Dwight D. Eisenhower photo

Remarks to a Group of Young Republicans.

June 06, 1956

I HAVE HEARD it said by older people that every time they run into a bunch of young ones, they say, "Doesn't that make you feel old?"

Well, it doesn't me. I get so much fun out of seeing young people and believing in young people that I think it takes the years off me. I get a big lift. So the first chore I want to perform this morning is: Thank you for coming. You have done a lot for me. I mean coming over here to the White House and giving Mrs. Eisenhower and me a chance to say good morning and hello.

The satisfaction, of course, that I feel is not limited merely to a personal one. By joining the Young Republicans, you show a determination early to take seriously the duties of a citizen in a free country, to perform them, and to help others perform them. I think it is one of the priceless privileges of free government. Those of you who have happened to travel abroad, where conditions are very much different, will know exactly what I mean.

I not long ago saw a group of Freedoms Foundation leaders-from Valley Forge. They are getting the Boy Scouts, I notice, again this year, as they did in 1952, to canvass every home and to make sure that everybody votes.

Now of course, you and I hope they vote properly; that is, Republican. But above all--vote.

It is trite to say that the world is in a crisis, we are going through new problems. When the day comes and you are standing in some such spot and talking to people forty or fifty years your junior, you will say, "You are facing newer and more severe problems than the world has ever known." That has been so since the world began, and it will continue.

But problems, all problems, tend to disappear in front of an earnest search for the truth and the application of the truth to the problems of the day according to a given group of sound principles.

A political party is a group of people who are dedicated to common principles of a political and economic nature. If they are not that, they are merely an organization for seizure of power. And I know one thing: the young folks are not interested in that. They are interested in ideals, what this world is going to be in which they have to live, and doing something about it.

Incidentally, let me digress for a moment--I used the expression "in which you have to live." If I have any one single bit of philosophy, it is "in which you will be happy to live." Everybody ought to be happy every day. If you don't have some fun every day, that day is wasted. You have got a long time on this earth, and if you will meet your problems as they come up and get the satisfaction of a job well done--play hard--have fun doing it--be true to your friends--stick with them--despise wickedness and dictatorship and the oppressors of humans, I think you will have a lot of fun every single day. And that is what it ought to be--life ought to be an accumulation of those happy days.

This morning--I am roaming around here--I hope you don't mind--just talking--this morning happens to be the anniversary of a day that was the most tense in my life. This morning twelve years ago hundreds of vessels went across the English Channel and toward a destiny that was certainly uncertain at the moment.

Now, even that day had some enjoyment, because we were certain that that great force was bound together by a common belief in the dignity and the freedom of men. It was doing its job to eliminate tyranny from the earth, and in the main, and in spite of all of the plays that you see written about the horrors of war, they went willingly because they believed.

Now I think in a lesser sense, what we are talking about in a political party is: how much do we believe? And I think in that is the success or the failure of that party. How much do you believe in it; what it is trying to do; indeed, how much do we believe it is your duty to come and help make the policies that that party follows. You people are showing that you are doing these things.

All of this is merely my effort to say how proud I am of you, how much I believe in you, how much I hope we get to associate together in every possible way. I would like to spend an afternoon at one of your meetings.

But to each of you, good luck. Thanks for coming and let's remember: Let's help the Boy Scouts get out the vote. What do you say?

Note: The President spoke to a group selected to attend the second leadership training school, held in Washington under the auspices of the Republican National Committee, and jointly sponsored by the Young Republican Federation and the District of Columbia Young Republicans.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Remarks to a Group of Young Republicans. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/232913

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