believe that what we are doing today is a necessary fulfillment of
what Americans have always been doing--a fulfillment of old and
tested American ideals.

Let me give you a simple illustration:

While I am away from Washington this summer, a long needed
renovation of and addition to our White House office building is to
be started. The architects have planned a few new rooms built into
the present all too small one-story structure. We are going to
include in this addition and in this renovation modern electric
wiring and modern plumbing and modern means of keeping the offices
cool in the hot Washington summers. But the structural lines of the
old Executive Office Building will remain. The artistic lines of
the White House buildings were the creation of master builders when
our Republic was young. The simplicity and the strength of the
structure remain in the face of every modern test. But within this
magnificent pattern, the necessities of modern government business
require constant reorganization and rebuilding.

If I were to listen to the arguments of some prophets of calamity
who are talking these days, I should hesitate to make these
alterations. I should fear that while I am away for a few weeks the
architects might build some strange new Gothic tower or a factory
building or perhaps a replica of the Kremlin or of the Potsdam
Palace. But I have no such fears. The architects and builders are
men of common sense and of artistic American tastes. They know that
the principles of harmony and of necessity itself require that the
building of the new structure shall blend with the essential lines
of the old. It is this combination of the old and the new that