Speech of Harry S. Truman at Cape Girardeau, Missouri

SPEECH OF SENATOR HARRY S. TRUMAN OF MISSOURI, TO THE YOUNG DEMOCRATIC CLIES AAVISAS, ILLINOIS, KENTUCKY AND TENNESSEE CAT GIRARDAAU, MISSOURI, OCTOBER 23, 1937. It is a very great pleasure and a high honor to be one of your speakers today. Missouri and Cape Girardeau welcome the Young Democrats of neighboring States and the officials of those States. We are also glad to have the son of our great President here as a guest. As Young Democrats, you are the standard bearers of the future; to you will be entrusted the ideals and the welfare of the Republic of the United States for the next generation. Those of us who are at the helm of public offices must shortly relinquish that helm to you, who are the "hope of the world". To you whose ideals are those of Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, it will be a pleasure to leave the affairs of this great Republic. It has been my privilege and my duty to serve the country publicly for some twenty-odd years, in one capacity and another, the last three of which have been as United States Senator from Missouri. We have been through some very trying times in that twenty years. I was a soldier-- field artilleryman under Wilson, one of the ablest and greatest of Presidents, when we made a trip abroad to establish the ideals of Democracy, only to see them erumble under the rule of men who had no ideals, but whose sole thought was completely selfish. We went through twelve years of the debauchery of public ideals. Then came another idealist who really believes in Democracy of the Jeffer- TRUNAN NARA