VETERANS

Fourteen million World War II servicemen have returned to civil life.  The great majority have found their places as citizens of their communities and their Nation.  It is a tribute to the fiber of our servicemen and to the flexibility of our economy that these adjustments have been made so rapidly and so successfully.

More than two million of these veterans are attending schools or acquiring job skills through the financial assistance of the Federal Government.  Thousands of sick and wounded veterans are daily receiving the best of medical and hospital care.  Half a million have obtained loans, with Government guarantees, to purchase homes or farms or to embark upon new businesses.  Compensation is being paid in almost two million cases for disabilities or death.  More than three million are continuing to maintain their low-cost National Service Life Insurance policies.  Almost seven million veterans have been aided by unemployment and self-employment allowances.

Exclusive of mustering-out payments and terminal leave pay, the program for veterans of all wars is costing over seven billion dollars a year—­one-fifth of our total federal budget.  This is the most far-reaching and complete veterans program ever conceived by any nation.

Except for minor adjustments, I believe that our program of benefits for veterans is now complete.  In the long run, the success of the program will not be measured by the number of veterans receiving financial aid or by the number of dollars we spend.  History will judge us not by the money we spend, but by the further contribution we enable our veterans to make to their country.  In considering any additional legislation, that must be our criterion.

CIVIL RIGHTS

We have recently witnessed in this country numerous attacks upon the constitutional rights of individual citizens as a result of racial and religious bigotry.  Substantial segments of our people have been prevented from exercising fully their right to participate in the election of public officials, both locally and nationally.  Freedom to engage in lawful callings has been denied.

The will to fight these crimes should be in the hearts of every one of us.

For the Federal Government that fight is now being carried on by the Department of Justice to the full extent of the powers that have been conferred upon it.  While the Constitution withholds from the Federal Government the major task of preserving peace in the several States, I am not convinced that the present legislation reached the limit of federal power to protect the civil rights of its citizens.

I have, therefore, by Executive Order,[1] established the President’s Committee on Civil Rights to study and report on the whole problem of federally-secured civil rights, with a view to making recommendations to the Congress.