Humphrey keynotes Turkey Day, talks USSR

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From the Sept. 16, 1959, Daily Globe:

Sen. Hubert Humphrey told Worthington’s 1959 Turkey Day crowd this noon that the United States is being toured by “one of the most competitive individuals in the world — Nikita Khrushchev.” He said it is the Soviet leader’s dream to “outsmart us, outplan us and outproduce us.”

Humphrey said he does not accept “the view expressed by some that we should be willing to live and let live with the communist world.”

The senior Minnesota senator, a candidate for the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination, arrived at Worthington’s Municipal Airport only shortly before noon and flew back to Washington immediately after the Turkey Day parade for another appearance in the capital tonight.

Speaking from a curbside stand on Worthington’s 10th Street Humphrey asserted, “We should hope for co-existence with the communist world, but it must be competitive co-existence.” He emphasized the word competitive.

“The Soviet leaders realize that they cannot afford to blow the world to pieces, and they have decided they will just take it bit by bit, using every device in the world, legal and illegal, to achieve world domination,” he said.

“Anyone who thinks that because our President and Khrushchev are talking together and visiting each other’s countries, we are going to have a nice, soft easy transition into a world without tension and struggle is simply living in a fool’s paradise,” Humphrey commented. “What we must understand is that while the nature and the shape and the color of the struggle may change, the basic struggle will go on.

“A real peace cannot be a passive peace,” the Senator emphasized.

“Peace must be won not only through the strength of our arms, but the strength of our character, our willingness to make hard decisions and our readiness to sacrifice if necessary in the economic, political and social warfare which is thrust upon us.”

If the Russians had the secret of American farm production, they would use it “to the hilt” in their foreign policy, Humphrey stated.

“There is one major American accomplishment which the Russians have not yet claimed to surpass and that is our tremendous farm production of food and fibre,” he asserted. He added:

“All that we must do is to learn to use this magnificent outpouring of food and fibre abundance to convert it into other forms of wealth.”

This he said would increasingly be the case with the newly expanded “Food for Peace” program which he offered and had passed through the Congress this session.

“In a world that is hungry, sick and illiterate, the American production and American friendship and generosity are as important in the great world struggle with Communism as our military forces — and perhaps even more so,” the Senator concluded.

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