I am very sure we shall have no conflict of opinion about constitutional duties or authority.  During the anxieties of war, when necessity seemed compelling there were excessive grants of authority and all extraordinary concentration of powers in the Chief Executive.  The repeal of war-time legislation and the automatic expirations which attended the peace proclamations have put an end to these emergency excesses but I have the wish to go further than that.  I want to join you ill restoring-, ill the most cordial way, the spirit of coordination and cooperation, and that mutuality of confidence and respect which is necessary ill representative popular government.

Encroachment upon the functions of Congress or attempted dictation of its policy are not to be thought of, much less attempted, but there is all insistent call for harmony of purpose and concord of action to speed the solution of the difficult problems confronting both the legislative and executive branches of the Government.

It is worth while to make allusion here to the character of our Clove Government, mindful as one must be that an address to you is no less it message to all our people, for whom you speak most intimately.  Ours is it popular Government through political parties.  We divide along political lines, and I would ever have it so.  I do not mean that partisan preferences should hinder any public servant in the performance of a conscientious and patriotic official duty.  We saw partisan lines utterly obliterated when war imperiled, and our faith in the Republic was riveted anew.  We ought not to find these partisan lines obstructing the expeditious solution of the urgent problems of peace.

Granting that we are fundamentally a representative popular Government, with political parties the governing agencies, I believe the political party in power should assume responsibility, determine upon policies ill the conference which supplements conventions and election campaigns, and then strive for achievement through adherence to the accepted policy.

There is vastly greater security, immensely more of the national viewpoint, much larger and prompter accomplishment where our divisions are along party lines, in the broader and loftier sense, than to divide geographically, or according to pursuits, or personal following.  For a century and a third, parties have been charged with responsibility and held to strict accounting.  When they fail, they are relieved of authority; and the system has brought its to a national eminence no less than a world example.

Necessarily legislation is a matter of compromise.  The full ideal is seldom attained.  In that meeting of minds necessary to insure results, there must and will be accommodations and compromises, but in the estimate of convictions and sincere put-poses the supreme responsibility to national interest must not be ignored.  The shield to the high-minded public servant who adheres to party policy is manifest, but the higher purpose is the good of the Republic as a whole.