Remarks to Members of the National Committee for the Midcentury White House Conference on Children and Youth.

I AM highly appreciative of the interest you have shown by your presence here. It has been customary, I think, since 1909, to hold these conferences every 10 years on what we can do to improve the welfare of the youth of the Nation.

It is customary, as you know, when a person becomes 50 or over, to decide that the younger generation is on its way to the lower regions. I was reading one of Plutarch's Lives not long ago, and he made the statement, in Pericles's time, that that was happening then. It is not true. And you are familiar with the fact that it is not true.

I think this rising generation has prospects before it that are really unequaled in the history of the world. And what we want to do is to impress upon them their responsibilities. I think that is the principal reason for this meeting, outlining a program for this future generation that is coming into control of this country and the whole world.

We have been working strenuously since September 2, 1945, for world peace, and that is still our main objective. We are going to get that world peace eventually, and it is going to be a peace we will all be proud of, and under which we can all live and progress.

I am hopeful that some of the things with which we are confronted can be remedied by this conference next year. One of the things that I am vitally interested in is the health of the people of the United States. We discovered in the draft program that 34 percent of the young people who came up for examination for draft purposes were physically or mentally unfit for service.

I think that is rather disgraceful in the richest nation in the world, with all the resources that we have, to neglect the health of the young people. I think that is one of the principal things we want to look after.

Then the other and the most important thing is the mental attitude of these young people. We want them to have the right outlook on life, as we believe the outlook on life is right. And in order to do that, they must have proper instruction both at home and in the schools. It is necessary that we improve our educational system continually.

Now we are short of teachers. We are short of places for children to go to school. Here in the District, just today, they had to issue an order on part-time schools, because there isn't room in the present school buildings to take care of all the children that want to go there. That is true in every city in the Nation.

We have been endeavoring to get an educational program that will help to remedy that situation and in no way affect the local control of the school system. That is one of the things that we are vitally interested in, of course, local control of the school system.

You know, if a child has a good mother, and most of them do have, and the first three grade teachers are good teachers, who understand the moral outlook as we see it, there is no danger of that child being anything but a good citizen, no matter what happens after the first 8 or 10 years. That is the thing in which I am sure you are all vitally and principally interested.

I can't tell you how much I appreciate your interest in this, by your presence here, and I hope that the next conference in 1950 will be the most important and most forward-looking and successful one that we have ever had. And I am sure it will.

When I look over the people who are here, I am sure it will.

And I want to say to you here that you have all the cooperation that goes with the Office of the President of the United States. I won't be running for office next year, and I can do a lot of things that I couldn't ordinarily do.

Thank you very much.