Remarks on Receiving the Members of the National Republican Editorial Association at the White House

I need hardly say how glad I am to welcome you here to Washington, and I am sure, also, that it is almost unnecessary for me to express my realizing sense of the importance of the work that you do. In the proper sense of the term, no man is more essentially a public servant than the editor, the man who, in the public press, not merely gives the news, but exercises so great a control over the thought of our country.

And in speaking to you as my fellow Republicans, I wish you to know how every man here in Washington who is striving to do what in him lies to serve his party or make that party serve the country realizes the dependence on you and those like you throughout this land for making his purposes effective. It is upon your interpretation of the acts done here that we must depend for having these acts received at the proper worth by the people as a whole. I feel very strongly that what we need is simply to have the exact truth told, to have what we have done set forth as it has been done, and to have our purposes interpreted in the light not merely of our words but of our deeds; and you know that that is all that we need, and to meet that need we depend absolutely upon you.

Feeling this as I do, it is in no perfunctory manner that I greet you and thank you for coming here.