June 7, 1952
THANK YOU very much. Governor, I thank you very much for that wonderful introduction. I hope I can live up to it.
I am very happy to be with you again. I always enjoy these reunions. In my present position I review a lot more parades, but this is one place where I can march in one, and that is unusual.
When I was in St. Louis 2 years ago at the thirtieth reunion of the 35th Division I talked to you about world peace, and about the necessity of building up the defensive strength of all the free nations. A great deal has happened since then. Today I want to talk to you about the progress we have made since 1950. And I want to point out some of the dangers that now threaten us.
When I talked to you on June 10, 1950, I told you how the Soviet Union was threatening the peace of the world. I told you that the Soviet Union was engaged in a tremendous military buildup, and that we, together with our allies, had a long, hard road ahead of us. There were a lot of things on my mind when I made that speech to you in 1950.
You will remember that the Soviet Union had set off the first atomic explosion in the fall of 1949. Shortly after that I directed the top officials of our Government to make a new study of the foreign policies and the military potential of the Soviet Union, taking into account the fact that the Soviet Union now had the secret of the atomic bomb. I directed our officials to try to find out whether the Soviet Union was headed for war, and what we should do to deter and prevent such a conflict.
These officials worked together through the new National Security Council, under my direction, and it came up with their preliminary answers in April 1950. These answers presented us with some very difficult problems.
It seemed clear, as a result of this study, that the United States and all other free nations were faced with a great and growing danger. It seemed clear that we could meet the danger only by mobilizing our strength-and the strength of our allies--to check and deter aggression. This meant a great military effort in time of peace. It meant doubling or tripling the budget, increasing taxes heavily, and imposing various kinds of economic controls. It meant a great change in our normal peacetime way of doing things. These were the problems that were being laid on my desk at the time I spoke to you in St. Louis in 1950.
Just 3 weeks later the Communists invaded the Republic of Korea. That made the danger clear to everyone. The invasion of Korea demonstrated to all free nations that they had to have much stronger defenses to prevent Soviet conquest.
As a result, the free nations have been moving forward since the middle of 1950 to build bigger defenses. Our own country has taken the lead, because we are the strongest of the free nations.
We have made a lot of progress in 2 years. We have reached a number of the goals we set for ourselves back in 1950. We still have a long way to go in many respects, but if we stick to our course we can create the kind of strong, free world that we need to guarantee security and peace.
We can win the peace. And we are going to win the peace.
Now there has been a lot of loose talk lately to the effect that our defense program has been a failure. Much of this talk is politically inspired--the kind of talk you would expect in an election year. But I want to set the record straight. I want the people to have the facts about our defense program and our national security.
Let me give you some examples. Two years ago we had an Air force of 48 wings, with 400,000 men on duty and less than 9,000 planes in active use. Now we have an Air force of 91 wings, with almost a million men on duty and nearly 15,000 planes in active use. These figures refer to the Air force only, they do not include the big buildup of air power in the Navy and the Marine Corps.
The goal we set in 1950 called for a 95 wing Air force by midsummer 1952. Ninety-one of those wings are now operating, with new and better planes coming into service all the time. Within 2 months we expect the four remaining wings to be in operation also.
In the last 2 years we have tooled up the aircraft industry to produce the best planes being built anywhere in the world. And we are turning them out--now listen to this-at better than four times the pre-Korean rate.
Some of you may not realize what a great accomplishment this really is. We all remember how rapidly our factories turned out planes in World War II and we are inclined to think we should be able to do the same thing now without any trouble at all.
But the program is a very different one today. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that the planes we are building now are far heavier, far faster, and far more complicated than those we were building 7 years ago. A new jet fighter bears about as much relation to the old P-40 as a 1952 Cadillac or Chrysler bears to a model T ford. Both planes fly, and there the similarity ends. The design, the power unit, the fire controls--and everything else--are different, and far more difficult to make. And it is the same way with all our new models.
The second reason is that we are in a race for technical supremacy. The nation that freezes its models too soon will be a nation with an obsolete, inferior air force.
In World War II it was my business to investigate the construction of airplanes, and at that time it took 18 months to get a plane from the drawing board off the end of the line. When that plane came off the end of the line it was obsolete. We don't want a situation like that, and we are not going to have it.
The air force we are building now is an air force of the highest quality we can possibly provide. We are concentrating on production of the very latest types of planes--and we are constantly working to design and produce even better planes.
We are not trying to build the biggest air force in the world. We are trying to build the best one--backed up by the industrial capacity to expand it rapidly if need be, and keep it always up to date.
Of course, this costs money. It costs a lot of money. You may have heard some nonsense in recent days to the effect that we could save money on our national defense by building up a gigantic air force. Anyone who has that idea forgets that modern air power is a very expensive proposition.
Some of our new jet fighters cost as much as $600,000--nine times the price of the average fighter plane used in World War II.
A B-36 bomber costs $5 million today, when everything is figured in, compared with only $800,000 for the B-29, 7 or 8 years ago. And the B-29 is just as obsolete now as the cars of 1938. We need new appropriations of more than $22 billion this coming fiscal year just for the Air force, of which $11 billion is to buy new aircraft.
A big, powerful air force is an absolute necessity and we are going to have one. But don't let anybody tell you that it won't cost money. It will cost a lot of money. Our plans now call for building up from 95 to 143 active wings in 2 or 3 years. We have a similar expansion under way for the air units of the Navy. These will be terrifically powerful air forces when we get them all complete. And at the same time our aircraft industry will be ready to go rapidly into full-scale war production of the latest models, should that need ever arise. God forbid that it should ever arise.
We are making progress in building up our air forces here at home without in any way neglecting the needs of the forces in Korea.
There has been a terrible amount of misinformation about our situation in the air in Korea. To hear some people talk, you would think we were completely outclassed over there--and at the mercy of the Russian-made enemy air force.
In the air combat in Korea our planes have knocked the Russians out at the rate of 8 to 1. You can read that in the newspapers if you want to. They can't prevent us from publishing that.
You know that isn't true about our not being properly prepared in Korea. Here are the facts. We have been able to maintain air supremacy over most of North Korea. That means we can bomb the enemy at will, almost anywhere in his territory. At the northern border, on the Yalu River, we do not have supremacy, but we do have clear superiority in air power--which means we can reach our objectives, even though we have to fight off opposition.
We owe a greater debt than we can ever pay to all the gallant airmen who have fought so valiantly to hold the Korean air for the United Nations. It is our duty to make sure they receive the finest and most efficient modern weapons to keep up the fight. And that we are doing. The United Nations forces in the air are being kept supplied with the planes they need for the tasks assigned to them.
All we have done and are doing to build up our air power is matched by our expanding land and sea power. The United States Army has. been doubled in size these last 2 years. And it is being reequipped with the finest of modern weapons. These weapons would astonish you. We are getting these weapons now, in quantity. For example, one of our best new tanks is now coming off the production line at the rate of well over 300 a month--and the rate is rising very fast.
As for the Navy, there are twice as many ships in full operation now as before Korea. And our naval ships and weapons are improving all the time. There are some amazing new technical developments in the Navy. I shall have more to say on that subject next week, up in New London, Conn.
With all the progress we have made, we still have a long way to go before we reach the strength we now consider necessary to the national security. We have just about reached the objectives for this summer that were set out 2 years ago, when the mobilization program first began. If we can do as well in the next 2 years, we shall have a right to be proud of ourselves, and to feel that the world is safe.
Two years ago, when I was talking with you in St. Louis, I said a good deal about the need to help our allies build up their defensive power.
The study that was made by the National Security Council in 1950 made it perfectly plain we could be secure against the Communist menace only if other free nations were secure, too--only if the strength of our allies was added to our own.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was just getting started at that time. To be effective it needed many things. It needed a more closely knit, a more clearly unified Europe behind it. And it needed real arms and real fighting forces.
Those were some of our problems 2 years ago, and great progress has been made in solving them.
Just last week Secretary Acheson came back from Germany and France. And he brought with him a series of treaties and agreements vitally affecting the defense of Europe. I have sent these treaties and agreements to the Senate, so that they can be ratified as soon as possible. These documents will make free Germany an equal member of the European community of free nations and will associate Germany in an integrated European defense force. This European defense force will be a part of the NATO forces under General Ridgway.
The plans for this European defense force are a tremendous step toward European unity and security. It is vitally important that we ratify the documents necessary to make this force a reality. Once these documents are in effect, there will be a new Europe, with a greater power to defend itself.
During these 2 years, while this European army plan has been worked out, the European countries have been doing a great deal to build up their individual defense forces. Take air power, for example. With our help there will be 60 wings in Europe under NATO command by the end of this year. Within 2 years, if present plans are carried out--if everything is not ruined in this socalled "economy" drive--the number will have risen very substantially. Of course, these NATO forces will be equipped partly with American planes. But about 60 percent of their equipment will be French and British models. And these European planes are comparable to the best that we produce.
The story is the same with the land forces and the sea forces under the NATO command. Wherever you look, you will find growing military strength in Europe, strength that we can count on.
This is the record of the things we have done. These last 2 years have been a period of great achievement. But our very successes have created a new danger for us-the danger of apathy and complacency.
So far, we have been able to avert world war III. Because of that fact, people are beginning to relax. Living in the middle of a world crisis for 2 years is beginning to make some of us indifferent to danger. Some people are forgetting about national security and thinking how nice it would be to economize and have lower taxes.
Well, everybody wants to economize and everybody wants lower taxes, but they don't want to economize and have lower taxes at the expense of the complete destruction of the free world. And that is what we are faced with.
It is easy to fall into this attitude. You can find this attitude running through labor, through industry, through the Congress. But the cold fact is that we are still in great danger. We cannot tell what the Kremlin is planning. There may be new offensives. in Korea. There may be new Koreas in other parts of the globe. The Communists may even be planning greater attacks than we have seen up to this point. We do not know. We cannot be sure.
There is no excuse for lying back and being indifferent to the national security.. There is no justification for slashing appropriations for defense for the aid of our allies. But that is exactly what a group of shortsighted politicians are trying to do. And they are doing it for strictly political purposes, political propaganda, and political' "honey." That is what it amounts to.
This is not the year to play around with meat axes in the field of national security. The Communists are building up forces in Korea and other parts of Asia. In Europe the Russians are threatening Berlin. Communist parties are staging riots in Paris and Tokyo.
The Kremlin is not going to take a vacation just because we are having a Presidential election in this country. Far from it. The Kremlin is going to make the most of this year to try to frighten the West--to try to undermine the morale of the free nations and split them apart.
Now, I am in favor of economy--of eliminating waste. But slashing appropriations for defense is not economy. It is playing with fire. The dollars that are saved in that way aren't going to help us much if we lack the planes, or the tanks, or our allies we need in the critical hour of danger.
Two years ago, when I talked to you in St. Louis, I spelled out the dangers we were facing, and the need for strong defense. Today, after 2 years of progress in building up those defenses--after 2 years of armed conflict against aggression--I am sure you will agree with me when I say we must not weaken, we must not waver, we must not relax in the effort we are making for the defense of the free world.
I think that every veteran knows what preparedness means. And I think it is the duty of every veteran to stand up and say to his friends, to his local organization, to his Congressmen: No false economy. No fooling around with the security of this country for petty political gain. No trifling with the mighty effort of this great Nation to lead the world to peace.
I am sure that I can count on you people here today to take that stand.
I think you veterans also understand that the purpose of our defense program is peace. Peace--peace is what I have been working for for the last 7 long years. The only reason in the world for our defense program and our mutual security program is to prevent aggression and deter war. I am sure that goal is worth the price we are paying. I am confident that if we carry these programs forward successfully, we can bring about peace in the world.
And may God help us to bring it about.
NOTE: The President spoke at noon at the Shrine Mosque in Springfield, Mo. In his opening remarks he referred to Governor Forrest Smith of Missouri.
For the President's address on world peace in St. Louis, June 10, 1950, see 1950 volume, this series, Item 162.
For the President's message to Congress transmitting a convention on relations with Germany and the related documents, see Item 151.
The 32d annual reunion of the 35th Division Association was held in Springfield, June 6-8, 1952. The address was carried on a nationwide broadcast.
THANK YOU very much. Governor, I thank you very much for that wonderful introduction. I hope I can live up to it.
I am very happy to be with you again. I always enjoy these reunions. In my present position I review a lot more parades, but this is one place where I can march in one, and that is unusual.
When I was in St. Louis 2 years ago at the thirtieth reunion of the 35th Division I talked to you about world peace, and about the necessity of building up the defensive strength of all the free nations. A great deal has happened since then. Today I want to talk to you about the progress we have made since 1950. And I want to point out some of the dangers that now threaten us.
When I talked to you on June 10, 1950, I told you how the Soviet Union was threatening the peace of the world. I told you that the Soviet Union was engaged in a tremendous military buildup, and that we, together with our allies, had a long, hard road ahead of us. There were a lot of things on my mind when I made that speech to you in 1950.
You will remember that the Soviet Union had set off the first atomic explosion in the fall of 1949. Shortly after that I directed the top officials of our Government to make a new study of the foreign policies and the military potential of the Soviet Union, taking into account the fact that the Soviet Union now had the secret of the atomic bomb. I directed our officials to try to find out whether the Soviet Union was headed for war, and what we should do to deter and prevent such a conflict.
These officials worked together through the new National Security Council, under my direction, and it came up with their preliminary answers in April 1950. These answers presented us with some very difficult problems.
It seemed clear, as a result of this study, that the United States and all other free nations were faced with a great and growing danger. It seemed clear that we could meet the danger only by mobilizing our strength-and the strength of our allies--to check and deter aggression. This meant a great military effort in time of peace. It meant doubling or tripling the budget, increasing taxes heavily, and imposing various kinds of economic controls. It meant a great change in our normal peacetime way of doing things. These were the problems that were being laid on my desk at the time I spoke to you in St. Louis in 1950.
Just 3 weeks later the Communists invaded the Republic of Korea. That made the danger clear to everyone. The invasion of Korea demonstrated to all free nations that they had to have much stronger defenses to prevent Soviet conquest.
As a result, the free nations have been moving forward since the middle of 1950 to build bigger defenses. Our own country has taken the lead, because we are the strongest of the free nations.
We have made a lot of progress in 2 years. We have reached a number of the goals we set for ourselves back in 1950. We still have a long way to go in many respects, but if we stick to our course we can create the kind of strong, free world that we need to guarantee security and peace.
We can win the peace. And we are going to win the peace.
Now there has been a lot of loose talk lately to the effect that our defense program has been a failure. Much of this talk is politically inspired--the kind of talk you would expect in an election year. But I want to set the record straight. I want the people to have the facts about our defense program and our national security.
Let me give you some examples. Two years ago we had an Air force of 48 wings, with 400,000 men on duty and less than 9,000 planes in active use. Now we have an Air force of 91 wings, with almost a million men on duty and nearly 15,000 planes in active use. These figures refer to the Air force only, they do not include the big buildup of air power in the Navy and the Marine Corps.
The goal we set in 1950 called for a 95 wing Air force by midsummer 1952. Ninety-one of those wings are now operating, with new and better planes coming into service all the time. Within 2 months we expect the four remaining wings to be in operation also.
In the last 2 years we have tooled up the aircraft industry to produce the best planes being built anywhere in the world. And we are turning them out--now listen to this-at better than four times the pre-Korean rate.
Some of you may not realize what a great accomplishment this really is. We all remember how rapidly our factories turned out planes in World War II and we are inclined to think we should be able to do the same thing now without any trouble at all.
But the program is a very different one today. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that the planes we are building now are far heavier, far faster, and far more complicated than those we were building 7 years ago. A new jet fighter bears about as much relation to the old P-40 as a 1952 Cadillac or Chrysler bears to a model T ford. Both planes fly, and there the similarity ends. The design, the power unit, the fire controls--and everything else--are different, and far more difficult to make. And it is the same way with all our new models.
The second reason is that we are in a race for technical supremacy. The nation that freezes its models too soon will be a nation with an obsolete, inferior air force.
In World War II it was my business to investigate the construction of airplanes, and at that time it took 18 months to get a plane from the drawing board off the end of the line. When that plane came off the end of the line it was obsolete. We don't want a situation like that, and we are not going to have it.
The air force we are building now is an air force of the highest quality we can possibly provide. We are concentrating on production of the very latest types of planes--and we are constantly working to design and produce even better planes.
We are not trying to build the biggest air force in the world. We are trying to build the best one--backed up by the industrial capacity to expand it rapidly if need be, and keep it always up to date.
Of course, this costs money. It costs a lot of money. You may have heard some nonsense in recent days to the effect that we could save money on our national defense by building up a gigantic air force. Anyone who has that idea forgets that modern air power is a very expensive proposition.
Some of our new jet fighters cost as much as $600,000--nine times the price of the average fighter plane used in World War II.
A B-36 bomber costs $5 million today, when everything is figured in, compared with only $800,000 for the B-29, 7 or 8 years ago. And the B-29 is just as obsolete now as the cars of 1938. We need new appropriations of more than $22 billion this coming fiscal year just for the Air force, of which $11 billion is to buy new aircraft.
A big, powerful air force is an absolute necessity and we are going to have one. But don't let anybody tell you that it won't cost money. It will cost a lot of money. Our plans now call for building up from 95 to 143 active wings in 2 or 3 years. We have a similar expansion under way for the air units of the Navy. These will be terrifically powerful air forces when we get them all complete. And at the same time our aircraft industry will be ready to go rapidly into full-scale war production of the latest models, should that need ever arise. God forbid that it should ever arise.
We are making progress in building up our air forces here at home without in any way neglecting the needs of the forces in Korea.
There has been a terrible amount of misinformation about our situation in the air in Korea. To hear some people talk, you would think we were completely outclassed over there--and at the mercy of the Russian-made enemy air force.
In the air combat in Korea our planes have knocked the Russians out at the rate of 8 to 1. You can read that in the newspapers if you want to. They can't prevent us from publishing that.
You know that isn't true about our not being properly prepared in Korea. Here are the facts. We have been able to maintain air supremacy over most of North Korea. That means we can bomb the enemy at will, almost anywhere in his territory. At the northern border, on the Yalu River, we do not have supremacy, but we do have clear superiority in air power--which means we can reach our objectives, even though we have to fight off opposition.
We owe a greater debt than we can ever pay to all the gallant airmen who have fought so valiantly to hold the Korean air for the United Nations. It is our duty to make sure they receive the finest and most efficient modern weapons to keep up the fight. And that we are doing. The United Nations forces in the air are being kept supplied with the planes they need for the tasks assigned to them.
All we have done and are doing to build up our air power is matched by our expanding land and sea power. The United States Army has. been doubled in size these last 2 years. And it is being reequipped with the finest of modern weapons. These weapons would astonish you. We are getting these weapons now, in quantity. For example, one of our best new tanks is now coming off the production line at the rate of well over 300 a month--and the rate is rising very fast.
As for the Navy, there are twice as many ships in full operation now as before Korea. And our naval ships and weapons are improving all the time. There are some amazing new technical developments in the Navy. I shall have more to say on that subject next week, up in New London, Conn.
With all the progress we have made, we still have a long way to go before we reach the strength we now consider necessary to the national security. We have just about reached the objectives for this summer that were set out 2 years ago, when the mobilization program first began. If we can do as well in the next 2 years, we shall have a right to be proud of ourselves, and to feel that the world is safe.
Two years ago, when I was talking with you in St. Louis, I said a good deal about the need to help our allies build up their defensive power.
The study that was made by the National Security Council in 1950 made it perfectly plain we could be secure against the Communist menace only if other free nations were secure, too--only if the strength of our allies was added to our own.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was just getting started at that time. To be effective it needed many things. It needed a more closely knit, a more clearly unified Europe behind it. And it needed real arms and real fighting forces.
Those were some of our problems 2 years ago, and great progress has been made in solving them.
Just last week Secretary Acheson came back from Germany and France. And he brought with him a series of treaties and agreements vitally affecting the defense of Europe. I have sent these treaties and agreements to the Senate, so that they can be ratified as soon as possible. These documents will make free Germany an equal member of the European community of free nations and will associate Germany in an integrated European defense force. This European defense force will be a part of the NATO forces under General Ridgway.
The plans for this European defense force are a tremendous step toward European unity and security. It is vitally important that we ratify the documents necessary to make this force a reality. Once these documents are in effect, there will be a new Europe, with a greater power to defend itself.
During these 2 years, while this European army plan has been worked out, the European countries have been doing a great deal to build up their individual defense forces. Take air power, for example. With our help there will be 60 wings in Europe under NATO command by the end of this year. Within 2 years, if present plans are carried out--if everything is not ruined in this socalled "economy" drive--the number will have risen very substantially. Of course, these NATO forces will be equipped partly with American planes. But about 60 percent of their equipment will be French and British models. And these European planes are comparable to the best that we produce.
The story is the same with the land forces and the sea forces under the NATO command. Wherever you look, you will find growing military strength in Europe, strength that we can count on.
This is the record of the things we have done. These last 2 years have been a period of great achievement. But our very successes have created a new danger for us-the danger of apathy and complacency.
So far, we have been able to avert world war III. Because of that fact, people are beginning to relax. Living in the middle of a world crisis for 2 years is beginning to make some of us indifferent to danger. Some people are forgetting about national security and thinking how nice it would be to economize and have lower taxes.
Well, everybody wants to economize and everybody wants lower taxes, but they don't want to economize and have lower taxes at the expense of the complete destruction of the free world. And that is what we are faced with.
It is easy to fall into this attitude. You can find this attitude running through labor, through industry, through the Congress. But the cold fact is that we are still in great danger. We cannot tell what the Kremlin is planning. There may be new offensives. in Korea. There may be new Koreas in other parts of the globe. The Communists may even be planning greater attacks than we have seen up to this point. We do not know. We cannot be sure.
There is no excuse for lying back and being indifferent to the national security.. There is no justification for slashing appropriations for defense for the aid of our allies. But that is exactly what a group of shortsighted politicians are trying to do. And they are doing it for strictly political purposes, political propaganda, and political' "honey." That is what it amounts to.
This is not the year to play around with meat axes in the field of national security. The Communists are building up forces in Korea and other parts of Asia. In Europe the Russians are threatening Berlin. Communist parties are staging riots in Paris and Tokyo.
The Kremlin is not going to take a vacation just because we are having a Presidential election in this country. Far from it. The Kremlin is going to make the most of this year to try to frighten the West--to try to undermine the morale of the free nations and split them apart.
Now, I am in favor of economy--of eliminating waste. But slashing appropriations for defense is not economy. It is playing with fire. The dollars that are saved in that way aren't going to help us much if we lack the planes, or the tanks, or our allies we need in the critical hour of danger.
Two years ago, when I talked to you in St. Louis, I spelled out the dangers we were facing, and the need for strong defense. Today, after 2 years of progress in building up those defenses--after 2 years of armed conflict against aggression--I am sure you will agree with me when I say we must not weaken, we must not waver, we must not relax in the effort we are making for the defense of the free world.
I think that every veteran knows what preparedness means. And I think it is the duty of every veteran to stand up and say to his friends, to his local organization, to his Congressmen: No false economy. No fooling around with the security of this country for petty political gain. No trifling with the mighty effort of this great Nation to lead the world to peace.
I am sure that I can count on you people here today to take that stand.
I think you veterans also understand that the purpose of our defense program is peace. Peace--peace is what I have been working for for the last 7 long years. The only reason in the world for our defense program and our mutual security program is to prevent aggression and deter war. I am sure that goal is worth the price we are paying. I am confident that if we carry these programs forward successfully, we can bring about peace in the world.
And may God help us to bring it about.
NOTE: The President spoke at noon at the Shrine Mosque in Springfield, Mo. In his opening remarks he referred to Governor Forrest Smith of Missouri.
For the President's address on world peace in St. Louis, June 10, 1950, see 1950 volume, this series, Item 162.
For the President's message to Congress transmitting a convention on relations with Germany and the related documents, see Item 151.
The 32d annual reunion of the 35th Division Association was held in Springfield, June 6-8, 1952. The address was carried on a nationwide broadcast.