Press Release, Speech of President Harry S. Truman, Toledo, Ohio

IMMEDIATE RELEASE IMMEDIATE RELEASE (As actually delivered) TRUNAN REMARKS OF THE PRESIDENT AT THE "NATIONAL CIVIC AUDITORIUM, TOLEDO ARCHIVES AND RECORDS LIBRARY oHTo, October 26, SERVICE" 1948 GOVERNMENT 2:02 p. m. E. S. T. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Mayor, I thank you most sincerely for that cordial welcome. I appreciate most highly the introduction of your next Congressman from this Dis- trict. This. is not my first visit. to Toledo. I have been here on several occasions, and I have always had a most cordial welcome. The last time I was here it was late night, and there were more than seven thousand people down at the station from Toledo to greet me. And I think that shows that people are interested in this campaigh and the campaign issues. Now, I have been in nearly all the great cities of the country -- and I will be in the rest of them before this campaign is over -- and I haven't had any more cordial welcome than I had here in Toledo. Now, here in Toledo, in the heart of the "Arsenal of Democracy, " I want to talk to you about national defense. I don't mean bombs and ships, and I don't mean guns and planes. I mean people -- you people right here in Toledo, and your neighbors. The basis of our national defense isinot weapons -- it is the spirit of the men behind them -- the spirit of the men and women who make up this great Nation. It is the American spirit, not our wealth, that gives us strength. It is the spirit of a free people, devoted to liberty and justice. It is the spirit of a people who are peace- ful -- peaceful and unafraid. That is the kind of national defense I believe in. This is the kind of national spirit which makes America's strength SO important a force for peace in the whole world. National defense begins at home. It begins with the things that make life worth while for the average industrial work- er, for the average f rmer, for the average small businessman. Now the leaders of the Republican Party just don't understand that sort of defense. They may understand munitions contraçts on a cost-plus basis, but they don't understand human righ rights on a man-plus basis. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Pearl Harbor had come nine years earlier, 1932, when the Republicans were in power --- when we had twelve million unemployed; when the farm- ers were desperate, losing their ferms, thousands a day; when the banks were being closed you were afraid to go into a bank in those days, afraid it would blow up in your face; when our whole free enterprise system was tottering and there was talk of revolu- tion. We would have pulled ourselves together, of course, and we would have won the war just the same. But it would have taken much longer and cost many more thousands of American lives. Fortunately, when the war did come, we were better pre- pared. We were better prepared because this Nation had been made strong by a. great Democratic President -- Franklin Roosevelt. President Roosevelt knew that national defense started with the welfare of the people. He knew that a nation is best de- fended by people who have a stake in that nation. It is exactly the same today as it was in the 1930's. The strength of America in the world-wide struggle against hunger and hatred, against fear and distrust, lies in our eager- ness to defend a form of democracy that has given us SO much to live for. (OVER)