Remarks Upon Arrival at the Airport, Lawrenceville, Illinois.

Mayor Hedde, Governor Kerner, Senator Douglas, Congressman Shipley, Congressman Gray, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls:

Mrs. Johnson and I want to thank you very much for coming out here and giving us this warm welcome.

We always just love to come to the great State of Illinois. We admire and respect your Governor. Your great Senator Paul Douglas is a tower of strength to us. Your Congressman Shipley and Congressman Gray and the other Members of Congress, who have accompanied us here today, have gone through the heartland of this country with us and we find it strong. We find it prosperous and we find it happy, and we are glad.

I will never forget this long afternoon that I have spent in Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky.

The greatness in your eyes and in your friendly hands and in your abundant spirit is a greatness that only free people can have.

We have so much to be thankful for. All of this country was once the land of Abraham Lincoln. He belonged to the whole Nation, of course, but he belonged especially to Kentucky and to Indiana and to Illinois.

I was reminded many times today that when Lincoln walked this land he too drew the strength from the proud and the independent people that he knew as his neighbors. These were his wellsprings and they helped him face the terrible decisions upon which depended the fate of the young American Nation.

No President, either before or since, was so bitterly fought by his enemies. But he never wavered from a conviction that all men deserve to be free and to live together as brothers.

I am very happy to say that today you have standing in the United States Senate a man who carries on in the tradition of Lincoln, a man named Paul Douglas, who fights to see that all men are free and equal and live together as brothers.

So the American faith today is built from that conviction. I believe that it is an unwavering faith. I don't think the day will come when Americans are ever afraid to fight for freedom. I don't think the day will come when America will refuse to be true to its word and keep its commitments. I don't think the day will ever come when the American people will desert those who stand for them on far-off battlefields in the fight for freedom.

We Americans have never run from danger. And we will never run from responsibility. We have built the greatest country that mankind has ever known and we are going to work day and night to make it better all the time.

We have given our blood and our treasure so that others might have the same opportunities. And we are not going to say now that all of these sacrifices have been in vain.

The United States was born in strife and it was nurtured in hardship. We grew and we prospered because we weren't afraid of frontiers. But we always looked toward those faraway horizons. We have not come this long distance in history because we were a weak or a frightened or a fearful or a timid people.

When America grows afraid and loses its commitment to freedom, that is the day that America will begin to die. The faces that I have seen in the States that I have visited today have told me that this will never be.

Mrs. Johnson, Luci, and I, the distinguished Governors, the many able, patriotic Members of Congress from both parties, are grateful to you for your warmth, for your generosity, for your hospitality. We want to thank you for helping make this a wonderful and a rewarding day for us.

We in America have much to be thankful for, much to be grateful for. I want to thank each of you for the contribution you are making to helping all of us make this the greatest Nation in all the world.

Goodby and God bless each of you.