We are met today in a general conference. Sometimes, I hear, the people feel, some of them, that perhaps we are not quite as "peppy" as we ought to be. But this is not a Church convention. This is a general conference where we meet for general counsel and advice. It is a place to which we come for the results of the reflective operations of our minds.

What we get, we members of the Church, compared with the total mass that is distributed, is almost microscopic, but the spirit in which we might take it, the spirit in which we might spend it, is the leaven that might leaven the whole lump. Let us be patriotic; let us love the government under which we live.

The real long term objective of the Welfare Plan is the fulfilling of character in the members of the Church, givers and receivers, rescuing all that is finest down deep inside of them, and bringing to flower and fruitage the latent richness of the Spirit, which, after all, is the mission and purpose and reason for being of this Church.

One year ago, on this occasion, I called your attention to the abuses that had crept into the distribution of our public funds, and I urged you and pleaded with you that, so far as the Church and its membership were concerned, we do not soil our hands with the bounteous outpouring of funds which the government was giving unto us. I renew that plea now. My brethren and sisters, for the sake of the government which we love, for the sake of the government which we believe was divinely inspired, be honest with it. Be honest, just ordinarily gold honest. That is all I ask.

I say to you that the price of liberty is and always has been blood, human blood, and if our liberties are lost, we shall never regain them except at the price of blood. They must not be lost.

I am persuaded, from all the facts that have come to me, that it would have been possible, if we had functioned as the Lord intended us to function, if we had paid our tithes and our offerings as the Lord intended us to pay them, we might have gone on without one dollar from our federal government. And has it ever occurred to you what a mighty influence we should have exercised for good and for respect and for all of the virtues that we have been taught, and that God has commanded us to exercise and cultivate and practice, if we had just followed along what he has asked us to do?

Eighteen months ago, when first I stood before you I called attention, as earnestly and seriously as I knew how, to what looked to me to be the dangers that were ahead, and I urged you at that time to practice the old virtues of thrift, of honesty, of truthfulness, of industry, and so on through the list of those I named. All that I said then I say again.