Remarks Recorded for Broadcast on the Occasion of the Opening of the Red Cross Campaign.

My fellow Americans:

I want to tell you something about what the American Red Cross has been doing this past year.

The Red Cross is your organization. It is relieving human distress and suffering at home and throughout the world. It is doing these things in your name, as you would want to do them yourselves, if you could.

First and foremost, in the last year the Red Cross has been helping the men and women of our armed services, at home and overseas, and especially in Korea. It has provided the wounded with life-giving blood, and aided the troubled and distressed to solve their problems. Through the Red Cross you have been standing at the side of our service men and women, giving them comfort and hope wherever they may be.

In this last year the men and women of our country have given over a million pints of blood through the Red Cross. That blood has saved thousands of lives, on the battlefield and in civilian life at home. That is something to be proud of. Every single one of you who gave some of that blood has helped to save a human life. I hope you will do even better this present year, because it has been proved time and time again that blood transfusions will save human lives when nothing else can.

The Red Cross has also been busy this past year in bringing relief to the victims of floods and disasters.

Last summer I flew over the devastated areas of Kansas and Missouri when the floodwaters were at their height. Homes, factories, even the fields themselves were destroyed. In that great flood, over 24,000 families in distress were given help by the Red Cross, at a cost of nearly $14,000,000. Your contributions made this possible.

Recently I flew over the floods in the Ohio River Valley, in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky. The flood damage was considerable, but thanks to our flood control system in that area, it was nothing like what it might have been. There, along the Ohio, as in Kansas and Missouri, the Red Cross has been on the spot, helping people. Red Cross workers helped to evacuate over 1,500 families as the waters rose, and set up many Red Cross centers to care for the homeless and the hungry.

The Red Cross was there, as your representative, helping people in trouble just as you would want to do if you had been there yourself.

The heroic work of the Red Cross in time of disaster, its day-to-day service in saving lives, and its constant help to the men and women in our Armed forces--these are the things that have made the Red Cross a living expression of our great tradition of neighbor-helping-neighbor in time of trouble.

The Red Cross asks only for the resources to serve you and your neighbors. It is a great fellowship of the men and women and boys and girls of our land, voluntarily banded together to give friendly help to others in time of need.

This is the cause of true brotherhood, and it deserves the participation and support of everyone.

As the Red Cross volunteers begin the 1952 fund appeal, I urge you, my fellow citizens, to answer this compelling call of humanity.