Outline of Remarks of Senator Harry S. Truman at Caruthersville, Missouri

Outline of the remarks of Senator Harry S. Truman on his 11th visit to the American Legion Fair, at Caruthersville, Missouri, October 7th, 1944. Ladies and Gentlemen and my friends of Southeast Missouri: This is my 11th visit to Caruthersville on the occasion of the Amorican Legion Fair, and I hope it will be my privilege to make it at least eleven more. I was here in 1937 and discussed with you the sit- uation then developing in the world and reminded you of the effort which President Wilson had made to create a League of Nations to keep the peace. This speech, if you remember, was brought about by the fact that in 1931 Japan had gone into Manchuria, breaking all the treaties to which it was a party. Italy had gone into Ethiopia under almost exactly the same conditions, and Hitler was threatening at that time to go into Poland, which he did two years later. Just a few days after this Fair closed President Roosevelt made a speech in Chicago in which he warned the country that the dictators of Europe were preparing to plunge the world into war, and that under those conditions there would be no opportunity for the United States to remain out of the conflict, because there was no chance for us to be isolated from a conflict of the magnitude then pending. Nor would neutrality laws prevent our be- coming entangled in a world-wide conflict. He was called at that time a "war monger" by a large section of the Press; the pacifists and the isolationists. He began then to make an effort to build up the defenses of this country and in every instance he was hampered by the isolat- ionists and the Republican minority in the two houses of Congress. That minority voted against increase of air plane production; voted against Lend Lease; voted against conscription. Just recently an effort has been made by the two leaders of the Republican party in this campaign to make it appear that the country was unprepared because the President didn't make an effort soon enough to get us prepared. They have made garbled quotations from that speech of October 5th, 1937, to which I have referred, in an axf endeavor to make that appear as a fact. They have left words and sentences out of their proper context and have de NARA liberately isrepresented the facts, which were stated in that great - 1 -