Remarks to Members of the Bull Elephants Club.

THANK YOU, Mr. Wolfson, members of the Committee.

My name is Dwight D. Eisenhower. I live in the house to your left front and work in the office to your left. I was told to come out here to meet Bull Elephants, and I must say every day in Washington you learn something.

Of course I am complimented by the sentiments of the resolution you have just heard read. When any American believes that another is qualified for holding public office, high or low, he is paying to that other person a very deep compliment because standards for public service should be, and I think in the main are, such that anyone who holds Federal office, or State or municipal office, is really set apart somewhat in the consciousness of America. So, I am truly grateful to those people for the confidence they express.

Now, if I can say anything that would be worth your while after coming all the distance from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue through this heat to give me a chance to greet you, it certainly will not be, and should not be, about me, my person, or my future decisions. It should be about the country and the Government for which you work, the Nation that you serve, and the party through which you perform that service. I think it would also be unnecessary for me to go back into what we hope for this country.

We hope, of course, in general terms for peace--peace with honor and security, for a fine flourishing and expanding economy and for the opportunity for all to participate in the productivity that that economy should have.

We hope for growing opportunities for ourselves and for our younger friends, and those coming after us, and our own children. But, when we talk about our party as an instrument to bring those things about, then we get a little closer I think to what we call legislative programs, things to implement the Government's part in achieving these great goals and aspirations.

I assure you that I for one know something of the great part you play in bringing about those programs. I have on my staff a few people who, had they stayed down there, would probably be eligible for membership in the Bull Elephants; Jack Martin and Gerry Morgan and others and Max Rabb, who have served down on the Hill with you.

They never let me forget what the principal secretaries and the filing clerks and all the others that answer the phones do, what they mean to legislation, what they mean to good will, what they mean to oiling the machinery that will allow a political party to achieve its own will on the Senate and House floors. But, I would like to talk a little bit more, go a little deeper into this matter of a party than just the mechanisms, the oiling of the machinery, the preventing of friction. We want, of course, honor and integrity in Government. We cannot only work for it, we cannot only preach it, we can exemplify it, and by that amount strengthen our party. We can also help to represent to all people in our own districts, in our own municipalities, and here in Washington, the desire of the Republican Party that this Nation go forward as it was conceived where individual opportunity for every man should be equally shared, where opportunity should be limitless so far as his capacities, his own ability, will enable him to take advantage of it.

We want no regimented state. We want no direction from the Federal Government where that is not necessary. We want, in our individual sense, the maximum of freedom so long as we do not trespass on the freedom of others.

But, when we come to the problem of determining where does the Federal Government's responsibility begin and end in all this--now we are really attacking the problem that each political party must solve for itself, in specific terms, before I think it can stand up and say: this is the party through which you can achieve the kind of ambitions of which I am talking, or this is the party that has another doctrine.

It is idle to say that the Federal Government can be as standoffish with respect to the affairs of Detroit, Michigan; or Abilene, Kansas; or San Antonio, Texas; as it was let us say 100 years ago. Life has gotten more complicated.

Our whole international situation affects each of us more closely than it did then, and the Federal Government is solely in charge of foreign relations. So, we have to determine: where do we want the Federal Government to go into this business and where do we want it to draw the line that they shall not go past. That is the kind of problem we have.

For myself I believe this--I believe that it is stated better by Lincoln than any other man--he said the function of Government is to do for the individual all of those things which he cannot do at all or which he cannot so well do for himself; but in all those things where the community or the individual can take care of his own affairs, the Federal Government ought not to interfere. That isn't quite an exact quotation, but it is almost exact. Now that is the kind of rule I think we should set up for ourselves.

We must never be a party that is indifferent to the sufferings of a great community where, through some unusual cause, people are out of work, where people can't educate their own children, where through any kind of disaster, natural or economic, people are suffering.

We must not only be alive to the requirements of that situation, but we must be alive to preventing it. But we must not put the Federal Government into this thing to the extent that we kill individual initiative, that we destroy the local responsibility for as far as it should reach in these matters. If we do, then we are starting to thread the way to regimentation, to Federal control.

I believe that if we stand for what I would call the great middle way in determining this line between Federal control and proper functions of the Federal Government, that if we stand irrevocably, inevitably, for decency and honor in Government, if we stand for peace abroad, for strength by which we protect ourselves while we are bringing about more peaceful relations, then in general we are doing what the Republican Party stands for. I believe if successful in carrying out this kind of a program, the Republican Party will continue to stay in power. That is because it will have proved itself worthy of the confidence of the United States, will have proved that it is in the hands of competent, devoted, loyal people who are extremists neither in the terms of being a reactionary or of believing in complete Federal control and responsibility, whether it be power, or whether it be anything else. It will have proved that we are the kind of people who can be trusted with the running of Federal, State, and local government.

Now, if we are going to achieve the kind of organization that I so roughly pictured, if we are to be successful in that, it is not enough merely to have fine presidential, vice presidential, senatorial, gubernatorial, and congressional candidates--all the way down the line.

We must also have loyal workers, workers that provide the staffs as you do for the leaders of such a group, who are devoted to a cause, because you believe in something. You believe in something that, because of the vastness of this Nation, is sometimes difficult to explain, but which you have in your heart very clearly written there. You believe in something, and you are carrying it out, in order for our Nation to have the benefit of that kind of a policy and program, and not primarily because you want to work in Washington. And I say that especially on a day like this!

Your efforts are above selfish ambition, no matter how ambitious one may be, and of course ambition is necessary. Someone told me the other day: ambition is like tempering steel--too little and the steel is no good; too much and it is brittle and breaks. Something to think about. Little bit like salt in your food. Of course you must have it, but your ambition, your burning ambition, must always be for the country--and for yourself as it fits into doing the very best you can for that country.

Now, I suppose that a person here could take up a lot of the special bills before Congress that I am interested in, plead for help, and probably do a better job than I do when I sometimes address some of your bosses. I am not going to do that. It is not my function here this morning, but rather to thank you. For all of the work you have done, for the work you are doing, thank you very much, very much indeed, and I hope that again one of these days I will get a chance to see you. Thank you for the compliment of coming out in this heat to see me. Goodbye.