Remarks to Delegates to the Girls Nation Annual Convention.

I WOULD like to say a word about the role that you can play as young ladies and as women in the years ahead.

Let me be quite candid. You know, there is a lot of debate going on these days about Women's Lib, and , frankly, men disagree about it. Most of them perhaps disagree very strongly; but on another side are the strong advocates of Women's Lib. And among the women, you know, there is also disagreement.

Well, like all ideas and all movements, it has many good factors and some which perhaps are questionable. But I think what is really important is to get the role of women in America and the world today in its proper perspective. The way I would put it is this.

First, the role of women is tremendously important from a political standpoint, because all election statistics presently show that there are more women who are potential voters than there are men. So, any candidate for office had better get along well with women.

The second point, in terms of the role women can play in our society, is that many have very active and responsible roles in the Government of the United States. Women today are Members of the Senate. And both political parties are making a major effort to enlist women in government positions at the local level, at the State level, and, of course, at the Federal level.

Now, there is one very selfish reason for doing that, for purposes of political cosmetics. In order to show that you are for women, the argument goes, you have got to appoint women to government positions or see that they are elected.

But that is not the most important reason. The most important reason is that in any society there are only a limited number of people who have capacities for leadership. That doesn't mean that other people are not people worth our respect, who do not have dignity, and who do not make great contributions. But all of the analyses of societies--and this is true of the American societies and the societies in all other parts of the world--show that around 5 to 6 percent is usual the proportion of the people who have real capacities for leadership.

Yet leadership is an enormously important ingredient for the success of any society. Without good leaders, you can't make it.

So where do you find them? Here we come to the key point. Leadership does not come in colors. It may be white or black or brown. One thing you must learn as you travel around the world as I have done, is that an individual's religion, his political philosophy, his racial background is no indication of whether he or she is a leader.

Neither does leadership come in terms of whether on happens to be a man or a woman. It is true that around the world today most people in political leadership are men. That has been the tradition, and only recently have women gotten the vote and begun to be recognized as leaders. Nevertheless, there are in the world women who have great capacity for leadership--and their capacity is recognized.

The story of India, the most populous democratic nation in the world, is, of course, well known to you. When Mrs. Gandhi first got the job as Prime Minister of India everybody thought (with some reason) that she got it because she was the daughter of Nehru, who was sort of a folk hero. My wife and I remember meeting her back in 1953; she was very attractive and very intelligent, and we were not surprised when she got that position after Nehru died.

But then they had an election in India, and she was elected. Now people may disagree with Mrs. Gandhi. Many people may say, "Why should a women have the job?" But 400 million people who live in that country apparently felt she should, because she won that election. They selected her not because she was a woman, but because she had capacity for leadership.

Then in a very small country we see a different thing. Take Golda Meir in Israel. Now, I would say, having met her on several occasions and knowing, also, the enormous competition in that country, which perhaps has as many leaders as you could possibly find in any small country of 2 million, she would win in any event, not because she is a woman, but because she is a very strong, vigorous advocate of her point of view. And that is why she is the leader of her country.

The point is this, basically: In the United States today we have got to have the best people in positions of leadership. We have got to look beyond all of the usual tests that we make, and if a woman has that capacity, we want her. We want women in the House; we want them in the Senate; we want them in government positions; we want them in elected positions everywhere. That is one of the reasons why Girls Nation is so important, because it is eliciting from the girls of America the very best and saying to them, "If you want to go into politics, do it, because you are going to have a chance."

I can assure you if you do, you will have a chance. You will have an equal chance. You will not be discriminated against. That, at least, is my opinion. If you want to go into business, the professions, various other activities, the same thing.

Wherever a woman has the capacity, she can make it. You know you all Compete with boys in school, and you do very well. I have seen the grades that you get, and the girls do very well.

I expect out of this group that some may end up in the Congress, State legislature, city council, school boards. Maybe, who knows, years ahead, maybe in this office. It can happen; it should happen; and America will be better for it--because we did not limit our search for leadership simply to half the population, the men. We went through the whole population, to everybody. We did not limit our search for leadership to the big States, or to certain religions, certain races, or the rest. We looked to all of America. That is the essence of America, that we look every place for our leadership.

Now, let's come to another phase of leadership. A woman has this advantage over a man: that she can exert leadership without ever being elected to office, without ever holding a position. I refer to the influence that a woman can have in her home, the influence that she has over her children, the influence, of course, that she has over her husband.

When I think back, I remember especially the influence of my mother, as you of course remember the influence of yours. My mother had perhaps more influence on me than my father. I think it rather works that way. Not always, but the mother often influences the boy, and the father may influence the daughter more. I am not sure Mrs. Nixon agrees with me with regard to our daughters [laughter]--but I know that the mother can have an enormous influence in finding and encouraging the leadership of her children.

Now a word about the wife's influence. I have met most of the great leaders of the world, and most of the first ladies of the world, since World War II, and I can assure you the first ladies of the world have an enormous impact on their husbands and on world affairs.

Looking around the world, some of the most gracious people, some of the most effective people in the world have been the women that I met. For example, one of the countries that Speaker Albert, with whom I had breakfast this morning, is going to visit this month is the Philippines. The Philippines has a very dynamic man as its President, Marcos. He was a war hero in World War II, vigorous and strong and so forth--but if you think he is strong, you should see his wife. Mrs. Marcos, a beautiful woman, attractive, persuasive, came here last fall. She was talking to us about the need for more sugar quotas for the Philippines--both to the Speaker and to me, we found as we compared notes. She was talking also about the need for many other things, such as an REA. Anybody from farm areas here? You know what the REA is. She said, "We need an REA in the Philippines. What can you do to help?" I can tell you that Mrs. Marcos had as much influence in her private visit to the United States as even her husband did when he came publicly. So you can imagine the influence she must have on her husband in addition to the influence she had with us.

I could name many others of the great leaders. Madame Chiang Kai-shek, who is one of the great ladies of the world. Or I think, in another and completely different vein, of Queen Elizabeth, her grace and poise as she presides as the Queen of England. I think of the Queen of Thailand--people often ask who is the most beautiful woman whom you have seen as you have traveled around the world and here again--I don't want to pick one over the other, but I have seen none more beautiful than she is. I was not surprised that Miss World came from Thailand 3 or 4 years ago. But here is a woman who has enormous influence on her husband, the King, who does not have great power but has great influence because of his position and she herself with her grace, her style, her poise, has an influence on that country.

Perhaps the strongest leader of our time, whether we agree with him or not, was de Gaulle, the last of the great World War II leaders in Europe. You remember he died last year, and everybody saw this great, strong, impressive man, a man who could talk for an hour without a note and it would be just as if he had dictated it. His wife, when you first saw her, was not impressive. De Gaulle was a huge man, tall, who walked as a soldier does, and his wife seemed rather small compared to him. But his wife, once you talked to her and knew her, was a woman who came from the soil of France. She had enormous spiritual and religious strength and qualities. Anyone who knew de Gaulle knew that there were very few people who ever got close to him. He was a man who did things almost totally alone, but the one person in all of his life who probably had the greatest influence on de Gaulle was Madame de Gaulle, his wife--this quiet and simple, yet very impressive and intelligent, woman, talking to this great man.

So, I have come full circle, and I come back to you. You are growing up in a period when America faces many great challenges and competition through the world. America has got to do its best. We have got to have the best of all of our people. We cannot afford to have any group of Americans left out. We cannot afford to fail to tap the human resources of this country. We need the men; we need the women; we need people from all sections of the country. We can't have the North fighting the South, the East fighting the West, or the cities fighting the country.

That is what we need, and above everything else I am convinced that you will play a role. Some of you may be tempted to think, "Unless I play a role of spending my whole time in politics or business, in other words, unless I become like a man"--and 'this is what our Women's Lib people might say--"then I really haven't done my share."

Don't you believe it. There are millions of women in this country who, without ever running for office, without ever becoming involved in business full time, have an influence on the country as homemakers, as wives, and as mothers, that is perhaps far greater than most of the men.

Don't ever downgrade that. It is terribly important, and I just know as I look at this group that you are going to be fine Americans in the years ahead. If you run for office, you are probably going to do pretty well. And whether you run for office or not, certainly in the capacity that you have in the homes you build, you will have an influence that will mean that the young people in the next generation, that you will help to raise, will be a generation that will be proud of America and be very worthy of America.

That is what Girls Nation can do for you, and it is what you can do for this country.