May 14, 1952
General Spaatz, Secretary Finletter, Mr. Speaker, distinguished guests:
I certainly appreciate the invitation of the Civil Air Patrol to come out here to its congressional dinner. I often say that I spent the happiest 10 years of my life in the Senate, and I am always glad to go to a party where I get a chance to see some of my friends from the Congress, both from the House and the Senate.
You would be surprised how lonesome it gets at the White House sometimes. You think that's funny. Of course, it wasn't lonesome there this afternoon. Mrs. Truman and I shook hands with 1,283 guests this afternoon. We have been doing that about every other day for some time. But along in June she will go home, and Margaret will go on the road, in all probability, and I will have to sit there and wonder what in hell Congress is going to do to the defense program.
Now, I want to congratulate the Civil Air Patrol on the approach it is making to Congress by having this dinner. I don't know just what you want out of Congress, but I will say to you you are going at it the right way. In fact, I would like to make a deal with you. I would like to team up with you. I will help you get what you want from the Congress--although I haven't got very much influence with them these days-if you will help me get what I want. You know, I have a little trouble in that regard, sometimes. I have got some wonderful friends in the Congress who understand what the program is all about and who fight valiantly for it. But, you know, it is a terrific thing to get a Congress to work in a presidential election year. Nobody knows that better than I do.
Take the defense appropriation, for instance. Look what the House and the Senate foreign Relations Committee and the Armed Services Committee have done to the economic European rearmament appropriation. Look what they have done to the Defense budget. That budget was an honest budget if there ever was one.
We are winning the cold war, and I fear very much that if the Congress continues to follow the attitude that it has on these immensely important appropriation bills, we may lose it, and then--and then these defense appropriations will look like a drop in the bucket. I hope that won't happen.
I think the Civil Air Patrol is doing such a wonderful job that it deserves the support of the Congress. Now I am lobbying for you with all these Congressmen and Senators.
You are providing an efficient search and rescue service for the Nation. You represent the air arm of civil defense, and you have a splendid program for training aviation cadets.
Now, people do not appreciate exactly the necessity and the importance of civil defense. It is one of the most important branches of our defense program, because the men in the field who do the fighting can't do that fighting if the production machine behind them should become destroyed. And you are helping us to protect that production machine.
I know that you put a lot of your own money into this business, and you render a real public service, at your own expense. You don't know how much I appreciate that, because most everybody who comes to see me wants something out of the Treasury.
I am especially pleased with your interest in civil defense. You know how important a real civil defense program is, and I hope you will try to impress that on other people-just as I told you awhile ago.
I am also very much interested in the work the Civil Air Patrol is doing to interest young people in aviation. If we are going to keep up with our responsibilities in the world, we must have a country that is air-minded. We must have more and more young people all the time who go into the business of flying. Consequently, I have been disturbed at the fact that there seems to be less interest in learning to fly during the last few years. Fewer permits are being issued to student pilots, and fewer licenses to private pilots. That is not good.
I think one of the difficulties may be that a lot of the glamor has gone from flying. The kids that are growing up today have airplanes all around them, and they take them as a matter of course. They think it's just as natural for man to fly as it is for birds to fly, for bees to fly, and for men to walk. They never will be able to appreciate the excitement and the wonder that an airplane creates in those of us who grew up when there was no such thing.
All we heard about when I was a boy was that old Greek mythology story about the fellow who made himself some wings out of eagle's feathers and flew close to the sun and the wax melted his wings and he killed himself. And we have heard about Darius Green and his flying machine but they didn't believe there would ever be a flying machine.
Now I have flown thousands and thousands of miles, and I still don't believe it can be done.
The kids naturally just take it for granted. They just don't realize what a wonderful thing it was when the Wright brothers succeeded in making that flight at Kitty Hawk.
I remember the first time I ever saw a picture of the Wright brothers' plane in flight, just a few years after the Kitty Hawk flight, in one of these old nickelodeons, where you paid a nickel to see a picture. I would like to see you get in one for a nickel now. They had a picture of one of the Wright brothers flying this biplane. Then a year or two after that I actually saw the plane, and as I said awhile ago, I just didn't believe it, but there it was.
My first flight is something I will never forget, either. After the first World War was over, I was a field artillery officer, and some smart person up at the top issued an order that field artillery officers, captains, and lieutenants--and I was a captain in command of a battery--would go up with the pilots and learn how to observe.
Well, I went back as ordered, and got in the plane with one of those pilots. He didn't want to take me up any worse than I wanted to go up. It was in one of those old Jennies, and he gave the darn thing the barrel roll and Immelmann turn and loop the loop and everything else. And I want to say to you that I left the last three meals all over France. It was a long, long time before I got over that experience.
I had another first-time experience that I think may have been the first time. When I got back home, I got into politics. That has been just 30 years ago. Next November I will have been in public elective office 30 years. This was the first time I ever ran for elective office. And I went out to a little airfield that had a couple of runways about a hundred feet long, and got a fellow who had a two-seater, an old single-wing plane. And he put me in the front seat and he got in the back seat, and I took a double armload of handbills and flew all over the county and the towns in the county and dropped those handbills, on one side of the plane and on the other side. And when that fellow went to land he had to land in a pasture in a little town called Oak Grove, where I was going to make a speech. He just missed a barbed wire fence by that much. If that had happened, I wouldn't be in politics today.
But that was an interesting experience. I really think that is one of the first times that a plane was ever used in a campaign. And by the way, I don't know whether it was the plane or not, but I won!
We are making a great deal of progress in the science of aviation now. In fact, I think we are at the door of the greatest age in history in everything.
If we can prevent a third world war-and I have been trying 7 years to prevent that third world war, and I hope we will be successful at it--the young people today, I think, will see a fantastic age, an age that our fathers and grandfathers dreamed about, but never thought would happen.
I wonder if I could read you a little something here that I have been carrying around for nearly 30 years. It is almost worn out. This was written in 1842 by a gentleman named Alfred Tennyson. And here is the way it goes--this is an extract from it:
"for I dipt into the future, as far as
human eye could see.
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the
wonder that would be;
"Saw the heavens fill with commerce,
argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping
down with costly bales;
"Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and
there rain'd a ghastly dew"
--atomic bombs--
"from the nations' airy navies grappling
in the central blue;
"far along the world-wide whisper of the
south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples
plunging thro' the thunderstorm;
"Till the wardrum throbb'd no longer,
and the battle flags were furled.
In the Parliament of man, the Federation
of the world."
Now, that was written in 1842 by Alfred Tennyson. That is a prophecy of the age in which we live now. And we are faced with a much greater age than the one that Tennyson dreamed about.
If we will just keep our feet on the ground and our heads level, I am sure that this discovery of the way to break the atom will bring not only fantastic things for us to use, but it will be used for peaceful purposes--just as all the other destructive articles that have been invented have been used for that purpose.
I want to live to see that age, and that is the reason I am quitting as President. I want to live that long.
Planes are getting bigger, and faster, and safer. I think there is no doubt that the airplane as a means of transportation is here to stay and is just on the verge of more and more improvement. And I am sure that flying has not really lost its glamor. I know you people here tonight will testify to that-or you wouldn't be here.
What you have to do is to give our young people a chance to find out what flying really is. The spirit of adventure is not dead in this great country of ours.
I wish--I wish all of you could be with me when I read the citations for Medals of Honor. I, of course, on account of the fact that I was the President at the end of the Second World War, and have been President during the unpleasantness in Korea, I have hung more Medals of Honor around the necks of our young men than any other President. All the Presidents put together haven't presented as many as I have.
And when you read those citations, it makes you the proudest person in the world. It shows what the fiber of this country is made of.
I asked one of the great moving picture men why he didn't take some of these wonderful citations and show the people just exactly what happened with these young men. "Why," he said, "I can't do it because nobody would believe it. It's just beyond belief." And it is. There is no question about it being beyond belief.
The first time I ever had a meeting for that purpose, there was a young man in a wheelchair, with both his legs off, all the way up--the nicest-looking young fellow you ever saw. And I said, "Young man, you have made a tremendous sacrifice for your country." He said, "Mr. President, I didn't have but one life to give for my country, and it can have it yet if it wants it."
I hung a Medal around the neck of a great big captain, six-foot two or three, and weighed a couple of hundred pounds. He had captured 160 Germans in a village in the drive that broke up the Bulge. And when he ran out of hand grenades he threw rocks at the houses, and the Germans came out and surrendered because they thought they were hand grenades.
And I said to him, as I had to stand on tiptoe to fix the Medal around his neck, I said, "I don't want you throwing any rocks at me." "Oh," he said, "Mr. President, I wouldn't think about doing that."
Well now, when our boys and girls have a chance to find out what an exciting and useful business aviation really is, they will be eager to take part in it. That is why the work of the Civil Air Patrol with its cadets is so important. That is why I feel sure that the Congress and other agencies of the Government will assist you in every way possible.
Now I hope you will keep up your good work, and keep on making your contribution to the country's welfare.
We need you. If I didn't think so, I wouldn't be out here urging you to go on with it. Please go on with it, and do everything you possibly can--back door, front door, and any other way you can get to the Congress, to get what you want.
Thank you very much.
NOTE: The President spoke at 9:15 p.m. at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington. In his opening words he referred to Gen. Carl A. Spaatz, USAF, Chairman of the National Executive Board of the Civil Air Patrol, Thomas K. Finletter, Secretary of the Air force, and Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House of Representatives.
General Spaatz, Secretary Finletter, Mr. Speaker, distinguished guests:
I certainly appreciate the invitation of the Civil Air Patrol to come out here to its congressional dinner. I often say that I spent the happiest 10 years of my life in the Senate, and I am always glad to go to a party where I get a chance to see some of my friends from the Congress, both from the House and the Senate.
You would be surprised how lonesome it gets at the White House sometimes. You think that's funny. Of course, it wasn't lonesome there this afternoon. Mrs. Truman and I shook hands with 1,283 guests this afternoon. We have been doing that about every other day for some time. But along in June she will go home, and Margaret will go on the road, in all probability, and I will have to sit there and wonder what in hell Congress is going to do to the defense program.
Now, I want to congratulate the Civil Air Patrol on the approach it is making to Congress by having this dinner. I don't know just what you want out of Congress, but I will say to you you are going at it the right way. In fact, I would like to make a deal with you. I would like to team up with you. I will help you get what you want from the Congress--although I haven't got very much influence with them these days-if you will help me get what I want. You know, I have a little trouble in that regard, sometimes. I have got some wonderful friends in the Congress who understand what the program is all about and who fight valiantly for it. But, you know, it is a terrific thing to get a Congress to work in a presidential election year. Nobody knows that better than I do.
Take the defense appropriation, for instance. Look what the House and the Senate foreign Relations Committee and the Armed Services Committee have done to the economic European rearmament appropriation. Look what they have done to the Defense budget. That budget was an honest budget if there ever was one.
We are winning the cold war, and I fear very much that if the Congress continues to follow the attitude that it has on these immensely important appropriation bills, we may lose it, and then--and then these defense appropriations will look like a drop in the bucket. I hope that won't happen.
I think the Civil Air Patrol is doing such a wonderful job that it deserves the support of the Congress. Now I am lobbying for you with all these Congressmen and Senators.
You are providing an efficient search and rescue service for the Nation. You represent the air arm of civil defense, and you have a splendid program for training aviation cadets.
Now, people do not appreciate exactly the necessity and the importance of civil defense. It is one of the most important branches of our defense program, because the men in the field who do the fighting can't do that fighting if the production machine behind them should become destroyed. And you are helping us to protect that production machine.
I know that you put a lot of your own money into this business, and you render a real public service, at your own expense. You don't know how much I appreciate that, because most everybody who comes to see me wants something out of the Treasury.
I am especially pleased with your interest in civil defense. You know how important a real civil defense program is, and I hope you will try to impress that on other people-just as I told you awhile ago.
I am also very much interested in the work the Civil Air Patrol is doing to interest young people in aviation. If we are going to keep up with our responsibilities in the world, we must have a country that is air-minded. We must have more and more young people all the time who go into the business of flying. Consequently, I have been disturbed at the fact that there seems to be less interest in learning to fly during the last few years. Fewer permits are being issued to student pilots, and fewer licenses to private pilots. That is not good.
I think one of the difficulties may be that a lot of the glamor has gone from flying. The kids that are growing up today have airplanes all around them, and they take them as a matter of course. They think it's just as natural for man to fly as it is for birds to fly, for bees to fly, and for men to walk. They never will be able to appreciate the excitement and the wonder that an airplane creates in those of us who grew up when there was no such thing.
All we heard about when I was a boy was that old Greek mythology story about the fellow who made himself some wings out of eagle's feathers and flew close to the sun and the wax melted his wings and he killed himself. And we have heard about Darius Green and his flying machine but they didn't believe there would ever be a flying machine.
Now I have flown thousands and thousands of miles, and I still don't believe it can be done.
The kids naturally just take it for granted. They just don't realize what a wonderful thing it was when the Wright brothers succeeded in making that flight at Kitty Hawk.
I remember the first time I ever saw a picture of the Wright brothers' plane in flight, just a few years after the Kitty Hawk flight, in one of these old nickelodeons, where you paid a nickel to see a picture. I would like to see you get in one for a nickel now. They had a picture of one of the Wright brothers flying this biplane. Then a year or two after that I actually saw the plane, and as I said awhile ago, I just didn't believe it, but there it was.
My first flight is something I will never forget, either. After the first World War was over, I was a field artillery officer, and some smart person up at the top issued an order that field artillery officers, captains, and lieutenants--and I was a captain in command of a battery--would go up with the pilots and learn how to observe.
Well, I went back as ordered, and got in the plane with one of those pilots. He didn't want to take me up any worse than I wanted to go up. It was in one of those old Jennies, and he gave the darn thing the barrel roll and Immelmann turn and loop the loop and everything else. And I want to say to you that I left the last three meals all over France. It was a long, long time before I got over that experience.
I had another first-time experience that I think may have been the first time. When I got back home, I got into politics. That has been just 30 years ago. Next November I will have been in public elective office 30 years. This was the first time I ever ran for elective office. And I went out to a little airfield that had a couple of runways about a hundred feet long, and got a fellow who had a two-seater, an old single-wing plane. And he put me in the front seat and he got in the back seat, and I took a double armload of handbills and flew all over the county and the towns in the county and dropped those handbills, on one side of the plane and on the other side. And when that fellow went to land he had to land in a pasture in a little town called Oak Grove, where I was going to make a speech. He just missed a barbed wire fence by that much. If that had happened, I wouldn't be in politics today.
But that was an interesting experience. I really think that is one of the first times that a plane was ever used in a campaign. And by the way, I don't know whether it was the plane or not, but I won!
We are making a great deal of progress in the science of aviation now. In fact, I think we are at the door of the greatest age in history in everything.
If we can prevent a third world war-and I have been trying 7 years to prevent that third world war, and I hope we will be successful at it--the young people today, I think, will see a fantastic age, an age that our fathers and grandfathers dreamed about, but never thought would happen.
I wonder if I could read you a little something here that I have been carrying around for nearly 30 years. It is almost worn out. This was written in 1842 by a gentleman named Alfred Tennyson. And here is the way it goes--this is an extract from it:
"for I dipt into the future, as far as
human eye could see.
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the
wonder that would be;
"Saw the heavens fill with commerce,
argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping
down with costly bales;
"Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and
there rain'd a ghastly dew"
--atomic bombs--
"from the nations' airy navies grappling
in the central blue;
"far along the world-wide whisper of the
south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples
plunging thro' the thunderstorm;
"Till the wardrum throbb'd no longer,
and the battle flags were furled.
In the Parliament of man, the Federation
of the world."
Now, that was written in 1842 by Alfred Tennyson. That is a prophecy of the age in which we live now. And we are faced with a much greater age than the one that Tennyson dreamed about.
If we will just keep our feet on the ground and our heads level, I am sure that this discovery of the way to break the atom will bring not only fantastic things for us to use, but it will be used for peaceful purposes--just as all the other destructive articles that have been invented have been used for that purpose.
I want to live to see that age, and that is the reason I am quitting as President. I want to live that long.
Planes are getting bigger, and faster, and safer. I think there is no doubt that the airplane as a means of transportation is here to stay and is just on the verge of more and more improvement. And I am sure that flying has not really lost its glamor. I know you people here tonight will testify to that-or you wouldn't be here.
What you have to do is to give our young people a chance to find out what flying really is. The spirit of adventure is not dead in this great country of ours.
I wish--I wish all of you could be with me when I read the citations for Medals of Honor. I, of course, on account of the fact that I was the President at the end of the Second World War, and have been President during the unpleasantness in Korea, I have hung more Medals of Honor around the necks of our young men than any other President. All the Presidents put together haven't presented as many as I have.
And when you read those citations, it makes you the proudest person in the world. It shows what the fiber of this country is made of.
I asked one of the great moving picture men why he didn't take some of these wonderful citations and show the people just exactly what happened with these young men. "Why," he said, "I can't do it because nobody would believe it. It's just beyond belief." And it is. There is no question about it being beyond belief.
The first time I ever had a meeting for that purpose, there was a young man in a wheelchair, with both his legs off, all the way up--the nicest-looking young fellow you ever saw. And I said, "Young man, you have made a tremendous sacrifice for your country." He said, "Mr. President, I didn't have but one life to give for my country, and it can have it yet if it wants it."
I hung a Medal around the neck of a great big captain, six-foot two or three, and weighed a couple of hundred pounds. He had captured 160 Germans in a village in the drive that broke up the Bulge. And when he ran out of hand grenades he threw rocks at the houses, and the Germans came out and surrendered because they thought they were hand grenades.
And I said to him, as I had to stand on tiptoe to fix the Medal around his neck, I said, "I don't want you throwing any rocks at me." "Oh," he said, "Mr. President, I wouldn't think about doing that."
Well now, when our boys and girls have a chance to find out what an exciting and useful business aviation really is, they will be eager to take part in it. That is why the work of the Civil Air Patrol with its cadets is so important. That is why I feel sure that the Congress and other agencies of the Government will assist you in every way possible.
Now I hope you will keep up your good work, and keep on making your contribution to the country's welfare.
We need you. If I didn't think so, I wouldn't be out here urging you to go on with it. Please go on with it, and do everything you possibly can--back door, front door, and any other way you can get to the Congress, to get what you want.
Thank you very much.
NOTE: The President spoke at 9:15 p.m. at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington. In his opening words he referred to Gen. Carl A. Spaatz, USAF, Chairman of the National Executive Board of the Civil Air Patrol, Thomas K. Finletter, Secretary of the Air force, and Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House of Representatives.