Remarks at the National Citizens for Eisenhower Executive Campaign Conference.

THANK YOU very much indeed. My difficulty this morning is not in any lack of subjects that I would like to talk about to such a group. My difficulty will be in stopping. I suppose I should start out by appointing a committee who would have that job; but in any event, if I get going too long, why someone can look bored and maybe I'll catch the hint.

I am more and more impressed as time goes on. Some people acquire wealth, some acquire experience and I suppose some even acquire wisdom. For me, I acquire anniversaries. Almost exactly four years ago to the minute, I left Orly Field to come home. I came home, in response--very largely the response-to a call from you people--your forerunners in this same movement, your associates all over the United States.

Some of your will had been expressed in New Hampshire, some in Minnesota, much of it by private letter. And I remember one of your number brought a two-hour movie to me, and made me sit down and watch it, until she had me practically in tears, and I thought the best thing to do was get up and go home.

We have been through a lot together. We were bound together by a series of determinations that to us represented ideals--ideas that we thought should be applied to the government of the United States. Likewise, we knew that ideas and ideals, no matter how perfect or how nearly perfect they may be, do not achieve real benefit for humans until they are transferred into the field of practical action. In this case, practical governmental action.

And so there was a program developed that was designed to carry out the things that we were working for: good government, honest government, the kind of government that would not be satisfied with mere legal compliance with the law on the part of any official, but that the strictest code of ethics had to be observed or else that individual--that individual's usefulness--was ended in such a crusade.

And so we designed a program. You people, whether in the farms or the cities or wherever you were, helped to do it. Governmental officials traveled far and wide, committees came to Washington and we worked out programs that applied to the farm, to the city, to our foreign affairs, and that program still stands as the great guidepost for everything the Administration does or tries to do.

Peace abroad, a prosperity widely shared at home, fairness and justice for all, honesty and integrity in government. Just words, of course. But they express ideas, and the program that was devised with the help of all the citizens brought about a practical platform of work that has guided us ever since. Never have we deserted it.

Now of course, the very fact that you are here today means that you yourselves want me again to carry the burdens that I have been carrying for the past four years, to continue in the work and along generally the same lines that we have been pursuing.

I want to say only one word this morning about party as such: I am a Republican in our two-party system. Consequently, to do that work best, I think it is only logical that the people you give to me as my closest associates--if that responsibility is again laid upon me--be bound to me by terms of party loyalty as well as official and personal loyalty. I think it is quite clear that in that way we preserve the integrity of the two-party system and make it possible to hold one single party responsible for anything that happens within the Federal government.

I thought this morning as I was coming over here, that I would begin to review for you some of the things that have happened to date.

Abroad--such things as the termination of the conflict in Korea; our final movement into Vietnam, taking over partially from the French in order to make certain that that entire country and peninsula did not fall into the hands of the Communists. The settlement of the Iranian trouble--or at least the beginning. The elimination of Trieste as a sore spot. The quieting of many of the more difficult situations around the world that were causing trouble among our friends, and therefore trouble for us.

All of these are not settled, but America has preserved its position as the friend of all, in a position of strength always to move in and help in the settlement of these quarrels--removing of the reasons that have led to these situations.

We have not been drawn into the position of being so completely on one side of a quarrel--any quarrel--due to emotion or sentiment or anything else that we are incapable of carrying out our proper role of mediator, conciliator and friend of both sides when there is any possibility of settling a quarrel.

At home you know the record. There is no use of me going through it this morning. I would rather talk for a moment about ways to make sure that this great middle-of-the-road philosophy of government can continue its influence in our lives.

Now then, first of all, I want to make it perfectly clear we are not carrying forward dead forms. I believe someone once said, "From the altar of the past we carry forward the fire, not the ashes."

That is what we are doing. We are trying to carry forward the fire that is built up out of sentiment, of which I spoke to you earlier, and apply that to the problems that we find in today's world. We are trying to make certain that the goals that we have set for ourselves come a little nearer in achievement. We know that these goals are not achieved all at once. Mankind moves forward by little steps. It doesn't have the inexhaustible power--the intellectual capacity--to drive straight for a goal. It has to tack. But if we never lose sight of that goal and every step takes us one inch closer to it, then that is progress. We are carrying a torch. We are carrying a fire. We are not carrying ashes.

This group, the mere organization of it, does something for an individual like me. I read once--I believe it was a modern playwright who said, "The great generals of the past never had to look over their shoulders to see whether their followers were going along with them."

I suppose that sentence was written to tell about the great virtues of these leaders and how they instilled morale and organized a group dedicated to a cause so that they were perfectly confident as they went ahead that their supporters and associates were there.

As I thought over my experience with the Citizens, I have sort of changed my mind as to what that sentence might have meant. It might have meant that most great generals in history were merely made by the fact that they were so lucky to have good followers they had to run pretty fast to keep out of the way.

And that is what I feel about the Citizens. Never for a moment in these past three and a half years has there been a time when any grave question was up for settlement that there wasn't consciously on the table in front of us all and often in terms of specific mention: "The Citizens would have expected this; this is the way they would have done it. Or this we believe is more in keeping with what the Citizens meant when they elected us to office?"

Now that is the kind of group I see the Citizens to be. I hear people talking about such words as "complacency." It has no place in my vocabulary. Such people as the Citizens know this: when you are in a battle you bring forward everything you have; you accumulate your supplies; you get the best plan you can devise, and then you throw in your last reserves.

We find reserves not only among ourselves. We are going to search out the people that haven't been doing their duty as citizens and voting. We are going to get them all to come out. Unfortunately, I think, not all of them will vote for our side. But if they vote, at least they are doing their duty and to that extent, at least, the form of self-government justifies itself and we go forward that much more. But it is sure that for every person you bring out, some of them are going to vote and give you--and the people you have selected to represent you--that vote of confidence which is now so important as we face the problems of the next four years-

I don't want to take time to outline them except to say this: the goals we have set for ourselves have not been reached. But progress has been made. There has been, I think, dedicated work in the great attempt to keep our economy stable, by going forward, to making certain that the products of our great industrial and agricultural nation are more widely shared; to make certain that we stand strong in the councils of the world--strong militarily, strong economically, strong intellectually and spiritually--so that our place as a great leader of nations toward these will never be lost.

I think it is fair to say that work has been done along that line. Certainly the prestige of the United States since the last World War has never been as high as it is this day.

Now these are the things that remain to be done to advance. that position in the world, to meet the Communist threat in every conceivable way it can appear, whether it be in propaganda, whether it be economic, whether it be political. We know that we have largely nullified its reliance upon force and threat of force, because it has gone to different kinds of influence. We know that it has felt the pressure of ideas and ideals circulating in its own country and back of the Iron Curtain, because they are more concerned with development of consumer goods, more concerned with the status and the frame of mind of the people. They have only recently given, for the first time, the permission to the laborer to quit one job and go to another, under many restrictions, but nevertheless it is an advance. That is the kind of thing that is going on in the world. Every bit of it means progress. It must continue. The progress must continue at home.

For myself, as you know, I was ill last fall. I can only say this: now the only way I know it is because the doctors keep reminding me of it. I am perfectly ready to go forward at the behest of such groups as this--and do the very best I can in attaining the objectives that I know within me you want.

That is the only reason for doing so, but with that reason I will do it as cheerfully, as energetically, as enthusiastically, as it is possible for me to do.

To see you here today will send me back feeling a lot better. I wish I could sit here and participate in all your deliberations, but I know without being here that you are simply going to stick to the things we always did: clean government, good government, progressive government, a government that knows its place and doesn't interfere too much with me as I go about my daily business.

I assure you that when I say "me," I think I am speaking for each of you.

Thank you very much for inviting me over. It has been a very enjoyable occasion for me.

Thank you very much.