Remarks at Twelfth Annual Washington Conference for the Advertising Council.

I THINK it was last year, gentlemen, when I met with the Advertising Council, that I made the request that the Council would try to do something about extending their good work to helping the government solve some of its problems in the foreign field.

Not only has the record of the past year shown that they took me seriously, but I am particularly delighted that this year they brought some of their bosses along with them so that they can get educated also, because we are talking about one of the most pressing problems with which the government--indeed with which the whole nation is confronted constantly. There is nothing that takes place at home of any great importance--if it is a difficult problem, at least--that is not caused by or at least colored by some foreign consideration.

During this past year, the Advertising Council got together a team of experts and went over the whole series of factors involved in these problems and came up with some very fine suggestions. The one I want to mention particularly--a product of their imagination--was the exhibit of "People's Capitalism." I don't know how many of you have seen it, but to me it is the kind of message that America ought to be carrying abroad. I would have liked to have seen some kind of adjective put between "people's" and "capitalism," something of the order of, if not "democratic"--something of the order of "competitive" or something of that kind. But in any event, the exhibit itself shows what the system of capitalism will do for a people. What it has done in this country in a very, very short time, measured by historical units, is a very telling thing.

I actually could hope that the truth that it exemplifies and shows could be brought home to our own people as well as to those abroad for whom it was designed. Because I think too often we forget some of the features of our own system that have been so responsible for the place this nation has reached. So before I leave that part of what I wanted to say to you, my thanks to the agencies for the time and talent they have contributed and are continuing to contribute through the media--enlisting space and radio and television time--and for the good work of all, particularly to the businessmen supporters of what the Council has been doing, with the government as its principal beneficiary.

Now when we consider this system of which we are so proud, we recognize that like all things human, it is neither perfect nor does it sustain itself forever without the people who are living in it and, as part of it, doing something about it. Internally and externally any form of government, and particularly self-government, is always subject to some kind of attack, particularly successful government that has brought material prosperity in the measure which ours has. Internally we watch that government, we watch it very carefully. We watch particularly the federal government to see that it doesn't transgress into fields from which it should abstain, except only in those cases where the changing miracle of industrial life brings about problems that are not solvable by communities, by private enterprise, or by individuals.

There we try to stick to the old Lincolnian dictum that it is the function of government to do for people those things they cannot do for themselves and to stay out of things in places where the people can do things for themselves. We would hope, therefore, to have wisdom in government to help distinguish this line beyond which government should not go and yet be courageous in doing those things that it should do.

Likewise, we should hope always for more wisdom in business leadership, not only in the business man and in business management, but in their concert with labor, so that in the individual company or the corporation--particularly the influential ones-we do not make decisions that damage us and the kind of system that we are trying to run. That can easily be done within the corporation just as well as it can within the Congress or within some regulatory commission.

Now, let us turn our eyes abroad. There is an old story about the man in a town who owned the factory on which the living of the community depended. He built a great house on the hill and all the rest of the people lived in the plain below in fairly meager circumstances. The climax of the story was, when things began to go bad, that the man on top found that he was not safe except only as the people below were contented and believed that they were advancing. When they became depressed and lost their morale, and the company began to fail, this man fell further than the others, because he had a greater distance to go.

Within a certain degree, that story has applicability in the world today. The United States cannot live alone--a paragon of prosperity--with all the rest of the world sinking lower and lower in its standards of living.

There are many ways in which we can use our influence to make certain that other peoples recognize the virtues of a free, competitive capitalistic system rather than to take the shortcut-the spurious and false road that is offered them by the communistic ideology.

You see, in many of these less developed areas of the world, there is a very great ambition to industrialize themselves. Now the communist comes along and says: "Well, you see what we were forty years ago? Look what communism has done for us. And today we can bring to you this steel mill or help you with this dam, or do this or that."

There is a very great appeal, because of the very rapid transformation that on the surface, at least, and under forms of dictatorship, has been accomplished in Russia. The man who is listening to the story doesn't understand that underneath this great facade of industrialization there is slavery, human misery, rather than human happiness--no opportunity for a man to realize his own spiritual, moral, physical and economic aspirations through his own efforts. He obeys. He is regimented. But they don't see that. As a matter of fact, it is not of importance at the moment, because it is only in such a society as ours, based upon the dignity of man, that the importance of that kind of thing to humans is recognized and catered to.

And so we must carry not only a material message to the world of what the kind of enterprise we have--the kind of system-can do for a people. We must carry those moral values, spiritual values of the worth of man--what he is entitled to as an individual. We must say not merely what this or that state would do if they would follow that line, because I think it is not to be denied, if you would give the communistic system to any backward country, with a complete dictator who could direct everything without question, he could make, on the short run, more rapid progress than could we by the cooperative method that is inherent in democracy.

So I think that we must realize that unless we do these things in the world, someone else will do them through false doctrines. And we finally will reach more and more that place where we are isolated from the rest of the world, with the whole world in a position possibly of envy and then of hatred, open antagonisms, that will reflect itself in first, let us say, refusal to trade, then breaking off relations and finally and ultimately in a very, very serious thing.

There is plenty of time for us to do it if we start now and keep doing it. That is the reason that I am so delighted that the Advertising Council has directed itself in its efforts along this path.

Governmental officials are busy. They are constantly putting out "fires." They are on the Hill answering why they need this money or that money, or sometimes why they don't need this or that that someone is trying to give to them. This is a new phenomenon, and ordinarily applies only to election year.

The need in government is time to think, with the ability of people to do it. Now by the selection of these people of the Advertising Council they are able to supplement the work of government and so to assist it, to point out new, imaginative ways of how the message of America can be carried.

I assure you that that message must be carried, not only in the ways I have indicated, but it must be expressed also in the readiness to help wherever possible, on good, sound business arrangements. Let us not forget for one instant that when we are putting 36 or 37 billion dollars of expenditures every year into arms and armaments, that those arms and armaments alone, remember, can never take us forward--they will merely defend what we have got.

But when you talk about something that promotes a business arrangement--trade--when you can talk about something that proposes a better understanding between us and the people of the Mid East or the people of Africa, or anybody else, then you are talking about something constructive, something that yields results over the years to come. It will not be merely something essentially sterile and negative so far as their capacity for raising human standards is concerned. We will not be merely acting like a policeman to protect what we already have. Of course, protection is necessary. It is just as necessary in this day and time as it can possibly be. But let us don't make the ignorant, uninformed decision that only in armaments are we going to find the solution of our foreign problems.

And since we have been favored by the system that our forefathers gave us, by the resources that God gave us, by the good fortune we have of having been born and raised here through the finest educational and health systems in the world, and so on, let us use our brains to make certain we sustain our position by helping everybody else to realize their own aspirations and legitimate ambitions, not necessarily in the exact pattern of this country. Of course not. Nobody starts from the same place and no other nation would possibly reach the same end.

But we can preach and show that we believe in the dignity of man, in the independence of nations, the right of people to determine for themselves their own faith. We can help. Every dollar we put into this kind of thing, if it is intelligently spent, is to my mind, in the long run, worth any five we put just in sheer defense because in the long run it is a constructive thing. It is a developing thing, the kind of development America has done at home and which we must help do abroad.

So, all of these words, all of these thoughts, my friends, give you the depth of my sincerity when I say thank you for coming here, thank you for helping. The people that talk to you today will come not merely to give you a briefing of what they are doing, but in doing so would hope that from you they will get reactions-in other words, what would you do?

Government is nothing but individuals. Every one of the individuals in government belongs to you. He is your "boy" in some form or other. You put him there directly or indirectly. So the job is still that of the American people, and I couldn't conceive of any job in this world being in better hands than that of the American people.

Thank you very much.