Remarks to a Group of New Democratic Senators and Representatives.

MY EDUCATION has been sadly neglected. When I was in politics in Jackson County, Mo., I engineered a Congressional District for myself, the Fourth District of Missouri, which is now well represented in the House of Representatives. I expected to go to the House and stay there the rest of my life, Sam, but it didn't work out that way.

I was nominated for the Senate, and after a campaign rather in line with the one last year, I was elected; and then in another campaign that was rather worse than that one, I was elected again. Then I got myself into all sorts of trouble, and became Vice President of the United States. I was going to say to Vice President Barkley, if he had stayed here, that on one occasion I had two tie votes in the same session, one right after the other, and those two tie votes resulted in the confirmation of Henry Wallace as Secretary of Commerce. And all of you know what Henry did to me after that, and what he tried to do in the last campaign--and is still trying to do.

It is a pleasure to me, of course, to be here tonight and to meet all the new Members of the Congress--the House of Representatives and the Senate, and to say to you that a new Congressman and a new Senator are each and everyone in the same position and condition that I was in when I was sworn in on the 3d day of January 1935, as the Junior Senator from Missouri.

There was an old county judge who was with me on the county court in Jackson County, who was a nephew of Senator Money from Mississippi, who had been here in Washington with Senator Money, and who was a very great philosopher. And he gave me some advice before I left Independence to come to Washington. He said, "Harry, don't you go to the Senate with an inferiority complex. You sit there about 6 months, and you wonder how you got there. And after that you wonder how the rest of them got there."

And the funny part about that was that J. Ham Lewis, who was a very kindly man, came and sat down beside me the day after I was sworn in, and said exactly the same thing to me as the old judge had said to me back in Missouri!

And I want to say to all you Junior Senators and Congressmen that what he said is exactly true. And I am not saying that unkindly, because after you have been in either one of those legislative positions for some time, you begin to understand why such men as Alben Barkley, Sam Rayburn, and Scott Lucas go to the top. They go there because they have kind hearts, because they believe in people, and because they want to do what is best for this greatest Republic in the history of the world.

I know that is what every one of you wants to do. You want to continue to see this great country of ours grow and do the right thing for all the people of the world. Not only the people of our own country, but all the people in the world, because the welfare of the world is now our responsibility. Whether we like it or not, we have been forced into that position by two world wars, both of which could have been avoided, if we had been willing to assume the place which God Almighty intended us to assume back in 1918, instead of having to assume it after two terrible wars.

I know that there is not a man here who wants to see a third war necessary, to make us believe what our responsibility is.

In the history of the world there has never been a republic, a monarchy, or a totalitarian state that has met the situation as we have: we have offered to give up the greatest weapon in the history of the world for the welfare of mankind. We have offered to surrender the most powerful thing we have under our control, if the world will come in and set up a control of that weapon which will prevent its use for the destruction of mankind.

I had to make a decision back in July 1945, and I had to make that decision on the basis of the welfare not only of this country but of our enemy country. And I made that decision because I thought 200,000 of our young men would be saved by making that decision, and some 3 or 400,000 of the enemy would be saved by making that decision.

Now I believe that we are in a position where we will never have to make that decision again, but if it has to be made for the welfare of the United States, and the democracies of the world are at stake wouldn't hesitate to make it again.

I hope and pray that that will never necessary.

The meeting we had the other afternoon day before yesterday--in which we signed the Atlantic Pact, I think is a step that will 'prevent our having to make a decision of that sort. We have made decisions at Rio de Janeiro and Bogota, and this is another one along that same line. And I hope that every one of you young Congressmen and Senators will study the history of the world, from Greece and Rome, and France and Britain, when they were on top--and Germany, Germany made a mistake in two instances--and understand that our only objective is peace and the welfare of every nation and every race in the world. That's all there is to it.