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

Chairman Kenney, all of the distinguished guests who are delegates, and those attending the convention of the American Red Cross:

I wish first to tell you that I am very appreciative and grateful of the invitation that I have received to address this organization, which I am proud to serve as Honorary Chairman. In fact, it is the only organization, as President of the United States, in which I have that distinguished title.

I want you to know, too, that I am glad that before you left the city of Washington that I was able to come before you in this session to address you very briefly, but from the heart, about the work that you have done and the pride that I have as your Honorary Chairman, and also as the President of this country, in working with you in great and good causes.

I was not sure that I was going to be able to come to this convention on Monday and Tuesday--we have a few problems at the present time in this country.

Tuesday, as you know, we had the problem of the railway strike. At 10:30 last night, I signed the bill that the Congress passed. So the trains will run, and you will all be able to go home, in case anybody rides the trains anymore. But late yesterday, when it appeared that the strike would go on through today, I called in my Appointments Secretary and said, "It doesn't look as if I may be able to get to the Red Cross on Wednesday morning, because if the strike is still going on, consultations would have to take place with Congressional leaders, and other matters of importance would have to come before me."

And I said, "When will they be back to Washington for a convention?" And so he checked the record, and he said, "Well, the last time they were here was in 1957, and President Eisenhower addressed the convention on that occasion." He said, "The next time they will be in Washington will be in 1981. Maybe they will invite you, but you can't do it as President of the United States."

Then I noted, however, that E. Roland Harriman is going to serve his eighth term as Chairman of the American Red Cross. And if I followed in his footsteps, maybe we might be able to make it, but I won't take that chance.

I did not want the American Red Cross to meet in Washington on this historic occasion without having the opportunity to come before you. And so I am here, and I want to cover briefly those points that anyone who serves as President of the United States would want to make to this organization, because perhaps no one in this country knows better than I do how much we depend upon you, your 2,400,000 members, and the millions who contribute to the American Red Cross for the works that you participate in.

I think back through my own term of office, over 2 years, and I think of those occasions when the American Red Cross has come to the assistance of our Government and of the American people.

I know that you have expressed deep concern in this convention about the plight of our prisoners of war, missing in action, throughout all of Southeast Asia. I am grateful for the work that you have done and the great tradition of the Red Cross, a tradition which recognizes that humanitarian concern transcends any differences that may be the cause of a war.

And you, in your handling of this issue of POW's and missing in action throughout Southeast Asia, have acted in the great tradition of the Red Cross, I am most grateful for what you have done.

Then I think of those other areas where the American Red Cross has been called upon and has come through in case after case, and the fact that I mention those that have been most newsworthy, the big news events, doesn't mean that those hundreds of other instances in community after community, State after State, are not also just as important in their way.

But I think of a hurricane in Mississippi. I remember visiting that area and seeing the devastation. And wherever there was devastation, and wherever there was suffering, the Red Cross was there helping, helping in a very personal way that the Government of the United States would not be able to match.

I know of an earthquake in California. I was not there at the time. I was there at the time of the '33 quake, however. I recall what the Red Cross did then, in 1933. I know what you did in this case in this year, 1971.

I know, too, of what you have done abroad. I know, for example, of an earthquake that occurred in Peru. I got a firsthand report on that earthquake from Mrs. Nixon, who went down to Peru in order to express the interest of our Government, but more important, the interest of the American people in the people of Peru.

This allows me to make a very important point about volunteerism, which the Red Cross, of course, represents in the eyes of most Americans and people throughout the world, perhaps better than any organization, more uniformly than any organization that we have.

When Mrs. Nixon went to Peru, it was recognized that the Government of the United States and the Government of Peru had very wide differences. You have read of those differences: the expropriation, for example, of some of our businesses in that country. But also, it was recognized that at least 60,000 people had been killed in that earthquake, had lost their lives. The suffering was simply indescribable.

So when she went, she went down in a plane, an American plane, the Air Force One. It was filled not with people, but with various items that were needed for those who were suffering--medical supplies, blankets, et cetera. That was, of course, symbolic.

She took a check with her, a check from the American Government. I think it was $10 million. That is a lot of money. But she also took several other checks, one a very large one from the American Red Cross, and others from other organizations--a labor union, other volunteer organizations.

When she came back, she said that as far as the people of Peru were concerned, that she met, and the Government leaders of Peru were concerned, they were far more impressed by the checks they received and the funds they received and the help they received from the American Red Cross and the other volunteer agencies than they were with the funds they received from the Government of the United States.

They needed both. They wanted both, and I am happy that this country is wealthy enough that, whether it is an earthquake in Peru or a flood in Romania, whatever the differences we have with governments, we always respond to humanitarian concern as a government, but even more important, we have throughout this country organizations like the Red Cross who, when there are problems abroad, when there is human suffering, whatever the political differences there may be between our country and that country, we come to their assistance.

I can assure you that that very personal reaction that Mrs. Nixon found among the people of Peru proved to me, demonstrated to me, something I had known before, but what we always need to be reminded of: that what we do as a government is very important but other nations can also do things as a government, people with a different standard than we have--but what we do as people, what we do voluntarily, that comes from the heart; that comes from one person having a concern about another person, and that really gets through.

So I express appreciation to the American Red Cross not only for what you did in the earthquake in Peru but for human suffering in the United States, abroad, wherever the case might be. This serves the cause of peace. It serves the cause, eventually, of good will which we hope will permeate the governments as well as the people of the world more than it is the case today.

Let me perhaps bring that message home in terms that people here in the Red Cross, who know this long and distinguished history of this organization much better than I, and also to update it in terms of a personal experience that Mrs. Nixon and I had in 1953 in Hong Kong.

Everybody who has studied the Red Cross record knows of that moving experience on the terrible battlefield of Solferino in the year 1859 when Henri Dunant, with three Austrian doctors, and some English tourists, an Italian priest, walked among the wounded and, regardless of which side they had fought on, gave them water. As they moved among the wounded, the word began to be heard over and over again from group to group: "Tutti fratelli," all are brothers.

Nothing, perhaps, more symbolizes the spirit of the Red Cross, your humanitarian concern for distress wherever it may be, than that "tutti fratelli" all are brothers. I saw it in a very different sense in 1953. We visited Hong Kong immediately after the truce had been agreed on in Korea, which ended the fighting in that war-torn country. We were driving in an automobile in an area called the New Territories, which is on the other side of the bay from Hong Kong city proper.

As we drove along, we had a little bit of water in our schedule, and we saw an elementary school in which the schoolchildren were apparently at recess and were in the school yard. We stopped the car, we got out, we walked into the school grounds.

As soon as the word was around that the Vice President of the United States and his wife were there, the little Chinese children swarmed around, just as American children would swarm around some stranger or some VIP from another country who had happened to visit their school grounds.

We talked to them. Mrs. Nixon went into the first grade room, having been a former teacher, and talked to them, signed her name with a brush, Chinese style. After 25 or 30 minutes, it was time for us to go on to make our next appointment.

I talked to the principal of the school, who was also the teacher of English, and I asked him at the next assembly to speak to all of the children in the school and to give them a message. I said to him, "Tell them that as Vice President of the United States I bring greetings and best wishes and the spirit of friendship from all the people of the United States to all the Chinese people."

He saw the significance of that statement, because thousands of Americans had been killed in Korea by Chinese troops. And then he said, "Mr. Vice President, I am deeply grateful for the visit that you and your wife have paid to our school, and I will pass this message on."

I can tell you that despite the differences that presently exist, and have existed, between governments, that I am convinced that the time will come when our two peoples, the Chinese people, wherever they are, on the mainland or elsewhere, and the American people, will again live together in peace and friendship, because he said, "As the visit that you and Mrs. Nixon have paid to our school today demonstrates, we are all brothers in our hearts."

The year 1981 will come. Another President of the United States will be standing here, perhaps with this podium or an improvement. He will be addressing some of you--oh, perhaps most of you. I am sure most of you will perhaps attend that convention, and I think of what I would wish this Nation would be like and what the world would be like at that time.

Let me put it very simply in this way: I want to see, and you want to see, the United States at peace with all nations in the world, and we will be at peace with all nations in the world long before 1981. Beyond that, when that year comes, and long before it, I want the United States, through its leadership, to have broken down the barriers that divide people from people in the world.

As I have often said, and I am sure you will agree with this sentiment: I want the world then, and as soon before then as we can bring it about, to be one in which our children .can go to any country in the world so that they can know the people, whether they are Chinese or Russian, or whatever country they may be in.

There will always be differences between governments. There will always be rivalries between peoples. We are never going to have a period, of course, in which those differences will be totally erased. But we can have the absence of war in the world. We can have peace in that sense.

Once having achieved that, then we must go on to a new understanding, a new understanding between and among people. That understanding cannot come from government. Government can help by breaking down the barriers. It will only come as great organizations like the Red Cross, as far as the United States is concerned, move through the world and demonstrate that we care about other people, because we care about them as individuals; not because of their wealth, not because of their power, not because of what they can do to us or take away from us, but because we are concerned about them as individual human beings.

It is that spirit which built the Red Cross. And so when the year comes, the year 1881, I confidently hope--in 1981, I confidently hope--I don't think anybody was here in 1881 [laughter]--when that year comes, 1981, I confidently hope and I confidently believe that not only will we have the United States at peace with all nations in the world, but that our children will have that opportunity, which they do not have today, to visit all parts of the world, to know people in all parts of the world, and to learn the truth of the great principle upon which this organization was founded: that we are, in truth, all brothers in our hearts.