Remarks at the Dedication of the State University of New York Medical Center, New York City

Mr. Chairman, Governor Dewey, Senator Ives, my friends:

Governor Dewey spoke very much about this invitation. I must tell you, frankly, I am practically self-invited. So you know I am an added starter up here, and not expecting to take too much of your time, or those back here.

The reason I wanted to come was because of a very long interest in the kind of work that will here be done. In World War II I was shocked to find that the record showed how many of our people were rejected from military service because of physical disability. And many of those disabilities were obviously ones that could have been corrected early in their youth, and they would have been healthy, completely useful citizens. They couldn't even do their tasks in war. Many of you here this morning are people who served with me in that war; we saw an unusually large number of men who fell along the wayside because they didn't have the stamina to go on, on an average march, an average hardship, an average privation, which that soldier has to suffer in war. The most of them went along all right, but there was a very large percentage that did not, and could have been better cured.

Then I came to this city--I went to Columbia. Your Governor was talking about the difficulty of saving $10 million out of the State budget. I would like to see him save $1 million out of the University's budget, and that was what our medical school support cost us each year, over and above revenues. That was tough. All the way along the line, this job of a healthful citizenry, providing the facilities for it, everybody in Government should give some attention to it, even though I subscribe to the view expressed just now: we must have nothing to do with controlling it.

And now, permit me just for a second to advert to what Dr. Carlson said about the job of each of us as a citizen, and particularly the doctor.

I believe that behind the whole purpose of keeping a healthful citizenry must be something that deals with the aspirations of mankind, the aspirations of men and women as we know them to live free and rich and useful lives. That means to live under institutions that give us an opportunity to expand, that we will not be controlled by others--we will not be regimented. The kind of thing that Dr. Carlson brought out so briefly is the kind of thing that I believe each of us, whether he be interne or student or laborer or high governmental official, ought to be thinking about all the time: this America, what it means in terms of our aspirations, our hopes, for ourselves, and our people--and preserving them down through the years. The healthful body in which we do it is only one thing. But the head, the understanding that we have of all of the tensions and the complexities in the world, and what we must do to preserve them; and finally, after all, the heart. What are the fine, decent things we want of life? How much are we prepared to sacrifice for them, and work for them with our whole selves?

Here is one evidence in this great hospital that the people of New York have worked and sacrificed to provide something to make us healthier in body so that we may be healthier and stronger and better in mind, and give, therefore, better opportunity for us to attain the aspirations of our hearts.

Thank you for letting me come to this ceremony. Thank you for these minutes you have given me to address you.

Goodbye.