Remarks in the Enlisted Men's Mess Hall, Aberdeen, Md., Proving Ground.

THANK YOU very much. I can't tell you how very much I appreciate the privilege of another visit to Aberdeen Proving Ground. This is my third visit. The last one, I think, was somewhere in the neighborhood of 1943, when I was here with a number of Senators and Congressmen to witness the same sort of demonstration with the new weapons at that time that we have been witnessing today.

I want to compliment the Commanding General of this post on the presentation which he made to us this morning on the technical side. I am very sure that we have a number of newspapermen with us today who had a liberal education on projectory, and the gun at one end and the target at the other. And I am sure that most of them have learned all about mathematics, when we saw that wonderful machine that agrees with Einstein--somebody told me that it would arrive at the same result in a very short time that Einstein would in a lifetime. That is one of the great things that came out of the war.

I was visiting Detroit one time, and interviewing Henry Ford on the war effort at that time. This was back in late 1942 or early 1943, when we were trying to get tractors and ordnance, and the automobile companies were transferring their production lines from automobiles to wartime implements.

Knowing that Henry Ford was a pacifist, I asked him what he thought about the conditions with which we were faced. He said that he thought we had to meet the conditions, but he was very certain that things would come out of the tremendous effort which ourselves and our allies had put forth that would be of great benefit to civilization. And that has been absolutely true.

One of the things that has come out of that effort, in this country particularly, has been peace terms between the Army, Navy, and Air Force. If nothing else had been accomplished in that war but that, it would have been one of the worthwhile products of that terrible struggle.

I notice here that unification works completely. I was told that the Army, Navy, and Air Force were cooperating in the experiments which are going on at this station. Talking about the Air Force, I served myself in the Army cafeteria back here, in the style I was accustomed to in 1917 and 1918.

It has been a very satisfactory visit to me, and I hope it has been an education to all those who came along with me. I hope it will be my privilege at some later date to visit installations of a similar nature which have to do with naval experiments and air experiments as specialties. I am very much interested in field artillery and small weapons. And for your information, I was at Fort Sill in 1917 and 1918, and in 6 months they gave me a university education on ballistics and projectories. So to some extent-I say, to some extent--I could understand what those highly educated gentlemen were talking about this morning when they gave us those lectures.

I hope you will all go home with a feeling that we are putting forth all these efforts for peace, and not with any idea of destroying any other nation or any other government.

I have just had the privilege of meeting five Korean veterans, who are here in front of me. All of them have spent various lengths of time in Korea, all of them have been hurt, all of them have recovered, and all of them are making good soldiers here on this post. That is something to be proud of.

I was just saying to the Commanding General of this post that there is nothing that appeals to me more than a man in uniform who is proud of that uniform and who wears it as if he is proud of it.

And there is nothing in the world more disgusting to me than to see a slouchy man in uniform. That is the only thing I ever fuss about in Washington--and I don't have to do that very often, I am happy to say.

You men here, at least today--in this weather, no matter how bad it is--are wearing your uniforms as if you were proud of them, and that makes me proud to be your Commander in Chief.