(The following excerpts are from last Tuesday's address by John Kenneth Galbraith, Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics, on accepting the national chairmanship of Americans for Democratic Action in Washington, D.C.)

...The liberal tendency is to be more preoccupied with policy than with power. For the last three days there has been an intense discussion at this Convention of issues facing the United States and to conclusions which I warmly endorse. Let me accordingly say a word or two on the more pedestrian problem of the political position of liberals now and in the days ahead and let me say a special word on how it can be strengthened.

There is no doubt as to the preferences of a great many very contented people in this country. It would be to have two great conservative parties between which it might be possible to choose at random. And it would be to have liberalism as feckless, irrelevant and intellectually obsolete as Time in its more thoughtful moments regularly proclaims it to be. We shall continue to disappoint their words. And the Democratic Party will be either a liberal party or -- as Harry Truman rightly observed -- it will be a losing party. And while Democrats, from time to time, will unquestionably try the experiment of running without liberal support, they will, as invariably in the past, lose. Not only do liberals have votes, and this in an election is not an unimportant detail, but we have more votes each year. And more important than votes we have political energy. Nothing ever presents such a picture of collapse--as Averell Harriman observed many years ago--as a Democratic campaign in which the liberals are sitting on their hands.

Nonetheless we must be much stronger. And, as your new National Chairman, I see the building of liberal strength as our major task. This requires three things for all of which there is, at the moment, an unparalleled opportunity. They are:

* First to organize people who were never before so eager for the kind of public voice that ADA can give them.

* Second to correct some of the mistakes of liberalism which have damaged us in the past and of which we must now be aware. Let us not embrace that high canon of modern foreign policy which holds that it is better to continue the wrong policy than to admit error by rectifying it.

* Third we must continue and widen our initiative on these critical matters on which there is, at present, such deep dissatisfaction throughout the country.

"To the Rear of Gerald Ford"

Let me address myself for a moment to this trinity of matters. The ADA in the past has had its political base in a rough coalition between unattached liberals and liberal trade unionists. So I trust it will continue to be. We shall continue to find strength in our alliance with men like Walter Reuther, "Abe" Abel, Louis Stohlberg and others who believe in their old-fashioned way that liberalism is the cause of the worker. But we must also be aware that large sections of the labor movement are no pillar of liberal strength. On the contrary the leadership is aged, contented and deeply somnambulant. And on important issues of foreign policy its position is well to the rear of Gerald Ford. This is a tragedy and we can only hope that time and a will to reform rather than adversity will work the remedy.

But as the outlook here is dark, elsewhere it is bright. In recent years we have had an explosive growth in the academic and scientific community in the United States. In 1900 some 24,000 were teaching in colleges and universities in the United States. By the end of this decade there will be 480,000. The number of students has increased more than in proportion. Where the sources of capital were once decisive in the economy, now it is the sources of highly qualified manpower. This is a community with a natural desire to be heard in public affairs. It has a large capacity for leadership and influence. It is literate, has a good political memory and a special interest in foreign policy and it presently feels an intense sense of frustration over its difficulty in registering its views. Nor has this been lessened by the determination of the foreign policy establishment to dismiss these views with contempt....

War: The Tragedy of Democrats

Organization is equally urgent now, for 1968 will not be an easy year for liberals. If an excess of affection for privileged people and antique ideas has been the misfortune of the Republican Party, war has been the tragedy of the Democrats. The first World War brought us the long blight of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. The aftermath of World War II brought a Republican Congress including what responsible historians may well consider the most retarded statesmen since King John. The Korean war brought the defeat of Adlai Stevenson, the loss of both houses of Congress and the eight years of Eisenhower and Dulles. And now we have the conflict in Vietnam.

This conflict differs markedly from the earlier conflicts in being regarded by a great many Americans as an unnecessary one. I have always so regarded it myself. It will be even more disastrous for the Democratic Party. While it is the Republicans who are the most enthusiastic for this war, I do not suggest that the Republican leaders, not even Nixon, would wish to prolong the conflict for party advantage. When I hear generals, or high State Department officials, speak blithely of a five or ten year war I am willing to believe that they have not considered the political consequences. Perhaps they can afford to be indifferent. But for the rest of us there is no excuse for innocence. This disaster could, indeed, mean the death and burial of the Democratic Party.

It also specifices the principal purpose for which we must organize. For in this disaster we are likely to lose some or all of the liberal senators and congressmen who have contributed so much to civilized advance in these last years. This must not be allowed to happen. And it rests with ADA to supply to the limits of its ability the energy and education which ensures that our friends do not go down to defeat.

For every chapter and every member this must be a first order of business.