Remarks at the Opening of the National Convention of the American Red Cross.

Mr. Harriman, General Gruenther, and my friends of the American Red Cross:

Normally, when I am asked to appear before a Red Cross meeting, I am told, "Oh, just come for a minute or so and say a word of greetings and leave."

But when I meet a group of Red Cross people, it just simply isn't enough. I have to try to express something of what is in my heart and mind. It ranges all the way from admiration and respect to downright gratitude.

I have a personal reason for my gratitude. Like some other Americans, I was responsible in World War Two for great numbers of our young men. They were called off the farms and from the villages and cities of America to serve in that greatest of all tragedies, war. They served on the battlefield.

Often they were bewildered. They were worried about their families. They were starved for some kind of direct communication with their homeland. And often they were just plain lonely and homesick.

The Red Cross stepped in to fulfill the functions, as they called it, of "the home away from home."

I know of no staff service in all of the wartime years to which senior commanders feel more grateful, to which they feel more lastingly obligated, than they do to the American Red Cross and to the devoted people that the Red Cross sent over to the theatres of operation to help young Americans in their terrible ordeal.

So again it is my high privilege, through you, to thank the American Red Cross for what they did then to help me in the discharge of the responsibilities that rested upon me.

The twentieth century has been a century of crises. We have passed from one war to another, from one type of world tension to another.

The last decade has been no exception.

We have had the Korean War. We have had cold war everywhere.

From each of these crises that affected us as a people, I think America has not only met the issue triumphantly, but has emerged from it stronger. I think we are a better people, a more informed people, because of the crises through which we have passed. As we have comprehended the terrific tensions that are created in other portions of the world by unsatisfied and legitimate aspirations, by poverty, by foreign domination, by despotisms, and as we have met the problems that have been presented to us, we, as a people--as a government--have surmounted them. We are a better people because of this.

There has been, at the same time, the kind of crises that the Red Cross has had to meet--or has met for us--to satisfy our desire, aside from government, to do our duty by humanity. That volunteer spirit of the Red Cross, I would say, is its truly greatest asset. It expresses for all other Americans their hope to be of help in alleviating human distress, human suffering and human want.

We have had all types of natural disaster here at home. In the East in the Appalachian area, in the far West, and in the Southwest, we have had fire and floods and droughts and every kind of storm that called upon the Red Cross to marshal their resources to speak and act for the American people in that voluntary spirit of helping neighbors.

I think that as the nation has emerged stronger from those emergencies--the crises that it faced--so has the Red Cross. As the nation is sure of its destiny, devoted to the strengthening of the unity of the free world and the preservation of the blessings of freedom and liberty for ourselves and for those of our friends who want to live that way--so the Red Cross--by preserving in us and in helping us to express our desire to help a suffering brother--has done a great deal to enrich us as a nation.

I think both the nation and the Red Cross can look forward to the future with confident ability that with this kind of experience behind us, we can measure up to the challenge the future poses.

General Gruenther has told me that these crises of the past two years that have come on us so rapidly, with such widespread character have diminished your reserves by 50 million dollars.

I realize this poses for the administration of the Red Cross-for all of you--a terrific problem. But again it is one that can be surmounted. America will respond. I conceive it to be one of your jobs, as it is indeed for all the rest of us, to carry a recitation of these facts to the people: what you have done, what you are prepared to do, what you are doing for all of us.

I believe that the 50 million dollars will be restored rapidly. Just as I walked in here, I learned that for next year's Finance Chairman you have General Lucius Clay, another of my World War associates. I assure you, if there's 50 million dollars left in the country to find, he will find it.

I think that the one great truth we should now get in our heads is this: this is no time for your country or for the Red Cross to falter, to hesitate, to think of turning back. The world grows. It grows in population, and as it grows in population the complexities of its problems increase.

For ourselves as a people, for each of us as an individual, I believe we will have to increase our understanding, not only of the statistical factors in all the problems that we come up against, but the human problems. We must assure ourselves that legitimate human hopes and aspirations are being satisfied under a system of freedom. Else freedom in the long run will have to retreat.

Of all the agencies that help to demonstrate this both at home and abroad, I think the Red Cross is one of the most important. Your help does not cease with alleviating disaster--alleviating suffering--in our own country. It goes abroad.

Only recently, in Hungary, where the Red Cross was the only one of the agencies that were anxious to help that was allowed within the borders of the country to search out those in need of help and to give it.

Governments could make special regulations to absorb some of the Hungarian refugees. They could help in other ways, but finally the human part of the job had to be done by the Red Cross. Coordinating the work of all the others, it had also to bridge that gap between the possibilities of government aid which are normally of the public utility type and that of human need which only personal contact--in other words, the Red Cross-can bring.

I am afraid that if I do not "push the button" here pretty quickly, I will be cutting into someone else's time, but I do want to urge one more point.

The Red Cross is simply not strong enough, not strong enough in volunteer workers. We must realize that the strongest force in all the world is the spirit of man. And in America the strongest force is that spirit combined behind a worthy enterprise.

So I would urge that when this meeting here in Washington is over--which I certainly hope will be interesting and informative for all of you, as well as enjoyable--that when you go home, each of you undertake the task of getting two more volunteers for the Red Cross, preferably young dedicated people that can stick with us for the next sixty years. In any event, get two new dedicated volunteer workers to help to carry the load of informing the American people and giving to them the opportunity to do what America always wants to do: preserve justice and prevent suffering.

Thank you very much indeed.