Remarks at the Republican Send-off Breakfast at the Washington National Airport.

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice President, distinguished guests and my fellow citizens:

I read in the paper I was going to make an address this morning, but I will have to correct my newspaper friends. I am not. I came out here to have a last meeting with this group that is starting out in this campaign, to give them a word of greeting and of thanks, and then to express a few thoughts on my mind that could scarcely be classed as an address.

First of all, I have a little criticism of the way your morning menu or schedule is checked up. I think this entire table is a truth squad. I see no reason for going to the public with anything except the truth--the truth about the situation as it was in 1952-what has been accomplished--the problems as they stand today, and what we propose to do about them in the future.

The record itself is sufficient, if it is made sufficiently clear to all Americans.

By no means do we need to claim perfection. We don't need to indulge in the exaggerations of partisan political talk.

The record is there. And it is good.

And where it has failed, it has failed not for want of trying; it has failed because of circumstances often beyond control. For example, we may be as peaceful as we want to be in this world. If someone else wants to be aggressive, we have to take measures that are not exactly the way we would like to spend our effort.

So, although the peace we have is not a secure peace in which we may have confidence, there are still many, many thousands of American mothers that are mighty thankful that their sons are not on the battlefield.

Though the distribution of the rewards from our economic system are not so perfectly accomplished yet as they will be one day in the future, yet the progress that has been made in the last three and a half years in this regard is attested by the economic facts that can be secured from any reputable economic statistical firm.

The farmers have been taken out of a system which just repeated over and over again the mistakes of the past and made the situation worse, and they have been given the right to hope, to believe that their income at the present can be brought up, and that the future will be truly one in which they share equitably in our growing--ever-growing prosperity.

With all of the facts of our economy, with all of the facts of the world scene, you can go before the American public. And again I say: tell the truth, tell it forcefully. And that should be our campaign.

I think that of course on-the-spot misstatements and distortions should be corrected so that nobody has the excuse to make conclusions of his own based on misinformation. But I have found myself, in the various kinds of campaigns I have waged: if I have a cause and believe in it enough, I get so busy trying to put that over, whether it be here or in other kinds of contests, that I don't even know what the other people are saying. As long as we have a positive plan of our own and are carrying it forward, let them do the yelling.

Now, to you gentlemen who are going out and your wives who are going with you, the warmest good wishes of Mrs. Eisenhower and myself to you. I hope that the job--of course I know it will be onerous--will also bring to you the satisfaction of doing a job, first of all for your country--incidentally, only, for your party.

Good luck to all of you.