Remarks at the 55th Annual Meeting of the National Association of Postmasters.

President Baker, Postmaster General, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is always a privilege and an honor to meet with any group of Americans that are dedicated to service. You people are representatives of the great Postal Service which has meant so much to the United States.

Of course, I am not now going to recite anything of the history of your Service. You know it better than I do, unquestionably.

But I am struck by a few facts that stick in my memory. I think it's next spring that will mark the centennial of the inauguration of the Pony Express. On the inauguration of President Lincoln was the first time that Pony Express made the great record of 7 days and 17 hours to carry the message about the inauguration from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California. Never was that record broken until the building of the railroad and the construction of the telegraph lines across the continent.

I think if we contemplate for a moment the achievements of America over that hundred years, we can do it by talking about the achievements of the Postal Service in that same time.

I know that now in a matter of 5 hours and a half the mail can be taken all the way from New York to San Francisco. The Pony Express man waiting at St. Joseph got his message over the wires from Washington. Then when he reached Sacramento he put the mail on a river boat, and it went all the way to San Francisco. Now almost in a moment we have our telegraphic messages across the continent. But the actual letter that I put in this mail today can within a matter of just hours be delivered across the continent.

And, of course, there are projects in prospect--I hear the Postmaster General talking about them often--for getting letters into your hands in a matter almost of moments.

But still it is not just in this matter of speed of transmission that I think is the great service of the postmasters of this country--and I understand there are something of 33 to 34 thousand of them--it is not just in the matter of speed that this great service has shown its value to the United States and to the world. These post offices, particularly in the smaller towns, are centers of information. They are places where people get some understanding of the news as well as just the actual news itself.

But more than that, as members of--I believe it's called--the Universal Postal Union, the Association of Postmasters in the United States is helping to do something for the world that is extraordinary. Ninety-seven countries belong to that Union. It was founded in 1874, I believe.

Through this service of the Universal Postal Union, the delivery of a letter from Dickinson County, Kansas, for example, to some small village in Rhodesia, or in Egypt, or in the Philippines, is accomplished smoothly and quickly. Ninety-seven nations belonging to that one single service, dedicated to cooperation in helping humans--helping humans to send and receive messages of importance to them, to their families, and sometimes to their whole communities. There is only one other international organization that has as many members as yours has. In that accomplishment, in this record of a continuous improvement of accomplishment, is a lesson for the world that to my mind should be expanded in almost everything we do.

If the world needs anything, more than anything else it is better understanding of each other, a better readiness to deal with each other on a cooperative basis. Not merely to try to defeat somebody else in the accomplishment of any kind--to be the first with this or the first with that. Not merely to have greater armaments and a greater destructive power than another. Rather, instead, we should learn of humans and their aspirations and their hopes, their dedications to their communities and to nations to which they belong. We should be trying to make information available in every possible line of human activity.

In doing so, we will eliminate eventually the need for armaments. We will have to give less thought about our own security and our safety, and about the standing of our friends in the world community.

So, as you--each of you--takes the responsibility when you take your oath of office to help make certain that a piece of United States mail is sacred almost in its character, shielded from the knowledge of anybody rise except the recipient, you make sure that America is tied more closely together. In the same way, we must make sure that the world itself is tied together more closely.

So, as you do this--do this service for the citizens of the United States-you are in a very definite sense doing it for the world; for the cause of a just peace, for the cause of greater mental ease, the lessening of tensions. In performing that kind of service, it seems to me you--all the people that you represent, people that are part of the Postal organization and other Postal organizations--are doing a tremendous thing for the world.

I submit again the great need for the world is that kind of understanding that comes about through the free exchange of information, from the very heart of Siberia to the heart of America, to the heart of Africa, and to all other places and locations in the world.

I congratulate you. I wish you an enjoyable as wall as an interesting conference. I assure you of the pleasure that the Government and I personally have in welcoming you here to the Capital City of your own country.

Thank you very much.