Remarks to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.

I HAVE had a very special project this week. I have been trying to get at least 50 new women in the Gridiron Club, and as many as I can in the National Press Club. But I am glad that we have got them in the Defense Department.

Mr. Paul and Mrs. McNamara and ladies and gentlemen:

When I look at a group like this, I have no trouble understanding why Bob McNamara is the greatest Secretary of Defense this country has ever had. With women like you working with him, I don't think he could lose. In fact, I would have never started my "Fifty Women in Government" campaign if I had known that Bob McNamara already had 50 women on this committee, because it looks like he has the market cornered.

Someone asked how it is possible for women to understand politics when they have to depend almost entirely on their husbands for political education. Until recently this same question could apply, I guess, to military science. Women could hardly be expected to know anything about the military because they had to depend almost entirely on their husbands for military education, but the world is changing and the times are changing, and so are the services.

I want to thank you for your efforts. Military service is becoming an attractive career to women, and we are mighty proud that it is, because it will be a better service, be a better career. And too many people always think, I have observed, of the military in negative terms. We must quit thinking of it just as a force for destruction, or as an instrument for war.

A call prompted me the other day, when we were dealing with all the nuclear weapons and the warheads and the bombs and everything, and I thought that might be a good place to have a woman, to sit on the Atomic Energy Commission, because they bring into the world the men who fight the wars and do the dying. So I was able to persuade Dr. Bunting of Radcliffe to come down and she has already been confirmed by the Senate. You women are going to be represented in that field as you are in the military.

Now, I think it is a myth we must destroy-about "force for destruction" and "instrument of war." We don't want that to be universally accepted, for in a democracy the armed services have a creative role to play and that creative role must be as an agent of peace. Their purpose is not only to deter war, but to help improve the quality of our society and to serve the public good and to train young men and women for useful service.

Once a career in the military for women meant just a clerical job, or an assignment as a nurse, or a nurse's aide in some clinic. This myth, too, is already being shattered, for today women are making important professional and technical contributions to the military as scientists, as engineers, as mathematicians, as administrators, as managers, as accountants, as teachers, as lawyers, as linguists. I think we need more women to play even more important roles. I think you can help encourage that. I think you have.

The Armed Forces faces serious shortages of nurses and dietitians and therapists. Secretary McNamara and I are counting on you to help us find these women and to recruit them. We want you to go out on the highways and the byways and tell the young women of America that this is no longer a stag Government, this is no longer a stag administration, and no longer is there anything like a one-man's army. Tell them it is their Government, it belongs to them, and it is their army, too. We want and we need them, and we urge them to come in.

It has taken us nearly 150 years to accept the truth of what Susan Anthony used to preach when she said, "It was we the people, not we the white people, or the male citizens, nor we the male citizens, nor we just the male citizens, but we the whole people who form this Union." Today women have become a greater force in the quality of American life. Military life is no exception, and all of us are in your debt for making this possible.

I have talked too long. I have heard it said that women always have the last word, because they have a dozen arguments left when the men are all run out. But I am sure you have a dozen arguments left in support of the women's role in the military or else you wouldn't be serving on this committee. But for all of us, for Secretary McNamara, for the Joint Chiefs, for the service Secretaries, for the country, I want to thank you for your devotion to duty. I want to tell you how proud we are of you.

We have never been stronger in the history of our country. I don't think we have ever had better opportunities to seek and ferret out and promote peace in the world. We know that is what you women want to do.

I was reminded this morning of a very touching experience two friends of mine had. Mrs. Bethune was meeting with General Marshall one time during the war. She got up and asked to be excused because she had to go see--Mary McLeod Bethune, you know, was a very able and very prominent Negro woman who was a great educator and exercised a great influence on my life. She worked very closely with me several years in the Federal Government. She asked General Marshall to excuse her because she had to go see the President, and someone asked her what she was going to see the President about--President Roosevelt, whose picture hangs over there. She said, "I am going to see him about women in the services, and about letting them do something besides the trivial details and the clerks and the minor jobs." That made quite an impression, that she was going to see the President.

The next day they were meeting again in this consulting group and Mrs. Bethune got up and asked to be excused, and said she was sorry, but she had to go see the President again. They said, "What are you going to see him for the second day?" She said, "I am going to get the answer," and evidently the answer was a good one, because here you are and I see a good many majors and colonels all over the place. We are very proud of it.

A good many people have made great sacrifices to build this instrument of peace that we call the Defense Department. I see at some of our bases "Peace Is Our Mission." Beginning with the Secretary, and the Under Secretaries, and the Assistant Secretaries, like Mr. Paul, these men have left jobs, some of them paying as much as a half a million a year, to come here and be harangued and harassed and browbeaten and fussed at and quarreled with in order to build the most efficient and most powerful peace machine we have ever had.

I feel comforted that you women are here to help them and to encourage them and maybe to comfort them some in these times of tribulation.

So you are welcome to the White House. We are honored that you are here. We are proud of your service and long may it continue.