Remarks to the Officers and Members of the Board of Trustees, American Dental Association.

I AM PLEASED to have you here. I have had quite a long and painful experience with your profession--and it has been very helpful. I still have, I guess, more teeth than most any other 67-year-old man, thanks to the treatment that I have received from good dentists.

I will never forget the first experience I had with a grand old man in Independence, Mo. His name was Gaines, and he had a curly goatee of the southern Confederacy. And while he worked on me, he explained various mementoes that he had, showing me a tooth about that long, a cow's tooth, which he explained to me he had taken out of a man's jaw one time, and it was very painful for him but he didn't think he was going to have to take any of mine out--which he didn't.

But I hope that you are as interested as I am in the general health of the United States of America. I was startled when I read the figures on the rejections for draftees in the Second World War. They ran over 34 percent for various reasons, mental and physical.

Since that time I have been trying to do something about it. I have had all sorts of accusations made against me, about my intending to turn the country into a socialistic state, and all that sort of business. But all I am trying to do is to try to get the proper medical and dental care for people in a manner so they can pay for it.

And if you will study the various statements and messages that have been made on the subject, you will find that there never has been a program more widely and completely misrepresented.

I wish you gentlemen would do that just for me: Find out for yourselves just what the facts and the truth are, and I don't think you will disagree with me in the objective that I have in view. Because a nation that is in the position that ours is in, ought not to be disgraced by having more than one-third of its young men unfit for service for one reason or another.

And we have made, I think, the greatest strides in the history of the world in the medical profession, all the way down the line, and I would like for the vast majority of the people to have the benefit of that progress that we have made.

They are not getting it, and principally because they can't afford it. But I think there is a way that they can get it.

Now, if somebody has got a better way than the one I propose, I am perfectly willing to accept it; and I hope you will take a look at the situation and see what you can do to improve the physical condition of the people of this country.

It is a great challenge. You can be very helpful at it.

And all I want you to do is get the facts, and don't believe what you see in certain magazines and papers.