Remarks to the Republican National Committee Meeting in Chicago.

I AM DELIGHTED to participate by telephone in this important meeting of our Party's Board of Directors. Later, during the political campaign, as I have already advised Chairman Alcorn, I expect to speak out on several subjects of over-riding interest to the American people. At the moment, I'm eager to tell you how I feel about the fall campaign.

There is no reason, in my judgment, for our Party to lose a single House or Senate seat that we now hold. But more than this, we can make great gains in the House and Senate if we do just three things: work, and vote, and get others to vote.

Each of you Republican leaders will recall that some of our counties brought out 95 percent of the eligible Republican vote in 1956. That's what it takes to win. But when we fail to get our own people registered and to the polls, that's when we begin to side-slip. That's exactly what happened just one year ago today in Wisconsin and we lost a Senate seat to a Democrat for the first time in 25 years.

And no one who has learned anything from the past two national elections will fail to appreciate the support of the Independent and discerning Democrat, though they may be unorganized or may organize themselves as "Citizens" or under some other name. Let's convince them that our program is sound and appealing. Let's court them. Let's go after them.

With this campaign, our Party starts its second century since it won its first national victory. This will be the fiftieth time that we have gone before the American people to ask for a Republican Congress. We go well prepared.

I hope you will bring home to the American people the Republican platform and the record of Republican performance. We Republicans take our platforms seriously. We believe in redeeming pledges--the basic set of beliefs and policies that our Party proposes at each national convention. And my friends, this we have done.

So I propose that we lay before the voters, our goals--just what it was that we sought to do; then we must show them what we have accomplished--what we have done to keep peace instead of war, to provide for the defense of the free world, to develop rapidly a sound satellite and missiles program, to encourage scientific education, and to raise farm income. And let's do something else.

Let's lead the defeatists away from the wailing wall. Time has proved right this Administration's confidence in the American economy. We are on the upward road. We shall reach new heights in a national economy whose boundaries are still unimagined. This I believe. And I believe the American voter is going to be gratified that we have overcome the economic challenge without risking the certain dangers of unnecessarily big deficits and the snares of a hastily devised patchwork of costly public works.

All leadership--political, economic, or moral--involves persuading others to do something now that will bring fruit in the future. This, it seems to me, is your task as managers of our Party. This is really what we will be doing when we gather with our party workers to talk about voting lists, poll checkers, and telephone canvassers. Our job is to arouse our party workers to do something now that will be of the greatest importance when we come to count votes in the next Congress.

What we do now will be equally important as we point ahead confidently toward 1960. In short, our immediate task is to have our party workers feel so deeply and fiercely concerned about the political life of the nation that they will produce the ground-swell on which middle-of-the-road, creative Republicanism will carry our country forward to new heights of achievement.

Within the rims of each congressional district, some issues, of course, will tend to be of greater local concern than others. This is inevitable in America where our diversity is one of our sources of strength. But we cannot emphasize too strongly that just as what goes on in the Middle East has its impact on the Middle West, so, too, must the scuffle of local interests not be allowed to blunt the force of vigorous Republican leadership in the national interest.

This is the Republican way. Our Party is not a many-splintered party. It is not a sectional party. It has been, and remains, a party guided by basic principles. And it was responsible for many shining achievements in the century just completed. We are here dedicated to carrying on that record of achievement, to the welfare of our people, the security of our nation, and the peace of the world. I know we shall succeed.

To each of you I send warmest greetings and best wishes for a successful campaign.

Thank you and goodbye.