Senator KENNEDY. Governor Lawrence, the next
Congressman from this district, Warren Ballard, ladies and gentlemen, Walter
Frye, who is running for the assembly in this State - and we need good
assemblymen, we need good State senators, we need good Congressmen, we
need good U.S. Senators, and we need a President, [Applause.] And that
is why I am here today.
I was informed when I started out this morning
that we were going to travel in Delaware County which voted 8 to 1 for
Alf Landon. We are going to wipe that record out. [Applause.] No county
in the United States should have that reputation. [Laughter.] * *
* [Inaudible.] * * * But this is the year for Delaware, Montgomery, Massachusetts,
the United States, to choose progress, to move forward, and I come here
today and ask your support. [Applause.]
No one can say with any certainty what is
ever going to happen on election day. But I want to make it very clear
that when election day is finished, or, rather, when it begins, I will
be satisfied and hope I will be satisfied when it is over. But in any case,
I believe that the Democratic Party and this campaign is on the side of
right, is on the side of the best long-range interests of our country,
stands for the things I hope in 1960 which are in accordance with the best
judgment that we can render on the needs of our country. I don't know of
any Democratic candidates - certainly this is true of our vice-presidential
candidate or myself - that have gone to the people in the election of 1960
and talked anything but the truth as we understood it, and as we saw it
and what represented the needs of our country.
Two thousand years ago when Athens was under
attack from the Macedonians, Demosthenes in a great speech said, "Our trouble
comes from those who wish to please us, rather than serve us." I hope after
this campaign is over in 1960, whether it is successful or not, though
I hope it is successful, but whether it is successful or not, I hope it
will be recorded that the Democratic Party and its candidates in 1960 sought
to serve the people, not please them. [Applause.] And my best judgment
is that those who in 1960 seek to serve the people also please them, and
I think that is the mistake Mr. Nixon has made. [Applause.] To go through
the United States and talk, about our unparalleled prosperity as if there
are no clouds on the horizon bigger than a man's hand, to talk about our
position in the world as higher and stronger and greater than it has ever
been in the past, to sound no alarm bell in the night, to express no urgency,
to fail to warn that these are dangerous and hazardous days, full of opportunity
and also of trouble, in my opinion misleads rather than misinforms, and
no free people can possibly maintain their freedom unless they and those
who seek positions of responsibility are willing to face the facts of life,
the facts with the bark off, the truth, and the truth in 1960 calls for
the American people to render an accurate judgment of their position of
their country, their position in history, where they have been and where
they are going. We face new problems, entirely different from those that
have faced the Eisenhower administration or that of Harry Truman or Franklin
Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson. Those names may be invoked by both parties.
But as we move across the frontier of 1960 into the sixties, the problems
which our country will face of economic growth, of development of our resources,
of the development of outer space, of fresh water from salt water, of food
from the ocean, of new uses for old minerals, of the undeveloped world
and its economic development, of the peaceful use of the atom, the control
of atomic weapons, the developments in the camps of our adversaries between
the Russians and the Chinese, the development of countries of Africa newly
independent, but without the resources to maintain their independence in
the traditional sense - all those are entirely new problems, requiring
new people, new solutions, new ideas, and requiring above all a sense of
dedication to the cause of freedom.
I do not find in the speeches of my opponent
any sound of commitment to this new future, any awareness that we live
in the most revolutionary of all times, that here in this old section of
Pennsylvania which was the scene of a great revolutionary struggle at the
beginning of our country, we move through a period far more revolutionary,
far more promising, far more dangerous. So I come not merely as a contestant
with Mr. Nixon for a prize. I come representing a point of view which I
hope the majority of our fellow citizens share, that in the great days
of the 1960's, we as Americans individually and as a country must measure
up to the responsibility which has been placed upon us by our own free
choice and by the pressure of history, to be the chief defenders of freedom
at a time when freedom is under attack all over the globe. I am confident
that this country can meet its responsibilities. I see no peril, no burden
that this country cannot sail through, unless we attempt to fool ourselves
that these are easy, gentle, and prosperous times, without responsibility,
without burden. We face an adversary who mobilizes all of the resources
of the state for the service of the state. Young men and women in
Moscow are studying esoteric dialectics of Africa and India, prepared to
spend their lives in those countries as servants of international communism,
prepared to work for the service of the state without regard to their own
free choice. Young men and women in our universities pursue their own interest,
if they should study language, occasionally French, some Spanish, and once
in a while Russian. How many of those young men and women will be willing
to spend their lives in far off lands in the service of freedom?
The 1960's will require more from each of us than we have given in the
past. But as for me, I am confident that this country will meet challenges.
I am confident that we will continue to be the great defender of freedom,
and I am more confident than ever that freedom will prevail. Thank you.
[Applause.]