, ladies anddent gentlemen of the convention. Citizens, i accept your nomination and your program. [cheers and applause] i should have preferred to hear those words by a stronger, wiser, a better man than myself. I can only hope that you understand my words. They will be few. Done i wouldught to seek it because i aspire another office, which was the full measure of my ambition. The officet treat within the gift of the people of illinois as an alternative or as a consolation prize. Seek your nomination because itsidency staggers the imagination. Its potential for good or evil within the years of our lives. Prayer. Ng vanity to i asked the following. The father of us all to let this pet this cup pass from me. Responsibility, and selfinterest or rainfall see if this cuphumility pass from me, except i drink. My will be done. [applause] that my heart has been troubled, this. Have not sought that i would not seek it an honest appraisal. Is not to say that i would value it less. Now, my friends, i will fight to end that office with all of my heart and soul. With your help, i have no doubt that i will win. You have summoned me to the highest mission within the gift of any people. I could not be more proud. Better men than i were at hand for this mighty task, and i owe to you and to them every resource of mind and of strength that i possess to make your deed today a good one for our country and for our party. I am confident too, that your selection of a candidate for Vice President will strengthen me and our party immeasurably in the hard, the implacable work that lies ahead of all of us. I know you join me in gratitude and in respect for the great democrats and the leaders of our generation whose names you have considered here in this convention, whose vigor, whose character, whose devotion to the republic we love so well have won the respect of countless americans and have enriched our party. I shall need them; we shall need them, because i have not changed in any respect since yesterday. Your nomination, awesome as i find it, has not enlarged my capacities, so i am profoundly grateful and emboldened by their comradeship and their fealty, and i have been deeply moved by their expressions of good will and of support. And i cannot, my friends, resist the urge to take the one opportunity that has been afforded me to pay my humble respects to a very great and good american, whom i am proud to call my kinsman, Alben Barkley of kentucky. Let me say, too, that i have been heartened by the conduct of this convention. You have argued and disagreed, because as democrats you care and you care deeply. But you have disagreed and argued without calling each other liars and thieves, without despoiling our best traditions, you have not spoiled our best traditions in any naked struggles for power. And you have written a platform that neither equivocates, contradicts, nor evades. You have restated our partys record, its principles and its purposes, in language that none can mistake, and with a Firm Confidence in justice, freedom, and peace on earth that will raise the hearts and the hopes of mankind for that distant day when no one rattles a saber and no one drags a chain. For all these things i am grateful to you. But i feel no exultation, no sense of triumph. Our troubles are all ahead of us. Some will call us appeasers; others will say that we are the war party. Some will say we are reactionary; others will say that we stand for socialism. There will be the inevitable cries of throw the rascals out, its time for a change, and so on and so on. Well hear all those things and many more besides. But we will hear nothing that we have not heard before. I am not too much concerned with partisan denunciation, with epithets and abuse, because the workingman, the farmer, the thoughtful businessman, all know that they are better off than ever before, and they all know that the greatest danger to Free Enterprise in this country died with the Great Depression under the hammer blows of the Democratic Party. And nor am i afraid that the precious twoparty system is in danger. Certainly the Republican Party looked brutally alive a couple of weeks ago and i mean both republican parties. Nor am i afraid that the Democratic Party is old and fat and indolent. After a hundred and fifty years, it has been old for a long time, and it will never be indolent, as long as it looks forward and not back, as long as it commands the allegiance of the young and the hopeful who dream the dreams and see the visions of a better america and a better world. You will hear many sincere and thoughtful people express concern about the continuation of one party in power for twenty years. I dont belittle this attitude. But change for the sake of change has no absolute merit in itself. If our greatest hazard is preservation of the values of western civilization, in our selfinterest alone, if you please, is it the part of wisdom to change for the sake of change to a party with a split personality, to a leader, whom we all respect, but who has been called upon to minister to a hopeless case of political schizophrenia . If the fear is corruption in official position, do you believe with Charles Evans hughes that guild is personal and knows no party . Do you doubt the power of any political leader, if he has the will too do so, to set his own house in order without his neighbors having to burn it down . What does concern me, in common with thinking partisans of both parties, is not just winning this election but how it is won, how well we can take advantage of this great quadrennial opportunity to debate issues sensibly and soberly. I hope and pray that we democrats, win or lose, can campaign not as a crusade to exterminate the opposing party, as our opponents seem to prefer, but as a great opportunity to educate and elevate a people whose destiny is leadership, not alone of a rich and prosperous, contented country, as in the past, but of a world in ferment. And, my friends even more important than winning the election is governing the nation. That is the test of a political party, the acid, final test. When the tumult and the shouting die, when the bands are gone and the lights are dimmed, there is the stark reality of responsibility in an hour of history haunted with those gaunt, grim specters of strife, dissension, and materialism at home and ruthless, inscrutable, and hostile power abroad. The ordeal of the twentieth century, the bloodiest, most turbulent era of the whole christian age, is far from over. Sacrifice, patience, understanding, and implacable purpose may be our lot for years to come. Lets face it. Lets talk sense to the american people. Lets tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when youre attacked, but a long, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man war, poverty, and tyranny and the assaults upon Human Dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each. Lets tell them that the victory to be won in the twentieth century, this portal to the golden age, mocks the pretensions of individual acumen and ingenuity, for it is a citadel guarded by thick walls of ignorance and of mistrust which do not fall before the trumpets blast or the politicians imprecations or even a generals baton. They are, my friends, walls that must be directly stormed by the hosts of courage, of morality, and of vision, Standing Shoulder to shoulder, unafraid of ugly truth, contemptuous of lies, half truths, circuses, and demagoguery. The people are wise, wiser than the republicans think. And the Democratic Party is the peoples party, not the labor party, not the farmers party, not the employers party, it is the party of no one because it is the party of everyone. [applause] i think, that is our ancient mission. Where we have deserted it, we have failed. With your help, there will be no desertion now. Better we lose the election than mislead the people, and better we lose than misgovern the people. Help me to do the job in this autumn of conflict and of campaign. Help me to do the job in these years of darkness, of doubt, and of crisis which stretch beyond the horizon of tonights happy vision, and we will justify our glorious past and the loyalty of silent millions who look to us for compassion, for understanding, and for honest purpose. Thus, we will serve our great tradition greatly. I ask of you all you have. I will give you all i have, even as he who came here tonight and honored me, as he has honored you, the Democratic Party, by a lifetime of service and bravery that will find him an imperishable page in the history of the republic and of the Democratic Party, president harry s. Truman. [applause] and finally, my friends, in this staggering task that you have assigned me, i shall always try to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with my god. [applause]