. So usually I see anywhere from 200 to 400 "customers" when I am here, and it is impossible for me to have any pleasure along the lines that we are having today.

I am very much interested in your business, and what you have to do. I know that all of you are as conscientiously interested in the welfare of the country as I am. We are in the midst of a situation that is unprecedented. Not in the history of the world has there been a time when two great powers have faced each other under the circumstances with which we face the Communists.

The only way that that situation can be worked out for the welfare of the world is for those people who believe in ethics, morals, and right to associate themselves together to meet the menace of those who do not believe in ethics, morals, and right, who have no idea of honor or truth.

We should be very careful that the attitude of that lack of honor and truth does not become a part of our own political system. It is a very dangerous thing.

Our growth and our laws are founded on those originating with Hammurabi in the Mesopotamian Valley, propounded by Moses, and elaborated on by Jesus Christ, whose Sermon on the Mount is the best ethical program by which to live.

Now the people we are in controversy with do not believe in any of those things. They are inheritors of the program of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, who were the greatest murderers in the history of the world.

I hope that you gentlemen--who represent some of the greatest means of information-will ponder these things and begin to under stand that the political situation in our country is a secondary matter.

It is a world situation. I have been trying to mobilize the moral forces of the world-Catholics, Protestants, Jews, the Eastern Church, the Grand Lama of Tibet, the Indian Sanskrit moral code--I have been trying to organize all those people to the understanding that their welfare and the existence of decency and honor in the world depends on our working together, and not trying to cut each other's throats.

We are making some progress. That is the reason I was able to say last night that this country is not in the confused and dangerous situation that a lot of people think it is. The American people understand what we are doing.

Just today I got a promise that everybody in the little town of Jackson, Mich., would stand by what we are trying to do--it was signed by 2,800 people in that town. And the Governor of Kansas last night spoke for the American people when he said what he did. And you will find, in the long run, that this crisis will be met just as we have met every crisis in the history of this great country.

I wish you would read more history. I wish all of you would understand that the existence in this world of crisis after crisis was met in the right way. The new one is the one you have to face, not the old one. I am more than happy to be here. I appreciate all the kind things that have been said about me, and to me--most of which I don't deserve. But it is a pleasure to come home. As I said last night at my little lodge, that is one place I can be farmer Truman, just as I was in the best 10 years of my life on the farm out here in Grandview.

In Independence I have some associates where I can be just as I was when my greatest job was running Jackson County, trying to leave it in better condition than I found it when I went there.

I am hoping I can do the same thing for the Presidency of the United States. I don't know whether I can or not. I can't, if you don't help me, and cooperate with me.