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How do you do? Ladies and gentlemen, one of the historic ways in which the people of America's stay in touch with their representatives in Congress is through the mail. And believe me, the mail has been enormously heavy over the course of these past couple of weeks, and one day we received well over some 5000 letters, and they're averaging now over the course of the week, somewhere between 3500, and it may go up to even 6000 letters when we have under debate.

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Some of these highly important subjects. Most of the male and the last couple of weeks, of course, has to do with the test Ban treaty, which the Senate has just recently adopted by a vote of 80 to 17. I was one of those who supported the treaty.

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I don't wish to take a lot of time here on it, but yet to some of the letters, but I would say, but I believe this treaty is a small step in the right direction. I think, of course, there is some advantage in it for the Soviet Union.

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I think there's also great advantage in it to us. I think it's terribly important and I think we must concern ourselves with increasing amount of radioactive fallout which we find in the atmosphere. And if we continued with a large scale of test as we intended to do and this summer and if the Russians came back and did the same thing, the amount of radioactive fallout would be increased, something like 50%.

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And already the scientists told us that some 50 people in this universe have already been adversely affected by radioactive fallout. If these tests continue to go on in the atmosphere with these large megaton bombs, there's no question about what it would systematically and genetically affect hundreds of thousands of people.

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Be the Russians, be the Americans. No matter where they live, they would be adversely affected. This has to be a matter of great concern to us as part of the human race. I voted for the treaty and the knowledge that while it was a calculated risk, it, in my judgment did not in any way compromise our security on that judgment.

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I relied on the statements of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are relied on the statements of the great numbers of scientists who appeared and testified before us. I think that the treaty will in no way and dangerous. On the other hand, I do believe it's a small step in the direction of the control of these nuclear explosions, which do n dangerous, and at the same time it's a step in the direction of control of armaments, which, of course, I think all of us would like to bring about so long as we do not unilaterally disarm as long as we can control the armaments and the other part of the world as well as control our own.

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I think it was a progressive and forward looking step. I don't think it'll bring about any immediate solution to our problems because even the next day, after the same day that we passed the test ban treaty while I was acting as majority leader, the Senate voted some 47 a half billions of dollars for our defense programs, showing that we intend to, and we expect to keep our guard high until we actually know what's in the mind of Mr Khrushchev.

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Now, ladies and gentlemen, here are just a few of the letters and some of the questions that we get. Here's a owner of the small trucking firm in Jacksonville. He asked me about a trucking bill. I'll skip over that because that's such a That's not a general concern that here's a person who wants to know What are we going to do in South Vietnam?

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The father of a Marine from San Francis? What are we going to do? I wish exactly I knew what we were going to do. It would seem to me, just from what I hear and read that probably we ought to pull out of Vietnam, I don't really know.

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But I do know that the president has sent over General Maxwell Taylor, who's the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff and senator and secretary of the Defense. Mr McNamara, who is you've heard me say previously, one of the a bliss men we have in this government.

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They, along with Henry Cabot Lodge, are former representative to the United Nations, are going to make an assessment, and it's obviously we're going to either have to go stronger in South Vietnam or pull out. We don't like to pull out because to do so turns over to the Communists those vast resources which are there and those almost hundreds of millions of people in that area of the world.

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This would, of course, be a great loss to us. My judgment will probably change your tactics, but we'll probably go stronger there rather than pull out. Ladies and gentlemen, I didn't get the answer many of these letters because my time is already up. I talked apparently too long on the test ban treaty.

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In any event, thank you for looking in. I hope you'll look in again at the same time next week. Here's a letter from the Lady in Auburndale who writes. I understand. She says, that the president and his address before the United Nations advocated that both the United States and the Soviet Union cooperate, joint like and a man dripped in the moon.

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And she said, I thought we were going to beat the Russians to the moon ourselves. What do you think we should do? Well, frankly, I thought the president's speech was more of a strategy move than anything else. It's my judgment at the Soviet Union will not join with us and say, we're we will let you see everything that we've got how far along we are with respected development of propellants with respect to the development of outer space equipment.

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Because this is what we've been trying to find out about them for a long period of time. And if we could get them to join with us in a trip to the moon, at least then we would know what they've got. Naturally, they know exactly what we've got because in our open society and in this type of democracy, everything we do is open.

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Almost everything we do is open to the press and to the public that we have for years wondered exactly where they stand. The second thing I think it's of great importance to us is that we would not like to spend all this large sum of money which will be required to put a man on the moon.

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It's going to cost many billions of dollars. The appropriation for the NASA this year is over five close to 5.5 billions of dollars standing by itself in just the preliminary stages of the Apollo project. So if we find out that they don't really have a program calculated to put a man on the moon.

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It's entirely possible that we might ourselves slow down in our efforts and thereby lighten the burden on the American taxpayer. These are These were all calculations which the president had in mind at the time that he made the speech before the Soviet Union. Now, if they, on the other hand, you'd come in and say, Well, we'll let you see exactly what we got and we would join with you Then we could determine from that action on their part that there has been a material and they decided, change in the attitude of the Soviet Union with respect to the Western world, if they would let us see what they have and lift the curtain of secrecy, which has been covering their activities since the end of World War Two.

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This would be a major change, and it would be one that I think all the free world could welcome. And we then, of course, would join with him in that joint effort because, as has been said by even President Eisenhower, when he made the same kind of a proposal in 1957 in secretary, then secretary of State John Dulles made a similiar proposal.

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The idea was to see if we could not make some change in their thinking and get them to join with us and thereby save both countries a great deal of money. Unfortunately, I don't believe anything will result from this speech. Here's another letter from a college professor from Gainesville, Florida and he says, What are your views with respect to propose changes and the streamlining of the machinery of Congress?

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Isn't the institution in which you serve rather archaic and in need of modernization? Well, I would have to agree to, to an extent, with that professor that I believe we can and should in the Senate improve our machinery of getting legislation considered in getting it adopted.

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I don't believe in going as far as Senator Joe Clark of Pennsylvania and others have suggested. After all, in the Constitution and the forefathers, they set up the Senate to be a body which would have continuing debate whereby each state, regardless of its population, would have two senators and where minority groups could be protected.

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Buy unlimited debate and those are the chief characteristics of this body, and I don't think that anyone should believe that we want to change and become like the House of Parliament in Great Britain, where the majority always rules. Now the House of Representatives that we have in the United States is based on population lines and where majority rules.

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But that was not the concept of the Senate. However, over the course of years, there have been certain dilatory practices and tactics which have developed, and I think we should eliminate to some of those. And I do believe that we should adopt a rule of germaneness, which I expect to support.

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Senator Past Story of Connecticut has introduced such a German this bill, and I expect to support that. I think that there are other improvements which we can and should make with respect to our machinery so that the Congress actually can more expeditiously handle its work. I see that my time is up.

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Thank you very much for listening in. I hope you'll listen in again at the same time next week.