Evening star., 1937-10-27
Text of Hoover's Radio Speech
Former President Outlines Needs for Party Program.
By the Associated Press.

BOSTON, Oct. 27.-The tert OF
former President Herbert Hooper'S
speech before the Republican Club
of Massachusetts last night toloiUs:
This club has made this evening
an especial occasion for the younger
Republican leaders. 1t is a happy
participation. The same spirit should
be extended over the country. The
party must have new faces and new
blood. 1t must incorporate more
youth, both men and women, in its
councils. The party needs the sin
cerity, the undaunted courage OF
youth. 1t is the idealism and virility
of youth which brings forward mo-
ton.
The rumor has been going about
for the past five years that oppor-
tunity for youth is gone in American
life. We hear of lost generation.
I said once that for $50 years God
fearing people under the blessings of
freedom have built up quite plant
and equipment on this continent.
The Nation teens with millions of
farms and homes and cattle and pigs
despite the A. A. A. There are rail-
roads, highways, power plants and
factories. stores and banks and eco
nomic royalsts. There are towns and
magnificent cities. There are news
papers, colleges. libraries, orchestras,
bands. radios and other noises. 1t
is very sad to contemplate, but 1t
has probably occurred to you that all
the people who live in these houses
and all those who run this compli-
Gated machine are going to pass into
the next world. just as sure as death
the Job of running it is yours.
Need Affirmative Program.
And there are increasing oppor-
tunities in every inch of it. Further
more, science and invention yearly
give to us further mighty powers of
progress. They create thousand
new frontiers of opportunity for
youth.
But over this world have come vast
problems in government which are
the challenge to youth. Unless they
be rightly solved there will be less
opportunity.
One phase of these solutions is
political party organization. SO pro-
pose to talk to you as Republicans
about the Republican party and the
service it can offer in these days OF
national perplexity.
am interested in building up the
Republican party not as a partisan
but as a citizen. So let us look at
It as citizens and not as politicians.
We are concerned now with some
thing greater than a game or securing
public Office.
The Republican party even out OF
Office is national necessity as a
unified opposition party to check ex-
cesses and protect minorities. But
It has a mission far greater than just
being against Nor can it be built
solely from a collection of politicians
and a mass of committees, no matter
how earnest and self-sacrificing they
may be.
This party must have a fighting
cause; it must have an affirmative
program; it must present effective
methods; 1t must have a forward
purpose; 1t must have idealism, and
it must be responsive to the needs
and crises of the people. If party
should come into power without such
definite purpose it would be OF little
good TO the Nation. 1t would mean
only that a few new people have got
up to the public trough.
Want No Public Office.
We are concerned with service in
q national crisis. Our country must
have emancipation from the moral
degeneration of current Government
methods. 1t must have emancipa-
ton from what Walter Lippmann so
sptly calls gradual collectivism." 1t
must bring sanity and reform to
destructive fiscal and economic poll
cies which undermine the standards
of living of the great economic mid
die class. 1t must make possible hui
nanitarian objectives which are 9TH
erwise wrecked by wrongful and in
efficient methods. Peace must be made
more secure.
If that be SO, all the wiles, the
tricks and the petty artfulness OF
politics are of minor r>oment.
Before I go further (noU hat it is
Of any Importance but just to keep
the air clean) let me repeat once
again that I do not want any public
Office. I shall keep on fighting for
those things vital to the American
people. There is no form of words
that will convince suspicious poll
tician that any man under 85 can
have any other purpose of interest
ing himself in public affairs. The
accusation of seeking office seems to
be the highest intellectual level to
which the opposition can rise when
they are made uncomfortable by argu-
ment and new proposals.
There are five great categories OF
national issues today. The first are
issues of moral integrity in govern
ment. The second are the vital is
sues of personal liberty and its safe
guards. The third are those financial
and economic policies which affect
the standards of living Of the people
The fourth are the humane issues oi
security and of aid for the less fortu-