What Ike thought...

Here's what Ike had to say in his remarks to the National 4-H Conference.
June 19, 1958...when I was Rio's age, just about to turn three...

"You 4-H-ers are young. You have not yet acquired so many of the prejudices, the emotional antagonisms that so often prevail in people of my age. It is very hard to get rid of these things. You people are meeting others of your own age in other lands, of other religions, of other races, other colors. But of what importance it is if you are struggling for the same great ideals, principles, aspirations that they are and how helpful we could be to them. Then we would be talking not only from the brain to the brain on the way you can raise more corn or cotton or wheat or hemp, but you would be talking from the heart to the heart. Then there would be, coming directly, better understanding among ourselves, a greater elimination of prejudice and these mutual antagonisms, a relief from the burdens of armament, a use of our resources for the better development of our human resources, and in the long last, better promise of universal, just peace."

Remarks to the National 4-H Conference.
June 19, 1958

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"The tin used in canning our food, the columbite and the cobalt that are needed in the manufacture of high alloys, the manganese that goes into our American steel, the hemp for our ropes and hawsers, all of these come, almost exclusively, from foreign markets.

"This dependence of our industry is certain to increase as the tempo of our industry increases. It highlights the most compelling practical reason why we must have friends in the world. We know that nations of hostile intent would not trade. with us except as it suited their own convenience. And this means that hostile rule of areas supplying us essential imports would place the American production line at the mercy of those who hope for its destruction."

Address in New Orleans at the Ceremony Marking the 150th Anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase
October 17, 1953