Incomplete typed and hand-annotated speech, five 8 x 11 pages (7–11 inclusive), with several ink and pencil notations in Kennedy’s hand. This partial manuscript appears to be part of a speech given by Kennedy during the 1946 Massachusetts congressional elections discussing recent British elections and the power of politics. He criticizes Neville Chamberlain and the Conservative Party’s “policy of appeasement” during WWII and calls for greater participation by women in politics: “In these difficult times, it is important, I think, that women realize their responsibility, they compose the majority of voters now and yet their representation in government is infinitesimal.” The last sentence of this speech offers a prelude to his famous ‘ask not’ quote from his inauguration speech in 1960. The line reads: “Unless the men and women of the country are willing to take part in meeting the complex problems of government which we now face our victory will be a hollow one, and we can easily lose at home what we so bloodly [sic] won abroad. This must not happen, we must be worthy of our times.” Bisecting vertical fold to pages, staple holes to corners, and some scattered light soiling and creases, otherwise fine condition. Accompanied by a letter of provenance on US Senate stationery from Kennedy’s friend, special assistant and Curator Emeritus of the John F. Kennedy Library, David F. Powers which states, “Handwritten notes from a 1945 speech by JFK on the British election. I do not know what happened to the rest of the speech.”
In the book The Search for JFK by Joan and Clay Blair, Jr., notes that “Jack wrote a speech which he read at the big assemblies…It begins with a simplistic narrative account of the ramming of PT-109…Then there is a transition ‘We face critical times’ followed by a long…account of what happened to the British Conservative Party;” this may very well be a draft of that speech. The times were indeed critical for democrats. Churchill had just lost the 1945 general election to Clement Atlee’s unexpected landslide victory, with voters believing the Labour Party better suited to postwar rebuilding than the Conservatives. This proved a major shock to war-weary Americans who would take aim at the unpopular incumbent president Truman. Democrats, including young JFK, were fearful of the impending Cold War and trying to prove themselves “worthy of our times.” RRAuction COA.
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