October 11, 1952
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Mayor, distinguished guests:
I am highly pleased to be here tonight and before I start on my regular address, I want to say to you that I don't think I have enjoyed organ music any more than I did the music put out by your great organist here tonight. He really played things worthwhile. I am exceedingly happy that Mr. Pope informs me that this is a nonpartisan organization. I am on a partisan trip, and I fear very much I am going to make you a partisan speech, so if you want to throw me out, now is the time to do it.
You know, I have been in elective public office for 30 years this November--this coming November I will have been in elective public office 30 years. I have had every honor that the Democratic Party can give to a man. On the 20th day of January I shall retire from public office, but I shall not retire from activity--be sure of that. I am not like some politicians who get everything they possibly can out of a party and then become nonpartisan and high-grade independents. I am a Democrat and will be that all my life.
I am glad to be here in New York, particularly on an occasion like this, when we are meeting to honor the vision, enterprise, and faith of Christopher Columbus. Those qualities in that great explorer opened the door to a new world.
Columbus had some very positive ideas, and he was willing to back them up. He was sure the shape of the earth was round, and he made a trip to prove it.
Like Columbus, I have had some positive ideas of my own. And also like Columbus, I have been making a trip to prove one of them. That was an idea I had about the shape this country is in.
I can report to you now on what I discovered. This country is in very good shape--very good indeed.
I am glad I had a chance to see this for myself. For I was beginning to fear, from the Republican campaign oratory which is filling the air these days, that the country was in terrible shape.
If these Republican orators had been living in Columbus' time, I'm sure they would have been among those who believed the world was flat.
In fact, I'm not altogether certain what their views may be on that subject even now.
I'm not going to tell you that Columbus would be a Democrat if he were alive these days, although I can't see why he wouldn't be.
But I do know that if he could have traveled with me these past 2 weeks, he'd feel very proud of this wonderful country of ours.
I have been through our cities and across our great plains and mountains, to the Pacific and back; and I can assure you that this is a very prosperous country. It is strong and industrious and thriving.
And when we think about what our Nation is doing, around the world, for the cause of freedom and peace, we can be sure of something else. This is a brave and generous country. In this time of trouble and upheaval, this country of ours is the hope of the world.
I am proud that this country has reached its present position of prosperity and world responsibility under the leadership of my party and my administration.
I am proud that my party rescued this Nation from the black despair of the depression, 20 years ago. I am prouder still that we have helped our economy to grow and expand ever since.
Never have we enjoyed so long a period of such prosperity and growth. The Communists have been waiting these past 20 years for that final economic collapse which, in their warped philosophy, is the inevitable end of all capitalist countries. The Republicans have also been expecting another depression that might give them a chance to get elected. But in this respect, both the Republicans and the Communists have been disappointed.
We are not going to have that depression, because we know, now, how to keep our country strong and prosperous. The answer lies in the policies we have put into effect-policies that promote the welfare of all the people.
We have made our agriculture strong through such programs as price supports and soil conservation. We have helped our people by protecting the right of labor to organize, and by minimum wage and social insurance laws. We have tapped the great resources of the West through Government-built power dams and irrigation projects. We have held the ups and downs of the economic cycle in line through a sound banking system, and controls over credit, and a flexible program of public works. All these things have encouraged the expansion of business, both large and small.
We have established the rule that no one group is entitled to dominate the whole economy, the way a little band of economic royalists did in the 1920's. They ran it for their own private profit.
Now, it's a curious thing, but during all these 20 years--while we have been putting this country on the firmest basis it has ever known--the head of the Democratic Party has been the object of a continual stream of abuse. The special interest lobbies have never lagged in their zeal. They have not even bothered to change their accusations.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was called a dictator. So was I. He was called a weakling. So was I. He was accused of being boss-ridden, corrupt, surrounded by a palace guard, of being a Socialist, of fostering communism, of weakening private enterprise, of lowering public morals. I am accused of exactly the very same things.
Both he and I, of course, have had our fair share of human frailty and error. But I suspect the real crime is that we were both successful in working for the people, and keeping the country with all its great resources and opportunities, for the people-for their enjoyment and that of their children-and keeping it out of the hands of the powerful few.
Now, on the 20th day of next January, I expect to welcome a new man to this company of much abused Chief Executives-Adlai Stevenson of Illinois.
I predict that he will be just as much slandered and maligned as his predecessors, because I am sure that he is devoted to the cause of the people.
But I have this comforting thought for him. The hatchet men among the lobbyists and the one-party press might just as well save their breath and their ink and their paper. When I go around the country, as I have been doing lately, the people do not shun me. They do not look for a monster with horns and tail. On the contrary, they seem very friendly, and very glad to see me, believe it or not.
The truth is, you can't fool the people. They know what is going on.
And as a consequence, the opposition party always finds itself in a dilemma, every 4 years. The Republican. Party starts the race in these election campaigns, under the banner of "Down with Socialism." And then, in the home stretch, they switch to the slogan of "Me, too!" The switch for this year is already underway.
It has only been a few weeks since the Republican candidate met with Senator Taft up here in Morningside Heights to learn what his "great crusade" was all about. Senator Taft explained to him that it was a crusade against "creeping socialization."
Now this is a perfectly safe thing for the Republicans to be against, but when they are called on to explain what they mean, it begins to get a little awkward for them. Are they against Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Harry Truman's fair Deal and all our works, or aren't they? Of course, a great many of them are, but you would be surprised at how this question can embarrass them. They can't admit we've done anything good for obvious reasons. On the other hand, and for equally obvious reasons, it is difficult for the Republicans to proclaim their opposition to all the programs we have put into effect for helping the workers, the farmers, and the businessmen, and all the rest.
So, you see, part of this great game of politics, every 4 years, is for us to try to pin the Republicans down as to what they mean by "creeping socialism," and for them to try to avoid being pinned down. It's a great game. This is an argument in which the Democrats have all the advantage--because the record of accomplishment is on our side. We just say to the Republicans: "Now you are against the New Deal and the fair Deal and all their works, so will you kindly tell us and the American people just which one of our programs you want to repeal."
Of course, they can't admit that they want to repeal any of them. So, as they are pinned down, issue by issue, they begin to say: "We're not really opposed to that--we are in favor of it." And pretty soon they begin trying to claim credit for having started the thing in the first place. This is called "Me-tooism"--that is the definition of it. The whole process might also be called trying to have it both ways at the same time. At any rate, that is now going on.
Just a few days ago Senator Taft, who has written the marching orders for the "great crusade," followed me on a platform in Shenandoah, Iowa. There he said, in a rather angry fashion, that he and his party were not against those things we had been doing for the farmer at all, and how could anybody have gotten that idea? And the socalled Republican "truth squad," who have been limping around in my wake, explained recently, in Denver, that when it came to farmers and reclamation, the Republican 80th Congress had done more for "creeping socialism" than the Democrats ever did. Now can you beat that one ? I can't.
I wonder if Columbus ever had a truth squad following him around, shouting at the top of his voice: "The world is flat, I tell you. The world is flat."
Now the Republican candidate for President, who has much to learn about these things, has begun to catch on to this business of "Me-tooism." He has been against Federal aid to education, against social security--no better than prison, he called it. He is against Federal action in the field of health. But in a speech in Los Angeles just the other day, he said he was for extending social security, a little bit. He said he is for Federal aid to education, just a little bit. He is for aid for medical care, just a little bit.
I can give him a piece of advice. He need not be so timid. The special interest lobbies won't bite him. Now this is the time in the campaign when the special interest lobbies get the daylights scared out of them--that their candidate will lose. So they'll let him say anything if it will get votes--just so long as he agrees to do what they want after he gets in. "Me, too" is all right now--this is nearly the middle of October. But I doubt that the Republicans can fool the people with any such acts of deathbed repentance. The people can tell where the Republicans really stand by looking at the record. That is all they need to do. And that record is clearly against the people. It is a terrible record, if you will just study it.
This is the fix the Republicans have gotten themselves into in domestic policy. Now let us see where the Republicans and their candidate stand on foreign policy.
There was a time when I thought I knew.
There was a time, during the life of Senator Vandenberg, when one wing of the Republican Party joined with the Democrats to strengthen our allies abroad against communism. They did more than make speeches then. They voted for a free world.
There was a time when the man who is now the Republican candidate played a great part in strengthening and unifying the defense of Europe. I thought his heart was in it. But I have been astonished and saddened since he became a candidate, that he has never seen fit to reaffirm the specific programs of military and economic aid to our allies in the free world--programs in which he played so vital a part. The only specific suggestion he has made about these programs is to propose violent cuts in money spent for our defense and to help strengthen our allies.
Now this is a new kind of isolationism. The old isolationism was to say that the United States was surrounded by an ocean moat that no enemy could cross. The new approach is to say: Yes, we are part of the world--but not if it costs any money.
So, we have the Republican candidate, on the one hand, who says that isolationism is dead but then sneers at the joint efforts we are undertaking with our allies. And on the other hand, we have all the diehard Senators he has endorsed for reelection, who still oppose the North Atlantic Treaty and the mutual security program--and want America to withdraw behind the moat.
Through all these isolationists runs a deep distrust of foreign nations and the foreign born. These men have turned their backs on the brave progress that the free countries of Europe have made with our assistance.
As for the Republican candidate himself, what has become of the convictions that he held--a few short months ago--when the free nations of Europe looked to him as a symbol of their unity against the Kremlin menace? He was in Europe as commander of the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty countries. I sent him there. It was his job to try to unify those forces, and to stimulate those countries to defend themselves from Communist imperialism.
Now I thought that mission was a success. At least, that was what I believed until a few days ago, when the Republican candidate made a speech attacking our foreign policy. In that speech, he said that our efforts to bring about greater unity in Europe have been failures. If that is true, then his mission to Europe was a failure.
This surprised me so much that I went back to the report he had made on the period of his service as head of the North Atlantic Treaty forces. This report points out the difficulties we all know, and the work that still has to be done to make Europe secure, but it doesn't suggest anywhere that our policy in Europe is a failure. In fact, he says we are on the right track.
Let me read to you from his report. He says, "We have made progress in all aspects of security." And later on he says, "The tide has begun to flow our way and the situation of the free world is brighter than it was a year ago."
If he really believed our policy in Europe was one of failure, it was his plain duty to tell us so when he returned from Europe, and not wait 6 months to put into a political speech.
Now let me tell you something. This talk about our European policy being a failure is just straight isolationist talk. It is part of the propaganda of the isolationist Republicans. What we have really done in Europe, is to save the home of Western civilization from enslavement by a godless creed.
The free nations of Europe are a shining example of what our leadership can mean. These great countries have more than strategic value. They are important to us as centers from which our culture springs, and to them we are bound by deep ties of ancestry. A great church to which many Americans belong, has its center in Europe-in Rome. All Americans can take pride in what we have done to save Western Europe from communism.
Our aid to Europe is not only a Government affair. One of our greatest accomplishments was carried out by private citizens, as a personal effort. That was the campaign of letters from our citizens to their friends and kinfolk in Italy, at the time of the Italian election in 1948. Many of you in this room took an important part in that effort. It helped to turn the tide against communism in Italy, and throughout Europe.
Just think where we would be now if we had listened to the defeatist talk of the isolationists in 1947, who said that Europe was not worth saving.
There is more that the people of this country can do in the struggle to strengthen and protect the free countries of Europe. Among other things, we would like to welcome more of the people of Europe to our shores, as immigrants and prospective citizens. As a Nation we can use those people in our expanding national economy. As Americans we would like to help provide new homes for refugees from communism, who manage to escape from behind the Iron Curtain. We would like to find new opportunities for many families in the overpopulated countries of free Europe--like Italy and the Netherlands and Greece. These are things the Democratic Party wants to do and will fight for with every means at its command.
We are held back now by a rigid immigration law, passed years ago by a Republican Congress and a Republican President. That law places a stigma of unworthiness on people from the countries of eastern and southern Europe. It holds them to be less desirable than the northern Europeans.
Yet it is those very people of southern and eastern Europe who are on the battlefront in the struggle against Communist subversion and Communist oppression. Their continuing resistance, their spirit in the fight, is of critical importance to the cause of freedom. These are the people, today, to whom we should be most grateful. Yet the discrimination in our immigration laws makes it impossible for us to give them the welcome and the refuge we want to provide. The discrimination in our immigration laws is an insult to these people and an injury to the free world.
I tried to get that old law changed. And so did your great Senator from this State, Senator Lehman. A coalition of Republicans and a few Democrats blocked us. Indeed, they even made the old law worse, in a new one, passed over my veto, just this year. It's true that this new law bears the name of a Democrat, Pat McCarran, but he's not my kind of Democrat.
The Democratic Party is not going to give up on this issue. We are pledged by our platform to remove discriminations from our immigration laws. The McCarran Act must go. And I want to say right here that the Republican candidate for Vice President voted against opening our gates to more of the brave people of eastern and southern Europe, and the Democratic candidate for Vice President voted for it.
The Republican platform and the Republican candidate for President have nothing to say about this issue. Their silence speaks louder than words.
But, perhaps, in the course of this campaign we may be able to smoke the Republican candidate out--as we are doing on some of the domestic issues.
We are already having enough success along this line to make it worth a try.
Originally, the Republicans had the idea that their candidate could get by without taking a positive stand on any of the issues. The theory was that he should talk about leadership--without exercising any. But to their surprise the Republicans have found that the people want to know where their candidate stands on some of the specific things that concern the people. That accounts for his feeble expression of views on health and education in Los Angeles the other day.
We have been able to make him admit, at last, that he played a part, as Chief of Staff, in some of the foreign policy decisions for which he is loudly criticizing the civilian side of our Government now.
Perhaps, as we go along, we may be able to make him confess that he had a part in our policy to strengthen and defend Europe--a policy that is so distasteful to his isolationist managers. Maybe we can even get him to admit that policy is a success and not a failure.
But I do not entertain hope any longer, that we shall be able to get him to repudiate his two new associates--the isolationist character assassins, Jenner and McCarthy--the very men who tried to destroy the reputation of Ike's greatest benefactor--that great tried and true patriot--George C. Marshall. Neither do I suppose that we can persuade him to disown the use of their tactics by his running mate. That would be too much to expect. He is in this thing too deep now to scramble back to a position of decency and honor.
fortunately--very fortunately--the American people have a happy alternative to this bankrupt Republican campaign and its captive candidate. Because the Democratic Party has as its candidate one of the most highly gifted men ever to make his appearance in our political life.
This Nation is too mature and too wise to reject the leadership and character of Adlai Stevenson of Illinois. His courage, his decency, his wide grasp of our problems have already been demonstrated in this campaign.
There is one aspect of his career that I think I should emphasize before this audience celebrating Columbus Day. In the dark winter of 1943, when Italy lay divided, with the German troops on the Rapido, and the Allies in Naples, Adlai Stevenson was sent by President Roosevelt to survey the conditions and problems of the Italian people in the liberated zone.
He found them without transport, without enough food and fuel, and suffering under a terrible inflation. Yet in spite of their misery, he recognized in the Italian people their underlying courage, their hope, their eagerness to help the allied cause. He recommended that they be treated not as former enemies but as valuable and useful coworkers in the fight for freedom. He urged that they be given not relief but the supplies they needed to help themselves--to rebuild their industries, and to do their part in helping win the war against tyranny.
Adlai Stevenson's plans for what ought to be done in Italy contained the seeds that eventually flowered into the Marshall plan for the defense of Europe against communism. It was a vision characteristic of his whole approach to public problems--the vision of a man who looks beneath the slogans, beneath the surface, into the hearts of people, and finds there the guide to action.
With this kind of leadership, the Democratic Party is proving, once again, that it is the party of growth and progress. With this new leadership, the Democratic Party proclaims again that it is the party of peaceful and forward-moving change.
Our past achievements are consistent with our platform and the record of our candidate. And in the Democratic Party the great forces of heart and mind that have moved the American people steadily forward for 20 years are marching ahead, again, to victory.
Thank you very much.
NOTE: The President spoke at 10:05 p.m. in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel at New York City. In his opening words he referred to fortune Pope, chairman of the meeting, and Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri of New York City. He also referred to Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, Democratic candidate for President, Arthur H. Vandenberg, Senator from Michigan, 1928-1951, Senators Robert A. Taft of Ohio, Herbert H. Lehman of New York, Pat McCarran of Nevada, William E. Jenner of Indiana, and Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, and General of the Army George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army, 1939-1945.
The dinner was sponsored by the Columbus Day Citizens Committee and the city of New York.
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Mayor, distinguished guests:
I am highly pleased to be here tonight and before I start on my regular address, I want to say to you that I don't think I have enjoyed organ music any more than I did the music put out by your great organist here tonight. He really played things worthwhile. I am exceedingly happy that Mr. Pope informs me that this is a nonpartisan organization. I am on a partisan trip, and I fear very much I am going to make you a partisan speech, so if you want to throw me out, now is the time to do it.
You know, I have been in elective public office for 30 years this November--this coming November I will have been in elective public office 30 years. I have had every honor that the Democratic Party can give to a man. On the 20th day of January I shall retire from public office, but I shall not retire from activity--be sure of that. I am not like some politicians who get everything they possibly can out of a party and then become nonpartisan and high-grade independents. I am a Democrat and will be that all my life.
I am glad to be here in New York, particularly on an occasion like this, when we are meeting to honor the vision, enterprise, and faith of Christopher Columbus. Those qualities in that great explorer opened the door to a new world.
Columbus had some very positive ideas, and he was willing to back them up. He was sure the shape of the earth was round, and he made a trip to prove it.
Like Columbus, I have had some positive ideas of my own. And also like Columbus, I have been making a trip to prove one of them. That was an idea I had about the shape this country is in.
I can report to you now on what I discovered. This country is in very good shape--very good indeed.
I am glad I had a chance to see this for myself. For I was beginning to fear, from the Republican campaign oratory which is filling the air these days, that the country was in terrible shape.
If these Republican orators had been living in Columbus' time, I'm sure they would have been among those who believed the world was flat.
In fact, I'm not altogether certain what their views may be on that subject even now.
I'm not going to tell you that Columbus would be a Democrat if he were alive these days, although I can't see why he wouldn't be.
But I do know that if he could have traveled with me these past 2 weeks, he'd feel very proud of this wonderful country of ours.
I have been through our cities and across our great plains and mountains, to the Pacific and back; and I can assure you that this is a very prosperous country. It is strong and industrious and thriving.
And when we think about what our Nation is doing, around the world, for the cause of freedom and peace, we can be sure of something else. This is a brave and generous country. In this time of trouble and upheaval, this country of ours is the hope of the world.
I am proud that this country has reached its present position of prosperity and world responsibility under the leadership of my party and my administration.
I am proud that my party rescued this Nation from the black despair of the depression, 20 years ago. I am prouder still that we have helped our economy to grow and expand ever since.
Never have we enjoyed so long a period of such prosperity and growth. The Communists have been waiting these past 20 years for that final economic collapse which, in their warped philosophy, is the inevitable end of all capitalist countries. The Republicans have also been expecting another depression that might give them a chance to get elected. But in this respect, both the Republicans and the Communists have been disappointed.
We are not going to have that depression, because we know, now, how to keep our country strong and prosperous. The answer lies in the policies we have put into effect-policies that promote the welfare of all the people.
We have made our agriculture strong through such programs as price supports and soil conservation. We have helped our people by protecting the right of labor to organize, and by minimum wage and social insurance laws. We have tapped the great resources of the West through Government-built power dams and irrigation projects. We have held the ups and downs of the economic cycle in line through a sound banking system, and controls over credit, and a flexible program of public works. All these things have encouraged the expansion of business, both large and small.
We have established the rule that no one group is entitled to dominate the whole economy, the way a little band of economic royalists did in the 1920's. They ran it for their own private profit.
Now, it's a curious thing, but during all these 20 years--while we have been putting this country on the firmest basis it has ever known--the head of the Democratic Party has been the object of a continual stream of abuse. The special interest lobbies have never lagged in their zeal. They have not even bothered to change their accusations.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was called a dictator. So was I. He was called a weakling. So was I. He was accused of being boss-ridden, corrupt, surrounded by a palace guard, of being a Socialist, of fostering communism, of weakening private enterprise, of lowering public morals. I am accused of exactly the very same things.
Both he and I, of course, have had our fair share of human frailty and error. But I suspect the real crime is that we were both successful in working for the people, and keeping the country with all its great resources and opportunities, for the people-for their enjoyment and that of their children-and keeping it out of the hands of the powerful few.
Now, on the 20th day of next January, I expect to welcome a new man to this company of much abused Chief Executives-Adlai Stevenson of Illinois.
I predict that he will be just as much slandered and maligned as his predecessors, because I am sure that he is devoted to the cause of the people.
But I have this comforting thought for him. The hatchet men among the lobbyists and the one-party press might just as well save their breath and their ink and their paper. When I go around the country, as I have been doing lately, the people do not shun me. They do not look for a monster with horns and tail. On the contrary, they seem very friendly, and very glad to see me, believe it or not.
The truth is, you can't fool the people. They know what is going on.
And as a consequence, the opposition party always finds itself in a dilemma, every 4 years. The Republican. Party starts the race in these election campaigns, under the banner of "Down with Socialism." And then, in the home stretch, they switch to the slogan of "Me, too!" The switch for this year is already underway.
It has only been a few weeks since the Republican candidate met with Senator Taft up here in Morningside Heights to learn what his "great crusade" was all about. Senator Taft explained to him that it was a crusade against "creeping socialization."
Now this is a perfectly safe thing for the Republicans to be against, but when they are called on to explain what they mean, it begins to get a little awkward for them. Are they against Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Harry Truman's fair Deal and all our works, or aren't they? Of course, a great many of them are, but you would be surprised at how this question can embarrass them. They can't admit we've done anything good for obvious reasons. On the other hand, and for equally obvious reasons, it is difficult for the Republicans to proclaim their opposition to all the programs we have put into effect for helping the workers, the farmers, and the businessmen, and all the rest.
So, you see, part of this great game of politics, every 4 years, is for us to try to pin the Republicans down as to what they mean by "creeping socialism," and for them to try to avoid being pinned down. It's a great game. This is an argument in which the Democrats have all the advantage--because the record of accomplishment is on our side. We just say to the Republicans: "Now you are against the New Deal and the fair Deal and all their works, so will you kindly tell us and the American people just which one of our programs you want to repeal."
Of course, they can't admit that they want to repeal any of them. So, as they are pinned down, issue by issue, they begin to say: "We're not really opposed to that--we are in favor of it." And pretty soon they begin trying to claim credit for having started the thing in the first place. This is called "Me-tooism"--that is the definition of it. The whole process might also be called trying to have it both ways at the same time. At any rate, that is now going on.
Just a few days ago Senator Taft, who has written the marching orders for the "great crusade," followed me on a platform in Shenandoah, Iowa. There he said, in a rather angry fashion, that he and his party were not against those things we had been doing for the farmer at all, and how could anybody have gotten that idea? And the socalled Republican "truth squad," who have been limping around in my wake, explained recently, in Denver, that when it came to farmers and reclamation, the Republican 80th Congress had done more for "creeping socialism" than the Democrats ever did. Now can you beat that one ? I can't.
I wonder if Columbus ever had a truth squad following him around, shouting at the top of his voice: "The world is flat, I tell you. The world is flat."
Now the Republican candidate for President, who has much to learn about these things, has begun to catch on to this business of "Me-tooism." He has been against Federal aid to education, against social security--no better than prison, he called it. He is against Federal action in the field of health. But in a speech in Los Angeles just the other day, he said he was for extending social security, a little bit. He said he is for Federal aid to education, just a little bit. He is for aid for medical care, just a little bit.
I can give him a piece of advice. He need not be so timid. The special interest lobbies won't bite him. Now this is the time in the campaign when the special interest lobbies get the daylights scared out of them--that their candidate will lose. So they'll let him say anything if it will get votes--just so long as he agrees to do what they want after he gets in. "Me, too" is all right now--this is nearly the middle of October. But I doubt that the Republicans can fool the people with any such acts of deathbed repentance. The people can tell where the Republicans really stand by looking at the record. That is all they need to do. And that record is clearly against the people. It is a terrible record, if you will just study it.
This is the fix the Republicans have gotten themselves into in domestic policy. Now let us see where the Republicans and their candidate stand on foreign policy.
There was a time when I thought I knew.
There was a time, during the life of Senator Vandenberg, when one wing of the Republican Party joined with the Democrats to strengthen our allies abroad against communism. They did more than make speeches then. They voted for a free world.
There was a time when the man who is now the Republican candidate played a great part in strengthening and unifying the defense of Europe. I thought his heart was in it. But I have been astonished and saddened since he became a candidate, that he has never seen fit to reaffirm the specific programs of military and economic aid to our allies in the free world--programs in which he played so vital a part. The only specific suggestion he has made about these programs is to propose violent cuts in money spent for our defense and to help strengthen our allies.
Now this is a new kind of isolationism. The old isolationism was to say that the United States was surrounded by an ocean moat that no enemy could cross. The new approach is to say: Yes, we are part of the world--but not if it costs any money.
So, we have the Republican candidate, on the one hand, who says that isolationism is dead but then sneers at the joint efforts we are undertaking with our allies. And on the other hand, we have all the diehard Senators he has endorsed for reelection, who still oppose the North Atlantic Treaty and the mutual security program--and want America to withdraw behind the moat.
Through all these isolationists runs a deep distrust of foreign nations and the foreign born. These men have turned their backs on the brave progress that the free countries of Europe have made with our assistance.
As for the Republican candidate himself, what has become of the convictions that he held--a few short months ago--when the free nations of Europe looked to him as a symbol of their unity against the Kremlin menace? He was in Europe as commander of the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty countries. I sent him there. It was his job to try to unify those forces, and to stimulate those countries to defend themselves from Communist imperialism.
Now I thought that mission was a success. At least, that was what I believed until a few days ago, when the Republican candidate made a speech attacking our foreign policy. In that speech, he said that our efforts to bring about greater unity in Europe have been failures. If that is true, then his mission to Europe was a failure.
This surprised me so much that I went back to the report he had made on the period of his service as head of the North Atlantic Treaty forces. This report points out the difficulties we all know, and the work that still has to be done to make Europe secure, but it doesn't suggest anywhere that our policy in Europe is a failure. In fact, he says we are on the right track.
Let me read to you from his report. He says, "We have made progress in all aspects of security." And later on he says, "The tide has begun to flow our way and the situation of the free world is brighter than it was a year ago."
If he really believed our policy in Europe was one of failure, it was his plain duty to tell us so when he returned from Europe, and not wait 6 months to put into a political speech.
Now let me tell you something. This talk about our European policy being a failure is just straight isolationist talk. It is part of the propaganda of the isolationist Republicans. What we have really done in Europe, is to save the home of Western civilization from enslavement by a godless creed.
The free nations of Europe are a shining example of what our leadership can mean. These great countries have more than strategic value. They are important to us as centers from which our culture springs, and to them we are bound by deep ties of ancestry. A great church to which many Americans belong, has its center in Europe-in Rome. All Americans can take pride in what we have done to save Western Europe from communism.
Our aid to Europe is not only a Government affair. One of our greatest accomplishments was carried out by private citizens, as a personal effort. That was the campaign of letters from our citizens to their friends and kinfolk in Italy, at the time of the Italian election in 1948. Many of you in this room took an important part in that effort. It helped to turn the tide against communism in Italy, and throughout Europe.
Just think where we would be now if we had listened to the defeatist talk of the isolationists in 1947, who said that Europe was not worth saving.
There is more that the people of this country can do in the struggle to strengthen and protect the free countries of Europe. Among other things, we would like to welcome more of the people of Europe to our shores, as immigrants and prospective citizens. As a Nation we can use those people in our expanding national economy. As Americans we would like to help provide new homes for refugees from communism, who manage to escape from behind the Iron Curtain. We would like to find new opportunities for many families in the overpopulated countries of free Europe--like Italy and the Netherlands and Greece. These are things the Democratic Party wants to do and will fight for with every means at its command.
We are held back now by a rigid immigration law, passed years ago by a Republican Congress and a Republican President. That law places a stigma of unworthiness on people from the countries of eastern and southern Europe. It holds them to be less desirable than the northern Europeans.
Yet it is those very people of southern and eastern Europe who are on the battlefront in the struggle against Communist subversion and Communist oppression. Their continuing resistance, their spirit in the fight, is of critical importance to the cause of freedom. These are the people, today, to whom we should be most grateful. Yet the discrimination in our immigration laws makes it impossible for us to give them the welcome and the refuge we want to provide. The discrimination in our immigration laws is an insult to these people and an injury to the free world.
I tried to get that old law changed. And so did your great Senator from this State, Senator Lehman. A coalition of Republicans and a few Democrats blocked us. Indeed, they even made the old law worse, in a new one, passed over my veto, just this year. It's true that this new law bears the name of a Democrat, Pat McCarran, but he's not my kind of Democrat.
The Democratic Party is not going to give up on this issue. We are pledged by our platform to remove discriminations from our immigration laws. The McCarran Act must go. And I want to say right here that the Republican candidate for Vice President voted against opening our gates to more of the brave people of eastern and southern Europe, and the Democratic candidate for Vice President voted for it.
The Republican platform and the Republican candidate for President have nothing to say about this issue. Their silence speaks louder than words.
But, perhaps, in the course of this campaign we may be able to smoke the Republican candidate out--as we are doing on some of the domestic issues.
We are already having enough success along this line to make it worth a try.
Originally, the Republicans had the idea that their candidate could get by without taking a positive stand on any of the issues. The theory was that he should talk about leadership--without exercising any. But to their surprise the Republicans have found that the people want to know where their candidate stands on some of the specific things that concern the people. That accounts for his feeble expression of views on health and education in Los Angeles the other day.
We have been able to make him admit, at last, that he played a part, as Chief of Staff, in some of the foreign policy decisions for which he is loudly criticizing the civilian side of our Government now.
Perhaps, as we go along, we may be able to make him confess that he had a part in our policy to strengthen and defend Europe--a policy that is so distasteful to his isolationist managers. Maybe we can even get him to admit that policy is a success and not a failure.
But I do not entertain hope any longer, that we shall be able to get him to repudiate his two new associates--the isolationist character assassins, Jenner and McCarthy--the very men who tried to destroy the reputation of Ike's greatest benefactor--that great tried and true patriot--George C. Marshall. Neither do I suppose that we can persuade him to disown the use of their tactics by his running mate. That would be too much to expect. He is in this thing too deep now to scramble back to a position of decency and honor.
fortunately--very fortunately--the American people have a happy alternative to this bankrupt Republican campaign and its captive candidate. Because the Democratic Party has as its candidate one of the most highly gifted men ever to make his appearance in our political life.
This Nation is too mature and too wise to reject the leadership and character of Adlai Stevenson of Illinois. His courage, his decency, his wide grasp of our problems have already been demonstrated in this campaign.
There is one aspect of his career that I think I should emphasize before this audience celebrating Columbus Day. In the dark winter of 1943, when Italy lay divided, with the German troops on the Rapido, and the Allies in Naples, Adlai Stevenson was sent by President Roosevelt to survey the conditions and problems of the Italian people in the liberated zone.
He found them without transport, without enough food and fuel, and suffering under a terrible inflation. Yet in spite of their misery, he recognized in the Italian people their underlying courage, their hope, their eagerness to help the allied cause. He recommended that they be treated not as former enemies but as valuable and useful coworkers in the fight for freedom. He urged that they be given not relief but the supplies they needed to help themselves--to rebuild their industries, and to do their part in helping win the war against tyranny.
Adlai Stevenson's plans for what ought to be done in Italy contained the seeds that eventually flowered into the Marshall plan for the defense of Europe against communism. It was a vision characteristic of his whole approach to public problems--the vision of a man who looks beneath the slogans, beneath the surface, into the hearts of people, and finds there the guide to action.
With this kind of leadership, the Democratic Party is proving, once again, that it is the party of growth and progress. With this new leadership, the Democratic Party proclaims again that it is the party of peaceful and forward-moving change.
Our past achievements are consistent with our platform and the record of our candidate. And in the Democratic Party the great forces of heart and mind that have moved the American people steadily forward for 20 years are marching ahead, again, to victory.
Thank you very much.
NOTE: The President spoke at 10:05 p.m. in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel at New York City. In his opening words he referred to fortune Pope, chairman of the meeting, and Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri of New York City. He also referred to Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, Democratic candidate for President, Arthur H. Vandenberg, Senator from Michigan, 1928-1951, Senators Robert A. Taft of Ohio, Herbert H. Lehman of New York, Pat McCarran of Nevada, William E. Jenner of Indiana, and Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, and General of the Army George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army, 1939-1945.
The dinner was sponsored by the Columbus Day Citizens Committee and the city of New York.