May 25, 1951
Mr. Secretary, ladies and gentlemen:
I don't know when I have been in a more impressive and well worthwhile ceremony. The entertainment which Carter had been having here in Washington, and which was given here for him tonight, was magnificent--the singers beyond compare, the dancers wonderful; Eugene List, I met him at Potsdam, and had him sent to Paris for that A Flat, Opus 42 Chopin Waltz. The two pieces he .played tonight were played especially because he thinks I like them--and I do.
It is a pleasure to me to be able to make a small contribution to the memory of Carter Barron and for the dedication of this wonderful amphitheater. This amphitheater is the result of the efforts of Carter Barron. I knew him very well. He was just what Walter Pidgeon said he was, he was the ideal southern gentleman.
I spent many hours with Carter, talking about this great Capital of the United States--literally and really the capital of the world. He and I talked about the improvement of this wonderful city. We talked of the necessity for expanding its plan, and for making it just what it ought to be: the most beautiful city in the world, and also the most useful.
We discussed many a time an auditorium that would seat 40,000 people and a stadium that would seat 100,000 people, and this amphitheater, for the purpose for which it was constructed, and for which it is being used.
Those are grand plans. I knew a city planner in Chicago one time, named V. H. Burnham, and he had a motto which said, "Make no little plans. Great plans can always be amended to meet the situation. Little plans can never be expanded into great plans."
I hope that Washington City and the Government which is responsible for this great Capital, will bear that in mind. I am doing everything I can to make this the great city it ought to be.
I was very fond of Carter, and it is fitting that the first play given in this theater should be called, "The Faith of Our Fathers." We ought to think deeply about that phrase "faith of our fathers." We ought to ask ourselves what the faith of our fathers really was, and what it means to us today.
The faith of our fathers is expressed in the Declaration of Independence and in the Bill of Rights. It is set forth in perfectly simple terms: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."
This faith is the basis of free government. This faith is the basis of the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States, the greatest document of government that was ever written in the history
Of man.
Many times in our history this faith has appeared to weaken, and our Government has appeared to have turned toward backward reaction. After that has happened, however, men have gone back to the faith of our Declaration of Independence and our Bill of Rights, and they have found there the strength and the courage to make our country stronger and better.
There are now many other nations that share our faith in free government. Since 1776 this faith has swept around the world. It now includes the free nations of Europe, and South and Central America, the Near East and Africa, and in recent years it has created many new and independent free nations in Asia.
This faith is the only hope for peace and freedom in the world.
Faith and free government have always been opposed by dictatorships. Today it is being threatened by a new and terrible tyranny. Hitler and Mussolini never had anything to match the terrible secret police of the Kremlin. The situation in Russia is almost fantastic. Nobody there can go to bed without the fear that the secret police may come in the night and take them away, never to be seen again. The Soviet is extending this slave system to the countries they now control.
In Eastern Germany--and I have this on the authority of no less a person than the Bishop of Eastern Berlin, who paid me a visit not very long ago--in Eastern Germany, thousands of persons have been kidnapped by the secret police. They just disappear, and are never heard of again. They kidnap the children between the ages of 10 and 16, and carry them off to Moscow. And those children never come home.
This is the kind of danger we are facing. This is what we are up against. It is our business, and our duty, to keep this thing from spreading. If we are to preserve freedom in the world, we must act together with the other nations that share our faith. We must try to create world peace under law. We must have a worldwide organization of nations that will put a stop to war and settle disputes peacefully.
This has been the constant aim of our foreign policy. This is what we are fighting for in Korea. We are fighting in Korea to preserve the United Nations, and to give it strength and power to enforce its mandates. We are fighting in Korea to prevent a third world war. That is the greatest cause in the world.
Our men and boys are fighting in Korea, struggling and dying to save us from the horrors of a third world war. They are fighting to make a world organization that will prevent war in the future.
It is up to us to see that they do not fight and die in vain.
It is up to us to stop petty bickering, to support them by our words, by our deeds, and by our prayers.
If we can stop that petty political bickering, stop the misrepresentations, and the character assassinations in this country, I am sure that our faith will succeed, we will be living the faith of our fathers, and victory will be ours.
We must believe in the faith of our fathers. We must believe in freedom and justice and fairness. We must believe in human rights and civil rights for every man, be he yellow, red, black, or white. We must act in accordance with that belief, and if we do act in accordance with the faith of our fathers, there will be no question about the outcome, we will attain world concord and world peace.
NOTE: The President spoke at 9:40 p.m. at the Carter Barron Amphitheater in Rock Creek Park in Washington. In his opening words he referred to Secretary of the Interior Oscar L. Chapman, who presided at the ceremonies.
Mr. Barron was a motion picture executive and civic leader in Washington until the time of his death on November 16, 1950.
Eugene List, a pianist, had played for Stalin, Churchill, and the President at the Potsdam Conference in 1945.
Walter Pidgeon, motion picture entertainer, read a eulogy of Mr. Barron by James Russell Wiggins, magazine editor of the Washington Post.
