May 24, 1951
Mr. Attorney General and members of his staff:
I am very happy to welcome you here this morning, as I usually do when you come to Washington. I think on the last trip I went down to the auditorium and made a long-winded speech to you. I won't inflict one on you this morning, because I know you have had a good one already and probably will have some more before you get through.
I am interested, though, in what you are doing and what the Attorney General is trying to do in the way of law enforcement.
I might remark that you are standing in a very famous rose garden. Great events have taken place here in this garden. I give a large number of Medals of Honor to our Armed Forces men here in this garden. I have given medals to nearly all the great generals of our allies--to the French and the British, the Belgians, Italians-nearly every one of our great allies has had some leading military man here who has received a medal here in this garden.
I remember particularly giving one to General Wainwright after he came back right out of a Japanese prison, and he told me that he thought I would be having him court-martialed because he had to surrender Bataan rather than my giving him a Medal of Honor. I don't think I ever gave one that was appreciated more.
Some remarkable things happened to these young men--most fantastic and unbelievable things that they do. I remember one in particular, a great big captain who had been a sergeant when the event for which he got his medal took place. He was about 6 foot 2, and weighed 200 pounds, and I had to stand on tiptoe to get the medal around his neck. He had captured 196 or some fantastic number of Germans--did it all by himself by going into a village and throwing hand-grenades into windows and houses, and when he ran out of grenades he threw rocks, and the Germans came out and surrendered to him. I said to him, "Young man, I don't want you to throw any rocks at me." And he said, "Mr. President, I wouldn't do that." He was much more scared when I was giving him that medal than he was throwing those grenades.
Then I had another young man who was a naval hospital steward. He told me that he was a conscientious objector, and he had a fantastic citation. On Okinawa he had carried out wounded men--he himself was wounded, and he wouldn't let them take him off, and he was wounded again before the rest of the wounded were removed, when finally they had to carry him off.
I said, "Young man, how does it come that you were on the battlefront and a conscientious objector?" He said, "Well, I just decided that I could serve the Lord there as well as anywhere else, if I didn't have to kill anybody." That was a real honest, conscientious young man, trying to do the best he could for his country yet still sticking to his beliefs.
I had another young man with both legs off up to here, and in a wheelchair. He had a fantastic citation, one that was almost unbelievable. When I gave him the medal I said, "Young man, you have made a great sacrifice for your country." "Well," he said, "Mr. President, I just have one life to give for my country, and it still can have it if it wants it."
Now that is what makes up the backbone of this country. That is a cross section of the United States, where you good people come from.
Now, it is your business to see that the laws of the United States of America are properly and rigidly enforced, for the welfare of the country. As I have told you once before, I don't want you to persecute anybody. It is your business to see that when men who are brought to the courts where you have to act as United States attorneys-it is your business to see that they have a fair trial, as well as to see that they are punished for their misdeeds.
We have had crime investigations by Senate committees, with which we cooperated entirely and fully. I called the Attorney General and the head of the collection agency over here--Internal Revenue Department-and all the other agencies that have to do with law enforcement, and told them to give the committees all the cooperation they could. When the committees have found certain things that exist that ought not to exist in this country, most of them are things that should be remedied by the State governments. Some of them are things that affect the United States and interstate business.
And it is your business to see that those things that affect the laws of the Federal Government are taken care of, that every man who has been breaking those laws is punished.
But I want to reiterate again that justice is what we are after. We are not out to persecute anybody. We are out to see that the good people are not harmed by criminals. But we must also see that no innocent man gets punished for something that he did not do.
Now, I am most happy to have you here. I appreciate your willingness to come and call on me. I know you are going to have a constructive--and have had a constructive-meeting, and that when you go back you will be feeling more like doing your job than you did when you came here.
Have a good time while you are here. Washington is a wonderful place to visit, but it is an awful place to live in.
Thank you very much.
NOTE: The President spoke at 12:35 p.m. in the Rose Garden at the White House. In his opening words he referred to Attorney General J. Howard McGrath.
