Speech of Assistant Secretary of War Louis Johnson Before the American Legion Convention, Department of Oklahoma, at Muskogee, Oklahoma

FUTURE RELEASE PLEASE NOTE DATE. TAR DEPARTMENT FUTURE RELFASE FOR RELEASE AFTER DELIVERY Address by The Honorable Louis Johnson The Assistant Secretary of Var The American Legion Convention Department of Oklahoma wuskogee, Oklahoma September 4, 1938, 3:00 p.m., C.S.T. AMERICANISM Fellow-Legionnaires: About five years ago it was my privilege, as your National Commander, to be your official guest. I then had the opportunity to see what valuable services you, my comrades of The American Legion, were performing in the in- terests of your communities and in the welfare of our country. You, loyal Legionnaires of Oklahoma, had just passed through a try- ing period of economic adversity. Meny of you had been hurt, some cuite badly. Even now, perheps, not all of you have recovered. Uith the characteristic de- termination of Sooner pioneers, and with the same fighting spirit that many of you, veterans of the 36th Division, showed in the Meuse-Argonne engagement, you dug in, practiced and preached the principles of Americanism, fortified your positions against subversive influences, and moved forward for the counter- attack. The job of preserving America comes to every generation. Upon some of us the lot has fallen to save it by blood and sword in battle; upon others of us, to preserve it by exemple and precept in our daily conduct. In 1917-1918, the dangers that threatened America ceme from overseas. Todey, there are sinister forces at work, principelly of foreign origin, that would erect ideological frontiers between our citizens, pit neighbor against neighbor, undermine our American soirit of tolerance and understanding and destroy America by propaganda. You and I of this generation must dedicate our lives to defend our soiritual frontier against these evil influences that endanger our ideals, our principles and our institutions. Thanks to the heroic dead who have fought to preserve our Union at various times in our history, we have a noble heritage. We have a stake in the world second to none. It includes the homes, the lives, the femilies, the properties and the rights of one hundred and thirty million people, oc- cupying an area of four million square miles, possessing one-half the total wealth of the world. It includes a standard of living unequaled in any other part of the globe. Our country is young and vigorous. It is not perfect. No nation is. Compared to the rest of the world, however, the men and women of our country are more secure in their property, more protected in their lives and more happy in their outlook toward the future than the inhabitants of any other na- tion in the world. There is hardly a man living today anywhere in Furope or Asia, who, if given an opportunity and a free passport to America, would not drop his work end migrate to this country on the first available boat. There is hardly a man now living in the United States, citizen or alien, even among those s. TUMAN NARA MORE