Remarks to Members of the National Advisory Committee on the Selection of Physicians, Dentists, and Allied Specialists.

Dr. Rusk, ladies and gentlemen:

I appreciate that introduction, and I hope I can deserve it.

I am vitally interested in what you are trying to do. I have always been interested in physical and mental health. I think it is vitally important that any man in public life or in private life should be physically fit. If he is physically fit he is much more likely to be mentally fit.

I have always thought it was a terrible reflection on the richest and greatest republic that the sun has ever shone upon, that 34 percent of its young men were found unfit for military service in World War II. I have always hoped that we could overcome that shortcoming. I believe we can. I don't think there is any reason why we cannot do it. What you gentlemen have been doing for the military services I think can be done for the civil population, too.

I am not only interested in physical health, I believe there is as much in preventing things from happening to your body as there is in curing it after it happens. I have spent a lot of time in an attempt to stop accidental killings in this country, in industry and on the road. I think we demonstrated over a 4-year period that the efforts we put forth have saved in the neighborhood of 10,000 to 12,000 lives a year, and immense numbers of people who would otherwise have been crippled.

I hope that you will continue your efforts for a health program for this great Nation of ours that will be practical and that will work.

Right now we are short--very short--of doctors and nurses, both in the armed services and in the country at large. I am urging the Congress to take some notice of that situation and try to help us produce more doctors and nurses in the immediate future, for the welfare of this Nation as a whole.

I hope you will continue your good work. I hope that the results of your meeting are concrete--and Dr. Rusk tells me they are-and that when we finally wind up we will not only be the greatest nation in the world but the healthiest nation in the world.

Thank you very much.