Remarks to Members of the National Advisory Committee of the Veterans Administration Voluntary Services.

Mr. Chairman, General Gray, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen:

I am very happy to be here to participate in the meeting of the National Advisory Committee of the Veterans Administration Voluntary Services. I understand that you represent 40 different organizations which are joined together in the voluntary service program for our veterans hospitals. They tell me that you have about 70,000 people working in these hospitals on a volunteer basis. I think that is one of the finest things I ever heard of, and I want to compliment you most highly on it. It is a great public service, and I appreciate it as President of the United States, representing all the people of America.

When you can get 70,000 people to put aside their own business and to go to work in the hospitals as you are doing, it is a real public service. The work of your volunteers shows that they understand how much we owe to the veterans, who have fought for our country and for the world, to save democracy.

Our first obligation, of course, is to the veterans who are disabled because of their service, and to the families of those veterans who have been disabled, or who have died in the service or have been killed. The Government has a responsibility to these veterans, and I think we have a good program for meeting that responsibility, just as General Gray has told you.

But you people can furnish something the Government never can provide, and that is the personal touch--just a little bit of home. I visited the wounded servicemen many times, both in veterans hospitals and in the hospitals of the armed services. There is nothing that gives me more pride in my country than the spirit I have found in those young men.

I paid a number of visits to Walter Reed and Bethesda during and after the war. Also, during World War II, I visited the hospital at Mare Island, where I met a Navy surgeon by the name of Kessler--Capt. Henry H. Kessler he was then; he is doing the same sort of work now for the great State of New Jersey. He was interested in the rehabilitation of men who had lost arms and legs and other parts of their anatomy in the war.

I went on to Brigham, Utah, to inspect another hospital, where I found an Army surgeon by the name of J. Laughtenhauser. He was a colonel at that time, and he was just as enthusiastic as the Navy surgeon. I got those two gentlemen together, and that was the beginning of our rehabilitation program, which is now headed by Admiral McIntire, and which is doing magnificent work for all disabled people in the country, as well as veterans. That rehabilitation program is one of the grandest things that this country has ever put on.

Then in September 1950 I made a trip out to a little island in the middle of the Pacific called Wake Island, to confer with a certain general. On that trip I stopped in California, at the Fairfield-Suisun Air Base, and visited the hospital there. They have changed the name of that base now, calling it Travis Air force Base, but they still have the hospital there, where they bring the wounded from Korea. I spoke to every man in the hospital that night, and had some of the most interesting conversations you ever listened to in your life with those men who had been wounded.

I stopped at the great hospital in Honolulu as I came back, which was full of wounded Korean veterans; and I talked to them. And I want to tell you this: those men know what it's all about. I wish everybody in this country were as well informed.

Those were some of the men who have been fighting in Korea, and they fought to hold back the Communists, while we endeavor at this end to work out a solution that will bring about peace in the world. These young men are suffering in our effort to bring about that peace.

There are some people in this country who say they don't know why we are in Korea. My suggestion to them is to go and visit these wounded Korean veterans, and they will find out. They know, but they don't want to let on like they do, these people don't.

The men I saw in the hospitals in California and Honolulu knew why we were in Korea. They had seen the Communist aggression at first-hand, and they knew why we have to fight against it.

If all the people in this country--every one of us--understood the situation as well as the men who have been in Korea, and who are there now, then we wouldn't have any trouble putting over the program for world peace.

Some of those boys I saw in California and Hawaii had been fighting in the frontlines only a few days earlier--5,000 and 7,000 miles away in Korea. When our men in Korea are wounded, the handling and medical care they get are truly remarkable. Every conceivable method, including helicopters and airplanes, is used to get them to aid stations and hospitals.

I have heard of cases where our pilots who crashed or bailed out behind enemy lines were picked up within 5 minutes-behind enemy lines, mind you, they were picked up. One of our paratroopers, who was injured in a jump north of Seoul, was back in the air and on his way to the hospital in less than 2 minutes.

We now have much better methods of treating the wounded than we had in World War I, or even in World War II. In Korea the doctors managed to save over 97 percent of the wounded who reach the frontline treatment stations. Isn't that a record. You ought to compare that record with the War Between the States, and with the Spanish-American War, and with World War I, and it will show you what progress we have made in the medical profession in this great Nation of ours. You are making a contribution to that, when you help rehabilitate these men, and when you make them feel as if the people at home are interested in them.

I know that every one of you here tonight will join with me in paying tribute to these medical people who are doing such a wonderful job in Korea.

I also want to pay tribute to the people who provide medical services for our veterans, after they leave the armed services.

There has been a great improvement in the medical service of the Veterans Administration since the end of World War II. I know you people of the voluntary services are aware of this, because you have seen it at first-hand, and have taken a part in it.

General Hawley and Dr. Magnuson worked out ways and means for bringing in the best medical knowledge in the country-and took many other steps to develop our outstanding medical department. Admiral Boone has carried on the good work they started, to build a first-rate medical program for veterans.

I am sure this audience will be interested in knowing what is about to happen to this first-rate medical program. Up in the Congress, the so-called "economy bloc" has decided it is too expensive, so the House of Representatives lopped off $75 million of the money required to run that medical program.

I hope the Senate will put the money back. If it doesn't, it will just be too bad for many of those veterans who have the misfortune to stand in need of medical care. I wouldn't be surprised if the House of Representatives wouldn't like to see this money restored by the Senate, and they can go home and say how economy-minded they have been, and the Senate kept them from doing it.

I have actually some sympathy for these economizers in Congress. They are in a terrible bad fix. When I sent my budget up there last January, they didn't stop to look at it, they didn't examine it at all, they just began to scream, "It's too much." "It's full of water." "It has got to be cut." Then they began to look for places to do the cutting, and you know what?--places to cut were very hard to find. So the economizers have been doing some laughably sharp turning and twisting.

I didn't think, however, they would ever get themselves out on this particular limb about which I am talking now. Let me tell you how absurd this thing really is. For several years the Veterans Administration has been engaged in a construction program to increase the number of hospital beds available for veterans.

Now the Congress wanted me to include in that program 16,000 more beds than I thought were necessary. We had some beds, at the time we were estimating this situation, that we were not able to get the people that we should have to make them operate. And I didn't see any use in adding 16,000 more beds that we couldn't care for. I was damned from one end of the country to the other because I wouldn't build those beds. You would have thought I was the worst enemy the veterans ever had. But we stuck to our guns, left out the 16,000 extra beds, and went ahead with the others.

And guess what!--the appropriations bill the House passed won't even provide enough money to operate all the hospital beds the Veterans Administration is going to have. I wonder what we would do with that extra 16,000 under those conditions. Can you imagine anything as absurd as that?

It's equal to the situation in the Post Office Department. We had an immense deficit in the Post Office Department, and I sent a message down to the Congress and asked them to meet that deficit by making the people pay who are being subsidized by the mails to carry some of their literature through the mails, which is not exactly what everybody ought to read, in my opinion. The slick magazines and a lot of the Sunday newspapers are being subsidized and being carried through.

Well, the Congress, after a lot of arguing around, added a pittance to the Post Office cost of carrying the mail to the public of about $160 million. And then you know what they did? They added an expense account to the Post Office Department of some $400 million, which made the deficit bigger than ever. Now that is right in line with this veterans thing that we are talking about. I don't understand what in Sam Hill they are thinking about.

First they try to make us build more beds than we need, and then they won't appropriate the money to operate the ones we have.

I don't know what's going to happen to this situation. But I will tell you one of the things that is the matter. This is an election year and there is a lot of ballyhoo goes on in an election year, as I proved in 1948. And some of it isn't true. What I am telling you, they are facts.

Then there was another matter of some interest to veterans that the House voted on the other day. I suppose I shouldn't mention these things, but after all this is an election year, as I told you a while ago, and this is a democracy, and the people are entitled to know what is going on. And if you don't think I am going to let 'em know, you're mistaken.

Well, day before yesterday, the House had before it a social security bill. This was a good bill and it would make a number of desirable changes in the social security law. One of these changes would have provided that veterans of the fighting in Korea should get credit under the Social Security System for the time they spend in Korea. Everybody thought that was fine and thought it was right. But along came that great organization which hates the administration worse than it hates the devil, called the American Medical Association, and said there is something in this bill that looks like socialized medicine. I don't know what they were talking about. Nobody else did, and I don't think they did, either.

There was nothing in that bill that came any closer to socialized medicine than the payments that the American Medical Association makes to the advertising firm of Whitaker and Baxter to misrepresent my health program.

But there are a lot of people in Congress who jump when the American Medical Association cracks the whip. And there are a lot of others who roll over and play dead when anybody yells "socialism." After all, as I said a while ago, this is an election year.

The upshot of all this was that the bill was defeated on the House floor. It may come up for another vote later on, and I hope it will pass. I think the people who voted against it will soon begin to see the light, because I am going to do a little preaching, and I think I will bring a little light to the souls of some of them. Because this is an election year, not only for the American Medical Association, it is an election year for the veterans as well.

It has been a wonderful thing to be here with you tonight, and I want to assure you that I am talking as a citizen of the United States, and as a veteran.

I am not a candidate for office. I am talking for the welfare of all the people in this country, and that is what I am going to continue to do, as long as I live. I am not going to run for President any more, because I want to get out and say some things and do some things that I can't say and do while I am President.

I can't tell you how much I appreciate all that you are doing for the veterans in our hospitals. They deserve the best, and I know that from you and your organizations they are going to get the best--and they are not entitled to anything but the best.

I am a veteran. I was a veteran of the first World War, and I tried my best to be a veteran in this war. I went down to see General Marshall--I had kept my Reserve commission--and told him I would appreciate it most highly if he would let me command a field artillery outfit, because I was a colonel. And the General pulled his glasses down on his nose, like that, and said, "Senator, how old are you?" And I said, "I am 56." He said, "You are too damned old. You go back and stay in the Senate. You can do more good there than you can commanding a field artillery outfit."

Sometime after that, when I was President, General Marshall was Chief of Staff, and he came to see me on official business. And I have a secretary who likes to pull pranks on people, and he said to the General, "Now General, under the same circumstances, what would you say to him now?" The General said, "I would tell him the same thing, but I would be very much more diplomatic about it."

I am interested in the welfare of the veterans, just as you are. I want to see them get everything that is coming to them, and I am going to do everything I possibly can to see that they get it.

And I want you to do the same thing. I want you to do everything you possibly can to see that these men, who fought to save the country and who fought to save democracy in the world, get the proper treatment.

I want to see the Korean veterans get justice--and they are not getting it now. They should have the same treatment, they should have exactly the same treatment and on the same basis, without the mistakes, that the veterans of World War II received. And I sent a message to the Congress asking for that sort of situation. I want you to help me on it, because it is just, it is honorable, and it ought to be done.

Keep up the good work for the veterans, and nobody in the world appreciates what you are doing any more than I do.

Thank you very much.