You gentlemen tonight are showing your usual tolerance in inviting to a Boston College dinner a graduate of that theological school across the Charles, but then, Boston College has always been that way. In fact, so tolerant has Boston College been to outsiders that in all its 89 years of history, Boston College has yet to have a Boston College graduate as a President - in fact, some feel that Boston College is getting intolerably tolerant, as its last two Presidents were graduates of Holy Cross.
I am especially glad to be here because your varsity men represent a great athletic tradition.
Men like Jack Ryder, the track coach for over 39 years, but recently retired - John Kelly of Cambridge, who coached Boston College inter-collegiate championship, and all other coaches who devoted their lives to Boston College.
Another reason why I am glad to be here is because we have as the guest of honor Mike Holovak. I have known Mike for a long time. He is not only a Boston College immortal, but has made for himself as a coach a great place in the hearts of all those who follow the games. One of the greatest tributes I have ever heard was given to Mike by Frank Leahy of Notre Dame -----
I am especially pleased to be here for while I was no great shakes as an athlete, I had one of the best spectator records ever achieved at that football factory across the river.
Someone asked me once what senators talked about in the cloak-room. While it covers everything, I remember a recent conversation I had with George Smathers, the Senator from Florida, who played end for Florida University. We discussed the greatest teams, plays and players that we had seen, and when Senator Wayne Morse was speaking we covered a good deal of ground.
The best football player I ever saw - who dominated his team and the entire field, was Clint Frank - saw him score four touchdowns in less than two quarters, against a pretty good Princeton team.
I would put Al Marsters or Tom Harmon of Michigan in class second. I saw Harmon score 21 points on his 21st birthday in the first half of the game against California.
Congressman Carrol Kean, who played three years for Chicago in the early 20's - he sat across from me on the Labor Committee - once told me that George Gitt was easily the best. The fact that Kearn's nose was broken tackling Gitt may have had something to do with it.
The best play I ever saw occurred in the game between the Army and Notre Dame in the 20's when Chris Cagle was starring for Army.
The most exciting team was Stamford - won only one game the year before with Dartmouth - which did not do much for Eastern football - and that was undefeated and went to the Rose Bowl the next year, the first year of the "T".
The most interesting football player I know of was Wisard White, with whom I served in the Navy, who was All America for Columbia. After graduating from college he went to Yale Law School. In 1941 he led his class at Law School by a point and a half.
The greatest game easily, of course, was the Georgetown-Boston College game. No less an authority than Grantland Rice called it the Greatest Game Ever Played and the Biggest Up-set, - but why go on.
All of these reminiscences are rather one-sided and I know that you each could match them all, but it does demonstrate the vivid memories that football has produced for those of us who have followed it through the years.
It is a great game - it, as well as all athletics, - means much in binding together all members of a college - in creating a common identity and purpose. Athletics help maintain the interest of the alumni in the life of a college, and without a loyal and interesting alumni a college cannot hope to survive.
By this banquet tonight honoring these young men, you are giving renewed evidence of your devotion to Boston College and the things for which it stands.
Boston College has long recognized this - and it has also recognized that football, and other sports, should not be merely spectator sports, - all should participate in them on one level or another. Life in the United States can be enervating and soft, but in school and college American boys acquire qualities of vigor and stamina.
I think that Catholic colleges, concerned as they are primarily with preparing their graduates for the life hereafter - recognize the connection between sports and the good life. They have concentrated attention on it, and all of us have benefited from it.
There is another reason for this emphasis on sports. Douglas MacArthur was right when he wrote these words which now stand before the playing fields in West Point: "Upon the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds, that upon other fields, in other days, will bear the fruits of victory".
These are difficult and dangerous days. The structure of containment in many areas is cracking, and our horizons are lit by the lightning flash of distant conflict. Young American soldiers now occupy a hundred different garrisons stretching from the Rhine in a great half circle to the 38th Parallel. If the free world is to survive in this type of trial and trouble, if the line is to be held against the advancing hordes, then in the final analysis, and this we must know, it will depend on us.
The leadership has been inexorably thrust upon the United States - for only America has the power and resources, both physically and spiritually, to provide that leadership. We are in truth the last best hope on earth. If we do not stand it now - if we do not stand firm amid the conflicting tides of neutralism, resignation, isolation and indifference, then all will be lost, and one by one the free countries of the earth will fall until finally the direct assault will begin on the great citadel - the United States.
In our efforts to rally those who would remain free - one of our basic difficulties has been that all too frequently the things which divide us seem stronger than those which unite us.
In many ways, for example, the free people of South East Asia feel closer to their neighbors, the Chinese, than they do to us. Many of the things for which we fight seem to mean almost nothing to those whose common support we seek.
The preservation of the private enterprise system means little as a rallying cry to the sullen half-starved masses of teeming Asia. Possession and the collectivization of private property does not stir the imagination of that great proportion of the world's population whose personal resources are almost non-existent.
And even to those who might possess a few sterile sun-baked feet of dusty earth, collectivization may seem a logical method of attacking agricultural problems which leave them without hope or even life. Democracy even, the rule of the majority, may mean little to the illiterate millions who have been dominated by native and foreign autocracies beyond the reach of their memories.
What then does unite us? Certainly the common desire to be free and independent, but there is something more vital above and beyond that, and that is the common link that unites us - that distinguishes us from our enemies - a belief in God - in the life of the spirit as against the materialism and atheism that joins together the primitives who seek to destroy us and the things for which we stand.
This is the common belief and force that binds us - east and west - free and oppressed. This is the power that must animate our thoughts and actions.
When we recognize this more clearly, when we lay the stress on this part of our national character and tradition - that it deserves and warrants - then the fundamentals of the world struggle will become more apparent - both to friend and foe, and then our final victory will be assured.
The Catholic Church has, of course, recognized this from the beginning and the Catholic colleges in America - colleges like Boston College - have been attempting to provide through their graduates the leadership in this time of crisis, and they are succeeding. This is especially true of Boston College whose graduates are providing leadership in so many important fields we are all the [unreadable].
The crisis is as great today as that of early days when Hun and Mongol marched East, West, North and South, like an irresistible force seeking the ephemeral goal of world domination. Their defeat this time is inevitable as it was then - for, in the last analysis and in truth, if we but see it, God and the right are on our side and we cannot fail.
Draft with Kennedy handwritten changes