Remarks at the National Editorial Association Dinner

President McIntosh, members of this distinguished audience:

Under the impact of the words of the tribute just paid me by this organization, through your President, I know that you will not expect me to be especially eloquent. I think, when the heart is full, the tongue grows clumsy. But I think that possibly you would allow me to talk to you this evening about a few of the things that are very close to my heart, as I try in my own stumbling way to carry out in some faint degree my duties in the style that President McIntosh's great tribute would suppose that I am doing.

Now, first of all, there is no need to sell me the small town of America. I think for any American who had the great and priceless privilege of being raised in a small town, there remain always with him nostalgic memories of those days. And the older he grows the more he senses what he owed to the simple honesty, the neighborliness, the integrity that he saw all around him, in those days, and took for granted, and that he learns to appreciate only as he grows older and dwells more in other places of the earth.

There is no need to sell me the small town paper. I hope there are those among you who are acquainted with and respect the Abilene, Kansas, Daily Reflector and Chronicle, as much as I do. Certainly, there is no other paper in the world that I read for so many years at a stretch as I did that one.

I was particularly interested in what Mr. Keller said, to the effect that a half-truth cannot make you half-free. In various places in his talk to us, he hinted at a very obvious fact--that truth comprises more than knowledge; there must be some understanding. And this understanding--in the hurly-burly of our world, the complexities, the intricate interdependencies that exist in the world--economic, political, and social interdependencies--to get real understanding is difficult, even among the people that we know to be, in relative terms, at least, enlightened.

If you will bear with me, I would like to talk for a few moments about four types of truths, or facts, that are brought to my attention constantly, each of which has its own elements of truth, but each of which, taken by itself, does not represent in any degree the advancement of the welfare of the United States of America.

The first obvious fact is this, repeated to me in many ways, through correspondence and other types of communication: the United States cannot be an Atlas, it cannot by its financial sacrifices carry all other nations of the world on its own shoulders, and we should stop giveaway programs. Now, this is very true. You could not keep any other country in the world free merely by money. You can't buy or import a heart, or a soul, or a determination to remain free. Consequently, the statement that American so-called giveaway programs are not going to keep the world free, is absolutely true.

Next, I am told: why do you allow nations with whom we are allied to trade with the Reds? And they go on, and they make quite a story about its wickedness. It is, of course, true that when others are trying to destroy us, we should by no means provide them with the ammunition, the guns, the planes, or the direct means of making things with which to destroy us. And we should not allow or we should certainly not agree to our allies doing so.

Another thing that we hear: do not let us get involved in southeast Asia. Let not the United States be in the place of defending the whole world in its freedom, when it really doesn't want freedom. Now, my friends, it is, of course, perfectly true that, again, the United States cannot be strong enough to go to every spot in the world, where our enemies may use force or the threat of force, and defend those nations. Again, unless there is a great determination in those places to remain free, they will in one form or another fall prey to some kind of authority other than the rule of their own people.

Again, I am told this, and this is the fourth factor: let us not trade with countries whose labor and living standards are so far below ours that it hurts some of the industries here at home. Let us not try to expand trade, let us rather raise our barriers and protect our people, whether they be in the mines, or in the shops, or working in any kind of industry, or in agriculture--wherever they may be. And again reason; commonsense shows that we must not merely open the gates and let these floods of supplies come in that would reduce our country to a workless, food-line basis of existence.

Well now, my friends, I want to take a situation in the world that focuses all of these considerations and these facts upon one particular problem that we have to solve. Over in the western Pacific, the key to its defense is Japan. Japan comprises 85 million people--industrious, hardworking, inventive. Actually, the power that they developed against us in World War II was such as to be frightening when we saw what they could do alone. Consequently, it becomes absolutely mandatory to us, and to our safety, that the Japanese nation does not fall under the domination of the Iron Curtain countries, or specifically the Kremlin. If the Kremlin controls them, all of that great war-making capacity would be turned against the free world. All of the soldiers, all of the armies, all of the air force, they could use. Japan would be given the task of producing all the great navies that they need. And the Pacific would become a Communist lake.

Now, my friends, what is Japan? Eighty-five million people, living on an area no larger than California. Now we of course admit that California is a very wonderful and prosperous place, but as yet there are not 85 million people there. And even if there were, they would have access to all the markets of the United States on a free basis.

Japan cannot live, and Japan cannot remain in the free world unless something is done to allow her to make a living.

Now, if we will not give her any money, if we will not trade with her, if we will not allow her to trade with the Reds, if we will not try to defend in any way the southeast Asian area where she has a partial trade opportunity, what is to happen to Japan?

It is going to the Communists.

Now, no one of these programs pursued alone could possibly help Japan; and any one of them pursued to an extreme would ruin us.

What we must do, what the statesman must do, what the Congressman must do, is find the answer to this: how do we put all four of these tough problems--these tough facts--together, and get the truth that you people must give to 160 million people.

This business of distributing the truth, I beg to say, is far more than printing a newspaper. It is getting the facts, and with such wisdom as God gave us, with such dedication to our country as we hope we have inherited from our forefathers to try to sum up; to try to work out in our time programs and policies that will further the kind of United States that Mr. Keller so eloquently described as having brought so much happiness to so many people.

We learn, then, that freedom, and the defense of freedom, is a collective job. I took only one example, to show you how these conflicting facts, and they are facts, come together. And now wisdom and understanding is demanded, in order that we may get a solution that will serve the United States.

Some weeks ago, I made a vow before a press conference--by the way, I think my dedication to a free press is possibly proven every Wednesday morning--I made a statement at one of these press conferences that hereafter I would never allow myself to appear in public, or in private, and in speaking of a public question, omit or ignore the opportunity to talk about the programs of legislation before our Congress today.

Now, I am not going to take this program, this evening, and outline it again in the pattern of a State of the Union speech to the Congress-not at all. I do want to point out that the job of keeping our freedoms, including our free press, means an America that is free, if not of anxiety, certainly free of hysterical fear from any threat abroad; which has at home a group of dedicated people, alert to dangers from within as well as from without, determined to do everything possible to see that, as we advance through the social developments of our time, people are served by their country--but in such a way as to preserve always the essentials of the individual freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution, and especially its first ten amendments.

The entire program that has been laid before the Congress has, in some form or another, these purposes in view.

Government, in the attempt to serve all the people, is apt to grow sprawling. As a matter of fact, Mr. Keller in certain instances expressed very emphatically, and rather, let us say, sarcastically at times, some examples of how Government is getting into places where it has no business to be--and I agree with him.

Moreover, I think I can say this: where Government must take over the job of regulating or interfering, or being part of our daily lives, we should so far as possible make that governmental function a local one-at city or township or county and State level, and keep it out of Washington.

One thing that always strikes me is this: Washington can print money to pay for its mistakes, and other governments can't.

So we don't want to blot out efficiency. We want to keep the Government out of too much of your affairs. But on the other hand, we cannot have a Government serving 160 million people in this modern, complex difficult time in which we live, if we just revert to, in the words of the old economic textbook, laissez faire--just let things slide. That can't be done. We can keep Government close to people and try to steer that line that does not ignore the rights of people to good health, to education--everything else.

Remember, I am not saying that the Federal Government does this itself. But we cannot ignore it. On the other hand, let us not tell every farmer what he may raise, and indeed let us not try to tell each newspaper what it may print.

And so before the Congress we place agricultural bills designed to protect all farmers against disasters that they could not have foreseen, and against which they could not protect themselves, designed to help move food into consumption instead of into storage bins, into surpluses.

We have devised tax programs to distribute the load equitably and leave to each person as much money as we possibly can so that he may spend it for himself rather than depend on the wisdom of some bureaucrat in Washington. We devise every kind of program affecting health, insurance plans, old age protection, unemployment protection so that people do things for themselves, knowing that a great Government is back of them to protect them only and especially when misfortune, which they could not avoid, overtakes them.

So we steer a line between laissez faire, which would just let these people look out for themselves, all of them, when they are in our economy incapable often of doing so, and on the other hand the rigid control that is a form of statism.

Now, in very simple words, ladies and gentlemen, that is the program that is before Congress. It runs into many forms. It provides additional laws, for example, by which we may honestly and with absolute respect for every American tenet of law, protect ourselves against any Communist infiltration or subversion.

It does not violate the rights of any person. But it does make certain that we have the weapons to combat those who would destroy us. This is the kind of thing of which we are talking.

And so I come back to this: the responsibility of the newspapers, and I mean the small, local newspapers, which provide so much of the reading opportunity for so many millions of our people in the small towns and rural areas of America. I know, because as I said before, I have read them.

I believe that as you understand and tell the truth, the whole truth, including the relationship of one fact to another, I believe we will protect and perpetuate our freedoms and our national security.

I believe as you fail in that, to that extent America and her freedoms are in danger.

I do not believe you will fail.

I have at times, at least in private, talked about some of the frustrating experiences that are encountered in the office that I am now honored to hold. But there are very inspiring experiences, and one of those is the frequency with which a President of the United States, calling upon any other citizen for assistance or help, gets the most inspiring and favorable response you could imagine--men, women, who say, "Well this is a great sacrifice, but if you tell me it is my duty, here we go."

Now, I would like to say to the editor of every single newspaper in the United States, you also have a duty: to find the truth and project it fearlessly, honestly, and to the utmost ability that your heart and head will allow, to every person that you can reach.

For the very great honor you have done me in this plaque, which I will keep so proudly, for the very warm welcome you have accorded me, I thank you all very much indeed.

Good night.