Dear Lucy: I received your series of May second letters and I will send to them a single reply.1
With respect to your trip: I note that you will stop in the following capitals: London, Dublin, Paris, Vienna, Bonn and are passing through Bern and The Hague. Many Americans passing through any capital like to pay a brief call on the Ambassador. I shall send a brief note to each of the Ambassadors in the countries named to tell them that if you should make such a call, they will identify you and Ed as my brother and sister-in-law. This does not mean that I think you should call on the Ambassador, but if you have time, I think you might find it a rather smart thing to do because normally they can advise a visitor as to the most interesting things to see and so on.2
Regarding your second letter, I shall be glad to receive and read the two pamphlets you suggested. I of course depend primarily for my information as to Communist activities on the FBI, Intelligence agencies and the State Department.3
In another letter, you mention the short note I sent to Ed, advising him to pay less attention to columnists. My little note was in response to the following from him: "There are signs that we are getting ready to ditch West Berlin. If we do we are not entitled to survive as a nation."4
I know of no one in a position of responsibility who has even hinted at ditching West Berlin, so my first thought was to ask him where he got his information and please to share it with me!
Going on from there, you express disappointment about the untrustworthiness of so many of the things we see in the newspapers.5
I personally think there has been deterioration in the quality of the information given to the public and for this statement I have a very definite basis. In an apparent effort to "pep up" the news and gain larger circulation, newspapers have gone, in some cases, to very great extremes in the use of columnists, or correspondents who write under signed by-lines. These practices seem to justify the newspaper in saying that they present these stories as the views of the writer; implying, at least, that the paper itself has little responsibility for the accuracy of the story.6 Added to this is the other factor of the weakness of our libel laws. Things are printed in American papers that, if printed in Britain, would occasion real punishment for the offender.
I agree with you that the Christian Science Monitor is an exception to the rule. Others are the Philadelphia Bulletin, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Baltimore Sun and the Kansas City Star. There are of course others; I mention these as a few examples.
Normally when any AP story appears in your newspaper, it represents objective reporting. In other words, it rarely attempts to bring the opinions and judgments of the writer into the account. I think the UP generally follows the same pattern.
But I find that in almost every conference at the White House some individual quotes a columnist, apparently thinking that by doing so the speaker brings a matter of importance to the attention of the assembly. I never fail to reject such so-called information and insist that we deal in our works with the facts. The columnists they normally quote are Pearson, Doris Fleeson, Alsop, Reston, Marquis Childs, Lippman, Sokolsky, and so on.7 There are many others. As a generalization you can say that any newspaper that carries an unusual number of these signed columnists is an untrustworthy periodical. Some of them are, of course, worse than others.
On the other hand, I note several people who do write columns that are in the main trustworthy. These writers do a lot of research before they write a story. The best two, I think, are Arthur Krock (who may write only for the New York Times, of this I am not sure) and Roscoe Drummond.8 On most subjects, particularly in the foreign field, David Lawrence is good.9
Respecting what you say about urging a greater sense of responsibility among editors and publishers, I assure you that in the past I have addressed many such groups and always in my talks I have brought in the necessity for this sense of responsibility as one of the most important matters that I wanted to emphasize.10 Many other speakers have done the same, and by and large I think that most of the publishers and a good many of the editors feel this responsibility. But publishers, just like other heads of businesses, are plagued by the difficulties they have with personnel. You would think that reporting was a very individualistic occupation and a matter between the publisher and the man doing the writing. But there are guilds that establish rules that are, in the main, similar to those that govern unions.
Respecting what you say about the sit-ins in the South: I think you are mistaken if you think that Southerners are completely unaware of the occurrence of these incidents.11 Within the last weeks I have been in Florida and Georgia at least three times. I have heard the matter discussed by my friends in those areas, often in a tone of amusement--at other times, resentment. None of them seemed to worry about the matter. I think most Southerners agree that we must make some progress toward achieving political and economic equality among all individuals regardless of race. The trouble is that too often the possibility of an undesirable social mingling creeps into the thinking or fears of the individuals affected, and so the matter is distorted.12
Finally I refer to your concern about the Vice President’s "liberalism."13 Just about eight years ago I finally decided I should come back to the United States to stand for the Presidency. I did so in the hope that I could stem what I thought was a clear drift toward paternalism, if not socialism, in our government’s relation to its people.14 This has ben a long, uphill struggle, and during the years I have learned some things.
The first of these is that this country is not going to the right--that the economic and political affairs of our people are not going to be so conducted as to take our nation back to the days of the 1890's. Indeed, this would be undesirable if we could do it. Our nation has become not only highly industrialized but highly interdependent among its several parts and classes.
Because of the great degree of specialization brought about largely by industrial progress, people find it much more difficult than formerly to change occupations, areas of employment, or modes of life. Workers, particularly those in the highly organized corporations, no longer find it possible to go from fireman to head of the organization, except in the most unusual circumstances. People are becoming more concerned about their future--as you know, the doctors have vastly lengthened the period of the so-called old age--and this concern is felt not only by the laborer, the skilled workman, the government employee, but even by professionals and in the groups that are classed as small businessmen. For example, I am constantly plagued by lawyer and doctor groups to permit the laying aside of annual sums for insuring comfortable old age without payment of taxes. All across the board, security has gotten to be foremost in our minds and a number of developments bring this kind of worry into acute focus. One of the inciting factors is the rising costs of medical care. The cost of catastrophic illnesses among the aged can create a calamity, unhappiness and the loss of self-respect. I have intimate knowledge of one case in which, for three years, it has cost $15,000 annually to take care of one person. (This is not an unusually high cost since private nurses are involved. The patient is at home; if hospitalization were necessary the cost, of course, would be much greater.) Fortunately in this case the means are available to take care of such expenses, but the same cannot be said of the great army of agricultural and industrial workers, clerks, and even more highly paid people who, after taking care of their income taxes and educating their children, are finding it increasingly difficult to carry insurance policies that are really adequate. Moreover, because of the constant erosion in the value of the dollar through inflation, these insurance policies tend to become a less and less trustworthy means of taking care of the aged.15
The greatest of all Republicans said that governments should always do for people what they cannot do at all, or do so well, for themselves. But Lincoln added that government should not interfere if the individual is perfectly capable of taking care of the matter himself.
I have pondered these things long and exhaustively, and I have come to the conclusion that the true middle-of-the road position is as follows:
Demand from the individual the maximum effort that he can make to take care of himself;
The government at the city, state and Federal levels should participate in helping the individual over and above what he himself can do in providing adequate insurance policies, but this means, to be effective, sound money.
(Right here I give you the difference between the Republican and Democratic candidates and philosophies--the Democrats have no apparent concern for the debasement of our currency. In the seven years just preceding 1953 I think the total cheapening of our dollar was about 40%. After seven years of sweat and work and fighting, we have done a great deal to stop the rate of increase, but nevertheless have had an additional 10% erosion during this period.
The real point I am making is that as a result of social and industrial revolutions and the breakdown of the so-called "laissez-faire" in industrial life, people are going to demand that the government do something to give them an opportunity to live out a satisfactory life.)
The big thing that the government and all of us should do is to act responsibly in our fiscal and financial affairs in order that the currency will not be debased and that the individual is given the opportunity thereby to participate actively in looking after his own future and the future of his family, in a manner such as to require the minimum of help from the community.
The principle can be expanded into many phases of our economic life. Above all other things it means the cutting down of Federal expenses in every possible way. Budgetary deficits will in the long run always cheapen the dollar and this hurts everybody. We must pay as we go, and we must try to keep our Federal expenditures at such levels that we can lower taxes. Once we can lower taxes, we can get every individual, no matter what his income, to do more to look after himself. This restores the feeling of self-dependence and self-respect, and enhances the value of the individual as an active citizen of our country. Paternalism and socialism are presented sometimes with an aura of righteousness. While I do believe that we truly must be "our brother’s keeper," this does not mean that we should take away from him those great qualities of spirit which are of the deepest value to the individual by promising him some dole during his declining years. I repeat, the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is not that either party fails to see the needs of the individual in our particular type of life; it is the fact that one wants to do this responsibly and in such fashion as to save the self-respect of the citizen and therefore the strength of our nation; the other refuses to face such a responsibility.
This is a long, rambling account of some of my feelings in these matters, but because I have so little time to write, I cannot possibly take the time to shorten it up and make it more emphatic.
I close by expressing the earnest feeling that the country must be made to see the difference between Nixon and any one of his prospective opponents and that it should rally to the cause of the policies and philosophies that he espouses.
I have no patience whatsoever with the extremes in political thinking. Both are wrong, equally. We must have a constructive, useful program of action--but the great effort must be to place the maximum amount of responsibility on the individual.
Again I apologize for the length and lack of coherence of this letter; I am off to the country for the weekend--and a beautiful weekend it promises to be.
With affectionate regard to yourself, and all the best to Ed,16 As ever
