Remarks at the Republican Women's National Conference.

Miss Adkins and ladies:

I realize there have been a number of speakers in front of you this morning, and there possibly may be some question in your minds as to what I could add to the information already given you.

Not long ago I was at one of Miss Adkins' breakfasts for ladies. It is her custom to have each one of these Republican ladies present whatever ideas are in their minds. Finally it happened that before it got around to the very last lady and my turn, that the last lady on deck was a Negro lady. She felt a little bit in the position that I do now: most of the things had been said. But she looked these people in the eye, and she said, "Well, since each of the prior speakers have referred to this most auspicious and enjoyable occasion, you must admit that I add to this most auspicious occasion, a touch of color!" Well, I tell you, she took over the meeting--but I don't have her advantage.

But these people who have spoken this morning to you have given you a series of facts, plans, convictions that are the basis of the confidence and optimism that we feel today.

There is one generalization to make as we proceed in our thinking about the Republican Party as an agency for serving this great country and that is that the public must be an informed public, if a republic or a democracy is to be a success.

There are certain decisions that people--the people as a whole must make. If they are not informed, they cannot make those decisions intelligently. They will be hit and miss, and therefore only accident will make a decision a correct decision.

We must be informed. Consequently, these people, in trying to present to you the facts, are doing a service but no greater service than you yourselves are doing by gathering together and in meeting with these people of your government, informing yourselves, so that in turn you can carry these facts--these truths-back to the localities from which you came.

The twin objectives of this Administration are a widely shared increasing prosperity at home, and peace abroad.

I think you have heard much on both these subjects this morning. With prosperity at home we must not forget that prosperity can never be the product of a static organism. There must be a growth: there must be an expansion that keeps up with and even exceeds the expansion of our population as we achieve a new number of two-and-a-half to two-and-three-quarters of a million more people a year.

Among other things we need are road programs, health programs, all of those things give to our people the right to enjoy every kind of spiritual growth to which they aspire, to achieve new intellectual heights and to have a greater material standard of living.

If each of our citizens has a right and an opportunity to work for those three things--and to achieve them in some measure each year--then we are getting what we call a growing prosperity widely shared. And that means roads and schools and hospitals and factories, wide employment and an increasing income for agriculture and the industrial worker--everybody. There is no class, no group, no individual that may be omitted and still have this objective achieved.

Now, peace abroad.

The central fact of our time, of course, is the implacable hostility of a doctrine which heads up into the group in the Kremlin which has announced its intention of conquering the world, believing in the overthrow of other forms of government by force, and substituting its own dictatorship of the proletariat for representative and free forms of government.

I shall not bore you with all of their claims about the weaknesses of capitalism and free democracies and free republics. We know that to be a fact.

In this struggle, they have one thing that is important. They have unity. It is the unity that is achieved by force--a knife in the back. People must conform or they are eliminated.

That is not the kind of unity we have, nor which we seek. But we do know we must have a unity among those nations that do not want to fall prey to this kind of existence--to fall prey to the spreading threat of communism. So we must have a community of interest that brings about the spontaneous unity that we want. That is, if we are to present a unified strength in the free world against a unified strength of the Communist world, there must be a great spiritual basis, an intellectual basis, a material basis, that leads people and nations to want to hold together and to oppose this evil.

That, my friends, is really the basis toward which we work in order to gain the strength that will oppose communism so firmly at every critical point in the world. Its progress will be stopped gradually as people everywhere become informed and understand the appeal that freedom has for the human soul as opposed to slavery. Then it will begin to atrophy--to dry up--and finally go the way of all dictatorships.

But to achieve that material, intellectual, and spiritual community of interests among the free world--the peoples of the free world--is a difficult task. It is one that engages your government, both branches--legislative and executive--all the time, every day.

We must make certain that people can make a living; that they can satisfy natural human wants; that they understand what they are working for; that they are to see a brighter day by working spontaneously with the free nations of the world as against this great communistic threat. That is the basis for all the things you hear called foreign aid--mutual security. Everything we do is to achieve the solidarity of partnership with our neighbors, recognizing their rights, recognizing their right to express their opinions and convictions and influence decisions as we move ahead. That will make that solidity of communion and partnership that can achieve success from a position of strength.

I think it entirely possible that Secretary Hoover has spoken to you some of the events of the past two years--those things that give reason to believe that we are somewhat on the upswing in this great, age-old effort of man.

Here I might pause just to say that always the United States has been a peace-loving nation. We have never wanted to fight wars. And in recognition of this fact, I thought it well, sometime back, to appoint a man of national stature to a specific position, to look into all questions of disarmament--which means also the promotion of peace. There can be no true disarmament without peace, and there can be no real peace without very material disarmament.

And so Governor Stassen's position, to study and devise plans and ways of implementing them in this great field of disarmament, is in fact a sort of secretarial position for peace. We give one man in the Administration the job of thinking of this and doing nothing else. I believe that nothing else is symbolizing in this form the effort and purpose of the United States--it can be nothing but beneficial both at home and abroad.

As for myself and for the Secretary of State and others involved, including those in the Legislature, we stand ready to do anything, to meet with anyone, anywhere, as long as we may do so in self-respect, demanding the respect due this Nation, and there is any slightest idea or chance of furthering this great cause of peace. We will not stand on minor questions of protocol or any other inconsequential question, if that opportunity of advancing the cause of peace is presented and there is the slightest chance that it may bring for our children and those that come after us a better world in this respect.

So it is, then, that these facts have been presented before you this morning, before the backdrop of two great purposes--a widespread prosperity at home and peace abroad. We are pursuing them tirelessly and energetically. It is the methods and the implementation of these purposes that constitute the governmental facts that must be carried back to our people.

Personally, in such a problem, in such a purpose, I believe that women are better apostles than men. Men are engrossed in many kinds of activities. They earn the living. They are engaged in business all day, and they are very apt, at times, to lose that great rounded concept of man that women almost always have before them: that he is a spiritual, and intellectual, and a physical being. He is not merely someone trying to get a higher wage. He wants a higher wage for a purpose, to give greater opportunity in all three of these fields to his family. Because women think of these things in their process of homemaking, think of them in terms of children and the family, I believe that their influence in spreading the basic doctrines of this kind is more profound than that of men.

Consequently, it is always an honor to come before you and urge a group like this really to get at it and let us go.

Now certainly I would be remiss if I left this platform without talking for a moment about the word "Republican." I read in the papers that the Republicans are a minority party. Now I will venture one thing, that the people who believe as we do, who will follow along in the paths marked out by the two great objectives, in the programs of implementation that have been described to you by certain Cabinet officers and will be furthered in large measure later in your meetings--these people that want to do as we do are the vast majority of the American people. This means, my friends, that real evangelical work in the business of educating, of informing, will make the Republican Party the majority party, and keep it that way.

A very great early President of the United States said that if he was forced to choose government without schools or schools without government, he would unhesitatingly choose schools. He meant, of course, that if he had to have a government over an ignorant people, or an informed people who would later find the necessity of having a government, he would of course take the informed people.

That is what we need to do now. We do not need to go out merely to exhort. We merely need to go out and show what the facts of this day and time are--what it is that the United States wants, what it is that the people of the world want. The people of the world want exactly what we do. They want opportunity and peace. They want security.

All right: let us go out and show that is exactly what the Republicans are bringing to the people, offering it in full measure richly and with everybody entitled to his share. No one can ask more than to do his share in bringing about such a great objective, such a great purpose.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are some gentlemen here--I thought I made a mistake there, for a moment--if I could make one simple request of you, it would be this: that as you go back, each to your own purposes and efforts in your own localities, it is not that we try to teach and preach Republicanism just because we worship the word. Let us go back to Republicanism and find the great purposes for which it stands, the great programs that have been brought forward by the consultation of people throughout this land--advisory bodies of citizens, governmental officials, professionals, everybody that could help. That great program is there to help achieve the purposes that we state. Then we can talk "Republicans" because almost everybody will be Republicans.

Thank you a lot.