Address at the Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Mayor, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen of Pittsburgh:

In the last 3 weeks I have been back and forth across this country talking to the voters everywhere, from our smallest towns to our biggest cities. Wherever I have gone, I have received the same kind of warm and friendly welcome which I have just received here tonight. I can't tell you how much that means to me.

It means a lot, because it shows that the great attempt to misrepresent me and my administration has not been successful. If the people believed what they read in the one-party press, they would regard me as a sort of horrible monster with horns and a tail.

But they don't. They seem to be really friendly. And I think the reason is that they know I have been standing up for their interests, for the interests of the common, everyday man, for the security and the safety of this great country, no matter what it costs. They know, too, that any President who does that is going to be vilified and slandered by the rich men who control the press and the opposition party.

Wherever I have gone, I have noticed another thing that gives me great satisfaction. The people come out not to whoop and holier, and make a noise, but to listen to what I have to say, and to think about what I have to say. They want to hear a discussion of the issues. They are trying to make up their minds on the basis of the facts. That shows that our people have commonsense and that you can't sell them a presidential candidate the way you sell toothpaste.

I am very glad, tonight, to be able to speak to the Nation, because I want everybody to hear my views on the issues. That should help to correct the deliberately false impression that has been created about my part in this campaign.
I want you to understand, very clearly, the reasons why I entered this campaign.

The first reason is, quite simply, that I want to tell the people about their candidate for President.

This year the Democratic Party offers you one of the finest men in American public life--Adlai Stevenson of Illinois.

I am extremely proud that the Democratic Party has found such a man.

One distinguished observer said the other day that Adlai Stevenson speaks "in the accents of greatness." That is as true as it can be. Governor Stevenson is a real American leader. He has talked straight and clear to the American people. He has shown a deep understanding of the great issues of our day, and a real feeling for the common people of America.

I urge all of you to listen to him on the radio and television, to read his speeches, and to get to know him before November the 4th. If you do that, there's no question as to how this election will come out. Adlai Stevenson will win.

And, my friends, that means that the people will win.

Now, there is another reason that I have come out in this campaign. I have had every honor that the Democratic Party can bestow upon me. I have gone from precinct to President as a Democrat, and the Presidency is the highest and most honorable office in the history of the world. And I appreciate what the Democratic Party has done for me, and I never expect to run out on them, as some people do when they get all they can out of the party.

The next reason for my getting into this campaign is that I do not want to see the American people deceived or tricked into giving up the liberal policies and programs of the New Deal and the Fair Deal. I do not want to see this country bamboozled into switching to reactionary policies that brought us to disaster once, and will bring us to disaster again.

If the American people want to choose a reactionary government, they are entitled to do it--to choose whatever they want. But they ought not to be fooled into doing it. They ought not to be fooled by this campaign into thinking that there is a new type of leadership at the helm of the Republican Party--or that the Republican Party has changed its basic philosophy since it last controlled the national government. The proof lies not in what the Republican leaders say, but in how they vote in Congress on the great issues that affect our country and the peace of the world.

The difference between the two parties goes back a long way.

In the twenties and the thirties, the Republicans were openly and frankly the party of big business. They let the Wall Street speculators and the big financial interests do as they pleased with the economy of this country.

When their policies had plunged the country into the blackest depression in its history, the American people turned the Republicans out of office, and they put the Democrats in power, under the leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Where there had been paralysis, we now got action. Where there had been a cold lack of concern for human misery, we now had a government with a heart, and a feeling for the welfare of the common man.

Under the Democratic leadership we have come a long way in the last 20 years.

Out of the depths of the Republican depression we have built the strongest economy the world has ever known. We have achieved a society of full employment. Today, virtually every man who wants a job can find a job, and he can find a job at cent wages.

Labor has been guaranteed the right to organize. The workingman no longer lives in fear of the private detectives and the strikebreakers that once were hired to keep him in his place.

We have opened up new opportunities for small business.

We have put security into farming, with programs of price support. We have brought the blessings of electricity to the farmer's home. We opened up vast new areas of irrigated land. We have created new industrial communities, by developing the great rivers of this country.

While the country and the Democratic Party moved forward, the Republican Party stood still. The Republican Party was financed and run by men who, doing nicely under the old system, saw no need for changes to benefit the everyday man, the farmer, the worker, and the small businessman.

So the Republican Party opposed change. And its opposition steadily became blind and irresponsible. It really became destructive.

Because the Republican Party could not adjust itself to the world in which we live, the American people did not give it power. And so it became filled with vindictiveness, with hate for the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party's leaders. It reviled Franklin Roosevelt. And it has abused me shamefully, but you can see it hasn't hurt much. It has refused to recognize the progress that we all know the country has been making.

The Republican platforms show you how blind they have been. In 1936, their platform said the New Deal measures had put America in peril. In 1940, their platform said the individual had lost his freedom, and that America was a shackled giant. In 1944, their platform said the American economic life had been destroyed. In 1952--in this very year--the Republican platform says free enterprise has been wrecked, initiative has been deadened, invention discouraged and self-reliance has been weakened. For the last 20 years the Republicans have been living in a world of make-believe.

In the Congress, the Old Guard Republicans have fought the Wagner Act, they have fought minimum wage laws, they have fought social security, they have fought slum clearance, they have fought farm price supports, they have fought electric power development, they have fought rural electrification, they have fought reciprocal trade agreements, and they have fought all the rest of the proposals of the New Deal and the Fair Deal, which were for the benefit of all the people.

Now they wanted none of these things. They called them socialism. They said they would wreck free enterprise. They said the country would go bankrupt.

Now, has the Republican Party changed? Take its record in the last 4 years. In this period, a majority of the Republicans in one or both Houses of the Congress voted against price control, voted against rent control, voted against farm price supports at 90 percent of parity, voted against rural telephone programs, voted against improvements in our social security system, voted against Federal aid for public housing.

In the international field, since the death of Senator Vandenberg, their record has been very little better. In 1949, the Republicans in the House of Representatives voted almost 2 to 1 against the military aid program, including military aid to the Republic of Korea. In 1950, they voted 3 to 1 against point 4. In 1951 and 1952--this year--a majority of the Republicans in both Houses voted to slash military and economic aid for our allies. In 1949, and again in 1951, the Republican Congressmen voted, almost unanimously, to cripple the reciprocal trade agreements program.

That's the way the Republicans have been voting for the last 4 years. And they don't dare discuss their record with you.

That record is a record of usually voting against the interests of the people--rarely voting for them. When the Republicans do vote for something, it's likely to be a bill that is anti-somebody and anti-something. They voted with great enthusiasm for the Taft-Hartley antilabor law.

And they voted with equal enthusiasm for immigration laws that discriminated against the Greeks, the Italians, and the Poles and people from other countries of eastern and southern Europe.

That is the kind of record that has kept the Republican Party out of power for 20 years. It is the kind of record they are still making. It's the kind of record that will keep them out of power for 20 years more.

Now, my friends, the Republican Party is trying to hide this record behind the military glamor of a candidate who was never even identified as a Republican until a few months ago. And they are trying to sell their candidate to the American people with a campaign full of circus ballyhoo.

But the men who made that record are the men who wrote the Republican platform, and are running the Republican campaign. They still control the Republican Party, and they will control it after the election.

I have felt, therefore, that it is my duty, in order that the people may have the facts, to make it clear that the Republican Party is still the party of reaction, no matter what they may say in this campaign and no matter what their candidate may say.

Now the liberals in the Republican Party, who had such high hopes for their new candidate, have been sadly disillusioned. And some of them have the courage to put their country ahead of their party and speak up and tell the truth--like Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon did.

Now, my friends, another reason for my campaigning is probably the most important. At any rate, it weighs most heavily on my mind.

Our Nation is engaged in a grave and dangerous struggle for world peace. This struggle has been thrust upon us by one of the most menacing totalitarian powers that free nations have ever faced. It is a struggle that is being fought in every part of the world. It is a struggle that free men must wage with their ideas, their material resources, and their very lives. On the outcome of this struggle depends not only our national safety, but also the future progress of all civilization.
To win we must have both confidence and patience. This is not a simple fight, like crushing an enemy in battle. To bring on an outright, total war would involve us in disaster. And to give in, or go soft, would mean appeasement of communism.

In this struggle, we have made many, many hard decisions. And in order to win, we have devoted large resources to the aid of our allies. We have imposed a heavy defense program on ourselves--requiring the control of materials and prices and the payment of high taxes. We have had to restore the draft, to build up our Armed Forces, to station units overseas, and to send men to hold the tide of aggression in Korea. This has cost us effort, money, and many brave lives.

It has also resulted in great gains for us. We have stopped the conquest of Europe, we have halted aggression in Asia. The strength of the free world is growing. The great danger that threatened us a few years ago-the danger of being isolated and surrounded in a Communist world--has been met successfully.

But the terrible struggle still goes on. It is still perilous.

We can win this thing. There is no question of that. With our great resources, our skills, our faith in God, we can most assuredly win.

But we can also lose. We can lose if we slacken our effort, if we appease the Communists, if we cut our defenses, or trim our sails.

And that might happen if we grow tired before the goal is won, or turn aside from the race before victory is secure.

Everything depends on the vision, the morale, and the determination of the people of this great country.

In this campaign now, my friends, I had hoped that neither party would seek to play politics with the sacrifices, with the doubts and the fears, that are necessarily created by this struggle for peace. But that, I am sorry to say, was not to be. The Republicans brought these elements into the campaign.

Next, I had hoped that the Republican candidate would rebuke his party, and reject their efforts to weaken our unity and our resolution.

I thought that this candidate would certainly hold firm. He was closely identified with our policy of resistance to communism. He had played a great part in it. He knows how difficult it is to build up and maintain a high level of national defense. He knows how hard it is to hold the free nations together, and to get them all to do their best. He knows that everything depends on the determination and the firmness of the United States--the strongest partner.

Yet, no sooner had this candidate won the nomination, than he welcomed the Republican isolationists to his councils. He began to follow their tactics--to suggest that our efforts were unnecessary, our sacrifices in vain, and that there is some cheap and easy way out of our peril.

He has blamed the Government of this country for the aggression of the Communists. He has blamed the leaders of this country not only for the Korean conflict but for World War II and for World War I.

He has listed our action to save Greece and Turkey, and the Berlin airlift, and our defense of Korea--not as great achievements, but as calamities. He has intimated that our policies in Europe have been a failure, even though he himself had a leading part in making those policies effective.

Now before he became a candidate for political office, he supported our program for building up our military strength. Now he calls it reckless and extravagant and says we can't afford it. He holds out the false promise that we can get all the strength we need for less money.

The Republican candidate knows--or he ought to know--that the only right way to pay for the defense program is through taxes. Yet he constantly tries to make political capital out of the high taxes we are paying for defense.
All this is the straight isolationist line.

While he has admitted that this country had no choice but to go to the defense of Korea, he is willing to make political capital out of the casualty lists.

And, finally, he has let the people think that he knows some undisclosed way to bring the Korean fighting to an end. But he does not tell you how. Now I challenged him to let us know what this proposal is.

I made him Chief of Staff of the United States Army. I put him in command of the Allied Forces in Europe for their creation and organization. If he knows of any panacea by which we can win the Korean war, it is his business to tell me, and not make a political football out of it.

But, my friends--but, my friends, there has been no reply on that subject. He hasn't got an answer !

These campaign tactics have one tendency: to weaken our resolution--to endanger the common determination of the people in the struggle for peace. In a time of great international peril like this, such tactics are a threat to our national security.

In a lesser man, they might not be so serious. But from the lips of one who has been regarded as a symbol of patriotism and international cooperation, these statements can do terrible harm. They can lead our country into the path of half measures and halfheartedness that means disaster for us and victory for communism.

The Republican candidate, with these cheap campaign tactics, was endangering all the work we had done for peace. As President of the United States, I could not and will not tolerate that.

I felt that I had to meet this danger. I had to tell the people that the Republican candidate was making false promises, and playing cheap and dangerous politics with the national morale.

I am glad to see that in recent days, in his talks in the Eastern States, the Republican candidate has sounded somewhat less like an isolationist. The press reports that in Massachusetts, he referred with approval, to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization--whose armies he commanded in Europe. But I do not know whether this change is due to inner conviction, or to a belief on his part that such things will help him get votes in the East.

As far as I am concerned, the damage is done. I cannot trust a man who has played this kind of game with the grave issues of our national security.

Indeed, I have asked myself again and again how this man could do it. How could he embark on a campaign of false accusations and hypocritical promises ?

I have found no satisfactory answer. Perhaps this course of conduct seems consistent with the whole pattern of his campaign. To those who believe they can win an election by using the techniques of an advertising agency--the distribution of confetti, the cheerleaders, the empty slogans--it may seem a little thing to talk one way about our national safety in the West, and to talk another way about our national safety in the East.

I do not know whether the Republican candidate is putting on this cynical kind of campaign through ignorance or by design. It may be that he has unwittingly become the tool of unprincipled men who are taking advantage of the fact that he does not understand politics or the art of government. Or it may be that he is knowingly joining in their schemes. In either event, such conduct could lead us to national disaster if he were elected.

A presidential election, my friends, is more than a popularity contest. It is a serious business. It is a serious business in which a nation decides its course. It is an act by which we give one man great power over the future of all of us.

We must have a President we can trust. We must have a man who knows what he is doing.

We have had only two professional soldiers in the White House. Both of them were failures. So far, we have never been so unfortunate as to elect a professional soldier President at a time of acute national peril.
In this year of 1952, we do not have to run this danger. We do not have to select a man who regards hypocrisy as necessary to politics. We can pick a man who maintains his principles under fire. We can elect Adlai Stevenson of Illinois.

Governor Stevenson has made no slick promises to end all our troubles and solve all our problems. He has not shifted his story from audience to audience and State to State. He has been honest in all he has said. He has not lost his principles in the effort to get votes.

In Governor Stevenson you have a man of deep conviction, you have a man of courage, of unflinching honesty. You have a leader equal to the difficulties of the times ahead. I know you will elect him President of the United States on November the 4th.