Well, it is very important, and the great idea of setting up an organism is so as to defeat the domino result. When, each standing alone, one falls, it has the effect on the next, and finally the whole row is down. You are trying, through a unifying influence, to build that row of dominoes so they can stand the fall of one, if necessary.
I know something about that war, and I never want to see that history repeated. But, my fellow Americans, it certainly can be repeated if the peace-loving democratic nations again fearfully practice a policy of standing idly by while big aggressors use armed force to conquer the small and weak.
The essence of leadership is to get others to do something because they think you want it done and because they know it is worth while doing, that is what we are talking about.
So, our readiness to meet and defeat this kind of possible attack is forced upon us, both as a potent preventive of actual war and to insure survival in event of attack. This alertness to danger has to be translated into specific policies and activities in the several parts of the world where our rights, our way of life, can be seriously damaged. Work of this kind occupies my days and nights.
War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men. Though you follow the trade of the warrior, you do so in the spirit of Washington, not of Genghis Khan. For Americans, only threat to our way of life justifies resort to conflict.
Since the advent of nuclear weapons, it seems clear that there is no longer any alternative to peace, if there is to be a happy and well world.
Not only do I have a great love for the game of golf, no matter how badly I play it, but I have also the belief that through every kind of meeting, through every kind of activity to which we can bring together more often and more intimately peoples of our several countries, by that measure we will do something to solve the difficulties and the tensions that this poor old world seems nowadays to so much endure.
Some politician some years ago said that bad officials are elected by good voters who do not vote.
Teachers need our active support and encouragement. They are doing one of the most necessary and exacting jobs in the land. They are developing our most precious national resource: our children, our future citizens.
I have no use for those, regardless of their political party, who hold some foolish dream of spinning the clock back to days when unorganized labor was a huddled, almost helpless mass.