Evening star., 1951-05-17

I
address deliUered By President
Truman today at the National
Conference on Citizenship:
am very glad to join in well
coming this conference to Wash
lington. I am strongly in favor
of what you are doing here to help
the people of this country become
better citizens.
The job of being an American
citizen keeps growing more diff
Ificult and more important. every
day. In some countries, the i'm
lportant decisions are made by the
rulers, and the citizens do as they
ARE told. In our country. the citi-
IzenS make the basic decisions. and
the officials OF the Government do
Jas the people tell them.
AS the problems before our coun-
try become more complicated and
more dangerous, our citizens must
give greater attention to their job
Iof making the basic decisions.
There is less margin for error than
there used to be. Wrong decisions
in this day and age may wreck the
country, once and for all.
There is great deal Of serious
business before the Government
of this country. This business
concerns our national defense and
our national survival. Important
decisions have to be made by the
Congress and the President, and
made soon, These decisions ought
to be above politics. because the
welfare of the country depends On
them.
Sense of Urgency.
I hope that. when you leave
this conference, you will take
home with you an understanding
Iof the major problems we face,
and sense if urgency about the
decisions your Government has to
make. If this understanding can
he spread among all the citizens
groups you represent, believe
these decisions will be made
promtly and made right.
If the citizens know the facts,
and let their elected representa-
tives know that they want the
national interest put above every
political interest and every special
interest, then there won't be any
question about keeping our Nation
strong and secure. That is one
of the most important things this
conference can do.
I would like to outline for you
a few of the major problems we
have to face
There is lot of discussion
nowadays about military strategy
That is all right. Military
strategy is important and every
body ought to be concerned about
it.
But there are a lot of other
problems that are equally i'm
'portant. We have the hard prob
lens of defense production, taxes
and stabilization, for example.
Unless we face those problems, we
won't be able to have any military
strategy at all.
Should Stand Together.
Our country faces the danger
Of war from an aggressive and i'm
perialistic foreign power. Meet
ing this danger is all-important.
We should all stand together.
I think that some people fail
to realize that this threat is very
real. They think there is still
time to play politics.
That is a terribly dangerous
attitude. We must all get to-
gether behind a program adequate
to meet the perils we face. We
must get together now-without
waiting-without playing politics
Our defense program and our
defense production must come
ahead of everything else. If we
let our defense program get
|snarled up, or delayed, or slashed,
We would would be courting dis
aster.
A suggestion was made by one
Senator the other day that we
ought to cut down the goal for
our armed forces by half a million
men. At a time like this, such a cut
would be very foolish.
Slashing the size of our armed
forces would not be economy, 1t