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people from religion. I really fear that religion will be put in a secondary place and then in a no account place in American life. If it is, I don't look forward with great faith to the ability of our country to keep itself a free country - free, honorable, what we are pleased to call a democratic country. I think it's only out of the tenets of the Judeo-Christian religion that there springs any of the basis for a free society and a democratic country, and even a republican form of government which is an aspect of our democratic government.
This isn't a religious topic. This is a political one. The older I get, the more attached I get to religion, the more I understand. Naturally a child doesn't understand the importance of religion to himself or to the society in which he lives. It's more or less taken for granted. But the older you get, the more you see of life, if you understand religion at all or have had it introduced to you at all, the more you understand its significance. That's the thing that was great about Sir Stafford Cripps - a man of God. I knew him very intimately. He was a great friend of mine. That's it. That's why he was able to do all these unpopular things in England. I could have murdered the New York times this morning (23 April 1952) for their editorial. I'm going to write to them.
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