Speech Transcript:

I share with all of you the grief that you feel at the death today of
one of the most beloved, respected, and effective Members of this
body, the distinguished Representative from Rhode Island, Mr.
Fogarty.

I have come here tonight to report to you that this is a time of
testing for our Nation.

At home, the question is whether we will continue working for better
opportunities for all Americans, when most Americans are already
living better than any people in history.

Abroad, the question is whether we have the staying power to fight a
very costly war, when the objective is limited and the danger to us
is seemingly remote.

So our test is not whether we shrink from our country's cause when
the dangers to us are obvious and close at hand, but, rather, whether
we carry on when they seem obscure and distant-and some think that it
is safe to lay down our burdens.

I have come tonight to ask this Congress and this Nation to resolve
that issue: to meet our commitments at home and abroad- to continue
to build a better America-and to reaffirm this Nation's allegiance to
freedom.

As President Abraham Lincoln said, "We must ask where we are, and
whither we are tending."

The last 3 years bear witness to our determination to make this a
better country.

We have struck down legal barriers to equality.

We have improved the education of 7 million deprived children and
this year alone we have enabled almost 1 million students to go to
college.

We have brought medical care to older people who were unable to
afford it. Three and one-half million Americans have already received
treatment under Medicare since July.

We have built a strong economy that has put almost 3 million more
Americans on the payrolls in the last year alone.

We have included more than 9 million new workers under a higher
minimum wage.

We have launched new training programs to provide job skills for
almost 1 million Americans.

We have helped more than a thousand local communities to attack
poverty in the neighborhoods of the poor.

We have set out to rebuild our cities on a scale that has never been
attempted before.

We have begun to rescue our waters from the menace of pollution and
to restore the beauty of our land and our countryside, our cities and
our towns.

We have given 1 million young Americans a chance to earn through the
Neighborhood Youth Corps-or through Head Start, a chance to learn.

So together we have tried to meet the needs of our people. And, we
have succeeded in creating a better life for the many as well as the
few. Now we must answer whether our gains shall be the foundations of
further progress, or whether they shall be only monuments to what
might have been- abandoned now by a people who lacked the will to see
their great work through.

I believe that our people do not want to quit-though the task is
great, the work hard, often frustrating, and success is a matter not
of days or months, but of years- and sometimes it may be even
decades.

I have come here tonight to discuss with you five ways of carrying
forward the progress of these last 3 years. These five ways concern
programs, partnerships, priorities, prosperity, and peace.

First, programs. We must see to it, I think, that these new programs
that we have passed work effectively and are administered in the best
possible way.

Three years ago we set out to create these new instruments of social
progress. This required trial and error-and it has produced both. But
as we learn, through success and failure, we are changing our strategy
and we are trying to improve our tactics. In the long run, these
starts-some rewarding, others inadequate and disappointing-are
crucial to success.

One example is the struggle to make life better for the less
fortunate among us.

On a similar occasion, at this rostrum in 1949, I heard a great
American President, Harry S. Truman, declare this: "The American
people have decided that poverty is just as wasteful and just as
unnecessary as preventable disease."

Many listened to President Truman that day here in this Chamber, but
few understood what was required and did anything about it. The
executive branch and the Congress waited 15 long years before ever
taking any action on that challenge, as it did on many other
challenges that great President presented. And when, 3 years ago, you
here in the Congress joined with me in a declaration of war on
poverty, then I warned, "It will not be a short or easy struggle- no
single weapon . . . will suffice-but we shall not rest until that war
is won."

And I have come here to renew that pledge tonight.

I recommend that we intensify our efforts to give the poor a chance
to enjoy and to join in this Nation's progress.

I shall propose certain administrative changes suggested by the
Congress-as well as some that we have learned from our own trial and
error.

I shall urge special methods and special funds to reach the hundreds
of thousands of Americans that are now trapped in the ghettos of our
big cities and, through Head Start, to try to reach out to our very
young, little children. The chance to learn is their brightest hope
and must command our full determination. For learning brings skills;
and skills bring jobs; and jobs bring responsibility and dignity, as
well as taxes.

This war-like the war in Vietnam-is not a simple one. There is no
single battleline which you can plot each day on a chart. The enemy
is not easy to perceive, or to isolate, or to destroy. There are
mistakes and there are setbacks. But we are moving, and our direction
is forward.

This is true with other programs that are making and breaking new
ground. Some do not yet have the capacity to absorb well or wisely
all the money that could be put into them. Administrative skills and
trained manpower are just as vital to their success as dollars. And I
believe those skills will come. But it will take time and patience and
hard work. Success cannot be forced at a single stroke. So we must
continue to strengthen the administration of every program if that
success is to come-as we know it must.

We have done much in the space of 2 short years, working together.

I have recommended, and you, the Congress, have approved, 10
different reorganization plans, combining and consolidating many
bureaus of this Government, and creating two entirely new Cabinet
departments.

I have come tonight to propose that we establish a new department-a
Department of Business and Labor.

By combining the Department of Commerce with the Department of Labor
and other related agencies, I think we can create a more economical,
efficient, and streamlined instrument that will better serve a
growing nation.

This is our goal throughout the entire Federal Government. Every
program will be thoroughly evaluated. Grant-in-aid programs will be
improved and simplified as desired by many of our local
administrators and our Governors.

Where there have been mistakes, we will try very hard to correct
them.

Where there has been progress, we will try to build upon it.

Our second objective is partnership-to create an effective
partnership at all levels of government. And I should treasure
nothing more than to have that partnership begin between the
executive and the Congress.

The 88th and the 89th between the executive social and economic
legislation than any two single Congresses in American history. Most
of you who were Members of those Congresses voted to pass most of
those measures. But your efforts will come to nothing unless it
reaches the people.

Federal energy is essential. But it is not enough. Only a total
working partnership among Federal, State, and local governments can
succeed. The test of that partnership will be the concern of each
public organization, each private institution, and each responsible
citizen.

Each State, county, and city needs to examine its capacity for
government in today's world, as we are examining ours in the
executive department, and as I see you are examining yours. Some will
need to reorganize and reshape their methods of administration- as we
are doing. Others will need to revise their constitutions and their
laws to bring them up to date-as we are doing. Above all, I think we
must work together and find ways in which the multitudes of small
jurisdictions can be brought together more efficiently.

During the past 3 years we have returned to State and local
governments about $40 billion in grants-in-aid. This year alone, 70
percent of our Federal expenditures for domestic programs will be
distributed through the State and local governments. With Federal
assistance, State and local governments by 1970 will be spending
close to $110 billion annually. These enormous sums must be used
wisely, honestly, and effectively.

We intend to work closely with the States and the localities to do
exactly that.

Our third objective is priorities, to move ahead on the priorities
that we have established within the resources that are available.

I wish, of course, that we could do all that should be done-and that
we could do it now. But the Nation has many commitments and
responsibilities which make heavy demands upon our total resources.
No administration would more eagerly utilize for these programs all
the resources they require than the administration that started
them.

So let us resolve, now, to do all that we can, with what we
have-knowing that it is far, far more than we have ever done before,
and far, far less than our problems will ultimately require.

Let us create new opportunities for our children and our young
Americans who need special help.

We should strengthen the Head Start program, begin it for children 3
years old, and maintain its educational momentum by following through
in the early years.

We should try new methods of child development and care from the
earliest years, before it is too late to correct.

And I will propose these measures to the 90th Congress.

Let us insure that older Americans, and neglected Americans, share in
their Nation's progress.

We should raise social security payments by an overall average of 20
percent. That will add $4 billion 100 million to social security
payments in the first year. I will recommend that each of the 23
million Americans now receiving payments get an increase of at least
15 percent.

I will ask that you raise the minimum payments by 59 percent-from $44
to $70 a month, and to guarantee a minimum benefit of $100 a month for
those with a total of 25 years of coverage. We must raise the limits
that retired workers can earn without losing social security income.

We must eliminate by law unjust discrimination in employment because
of age.

We should embark upon a major effort to provide self-help assistance
to the forgotten in our midst-the American Indians and the migratory
farm workers. And we should reach with the hand of understanding to
help those who live in rural poverty.

And I will propose these measures to the 90th Congress.

So let us keep on improving the quality of life and enlarging the
meaning of justice for all of our fellow Americans.

We should transform our decaying slums into places of decency through
the landmark Model Cities program. I intend to seek for this effort,
this year, the full amount that you in Congress authorized last
year.

We should call upon the genius of private industry and the most
advanced technology to help rebuild our great cities.

We should vastly expand the fight for clean air with a total attack
on pollution at its sources, and-because air, like water, does not
respect manmade boundaries-we should set up "regional airsheds"
throughout this great land.

We should continue to carry to every corner of the Nation our
campaign for a beautiful America-to clean up our towns, to make them
more beautiful, our cities, our countryside, by creating more parks,
and more seashores, and more open spaces for our children to play in,
and for the generations that come after us to enjoy.

We should continue to seek equality and justice for each
citizen-before a jury, in seeking a job, in exercising his civil
rights. We should find a solution to fair housing, so that every
American, regardless of color, has a decent home of his choice.

We should modernize our Selective Service System. The National
Commission on Selective Service will shortly submit its report. I
will send you new recommendations to meet our military manpower
needs. But let us resolve that this is to be the Congress that made
our draft laws as fair and as effective as possible.

We should protect what Justice Brandeis called the "right most valued
by civilized men"-the right to privacy. We should outlaw all
wiretapping-public and private- wherever and whenever it occurs,
except when the security of this Nation itself is at stake-and only
then with the strictest governmental safeguards. And we should
exercise the full reach of our constitutional powers to outlaw
electronic "bugging" and "snooping."

I hope this Congress will try to help me do more for the consumer. We
should demand that the cost of credit be clearly and honestly
expressed where average citizens can understand it. We should
immediately take steps to prevent massive power failures, to
safeguard the home against hazardous household products, and to
assure safety in the pipelines that carry natural gas across our
Nation.

We should extend Medicare benefits that are now denied to 1,300,000
permanently and totally disabled Americans under 65 years of age.

We should improve the process of democracy by passing our election
reform and financing proposals, by tightening our laws regulating
lobbying, and by restoring a reasonable franchise to Americans who
move their residences.

We should develop educational television into a vital public resource
to enrich our homes, educate our families, and to provide assistance
in our classrooms. We should insist that the public interest be fully
served through the public's airwaves.

And I will propose these measures to the 90th Congress.

Now we come to a question that weighs very heavily on all our
minds-on yours and mine. This Nation must make an all-out effort to
combat crime.

The 89th Congress gave us a new start in the attack on crime by
passing the Law Enforcement Assistance Act that I recommended. We
appointed the National Crime Commission to study crime in America and
to recommend the best ways to carry that attack forward.

And while we do not have all the answers, on the basis of its
preliminary recommendations we are ready to move.

This is not a war that Washington alone can win. The idea of a
national police force is repugnant to the American people. Crime must
be rooted out in local communities by local authorities. Our policemen
must be better trained, must be better paid, and must be better
supported by the local citizens that they try to serve and to
protect.

The National Government can and expects to help.

And so I will recommend to the 90th Congress the Safe Streets and
Crime Control Act of 1967. It will enable us to assist those States
and cities that try to make their streets and homes safer, their
police forces better, their corrections systems more effective, and
their courts more efficient.

When the Congress approves, the Federal Government will be able to
provide a substantial percentage of the cost:

-90 percent of the cost of developing the State and local plans,
master plans, to combat crime in their area;

-60 percent of the cost of training new tactical units, developing
instant communications and special alarm systems, and introducing the
latest equipment and techniques so that they can become weapons in the
war on crime;

-50 percent of the cost of building crime laboratories and police
academy-type centers so that our citizens can be protected by the
best trained and served by the best equipped police to be found
anywhere.

We will also recommend new methods to prevent juvenile delinquents
from becoming adult delinquents. We will seek new partnerships with
States and cities in order to deal with this hideous narcotics
problem. And we will recommend strict controls on the sale of
firearms.

At the heart of this attack on crime must be the conviction that a
free America-as Abraham Lincoln once said-must "let reverence for the
laws . . . become the political religion of the Nation."

Our country's laws must be respected. Order must be maintained. And I
will support- with all the constitutional powers the President
possesses-our Nation's law enforcement officials in their attempt to
control the crime and the violence that tear the fabric of our
communities.

Many of these priority proposals will be built on foundations that
have already been laid. Some will necessarily be small at first, but
"every beginning is a consequence." If we postpone this urgent work
now, it will simply have to be done later, and later we will pay a
much higher price.

Our fourth objective is prosperity, to keep our economy moving ahead,
moving ahead steadily and safely.

We have now enjoyed 6 years of unprecedented and rewarding
prosperity.

Last year, in 1966:

-Wages were the highest in history- and the unemployment rate,
announced yesterday, reached the lowest point in 13 years;

-Total after-tax income of American families rose nearly 5 percent;

-Corporate profits after taxes rose a little more than 5 percent;

-Our gross national product advanced 5.5 percent, to about $740
billion;

-Income per farm went up 6 percent.

Now we have been greatly concerned because consumer prices rose 4.5
percent over the 18 months since we decided to send troops to
Vietnam. This was more than we had expected--and the Government tried
to do everything that we knew how to do to hold it down. Yet we were
not as successful as we wished to be. In the 18 months after we
entered World War II, prices rose not 4.5 percent, but 13.5 percent.
In the first 18 months after Korea, after the conflict broke out
there, prices rose not 4.5 percent, but 11 percent. During those two
periods we had OPA price control that the Congress gave us and War
Labor Board wage controls.

Since Vietnam we have not asked for those controls and we have tried
to avoid imposing them. We believe that we have done better, but we
make no pretense of having been successful or doing as well as we
wished.

Our greatest disappointment in the economy during 1966 was the
excessive rise in interest rates and the tightening of credit. They
imposed very severe and very unfair burdens on our home buyers and on
our homebuilders, and all those associated with the home industry.

Last January, and again last September, I recommended fiscal and
moderate tax measures to try to restrain the unbalanced pace of
economic expansion. Legislatively and administratively we took
several billions out of the economy. With these measures, in both
instances, the Congress approved most of the recommendations rather
promptly.

As 1966 ended, price stability was seemingly being restored.
Wholesale prices are lower tonight than they were in August. So are
retail food prices. Monetary conditions are also easing. Most
interest rates have retreated from their earlier peaks. More money
now seems to be available.

Given the cooperation of the Federal Reserve System, which I so
earnestly seek, I am confident that this movement can continue. I
pledge the American people that I will do everything in a President's
power to lower interest rates and to ease money in this country. The
Federal Home Loan Bank Board tomorrow morning will announce that it
will make immediately available to savings and loan associations an
additional $1 billion, and will lower from 6 percent to 5 3/4 percent
the interest rate charged on those loans.

We shall continue on a sensible course of fiscal and budgetary policy
that we believe will keep our economy growing without new inflationary
spirals; that will finance responsibly the needs of our men in Vietnam
and the progress of our people at home; that will support a
significant improvement in our export surplus, and will press forward
toward easier credit and toward lower interest rates.

I recommend to the Congress a surcharge of 6 percent on both
corporate and individual income taxes-to last for 2 years or for so
long as the unusual expenditures associated with our efforts in
Vietnam continue. I will promptly recommend an earlier termination
date if a reduction in these expenditures permits it. This surcharge
will raise revenues by some $4.5 billion in the first year. For
example, a person whose tax payment, the tax he owes, is $1,000, will
pay, under this proposal, an extra $60 over the 12-month period, or $5
a month. The overwhelming majority of Americans who pay taxes today
are below that figure and they will pay substantially less than $5 a
month. Married couples with two children, with incomes up to $5,000
per year, will be exempt from this tax-as will single people with an
income of up to $1,900 a year.

Now if Americans today still paid the income and excise tax rates in
effect when I came into the Presidency, in the year 1964, their
annual taxes would have been over $20 billion more than at present
tax rates. So this proposal is that while we have this problem and
this emergency in Vietnam, while we are trying to meet the needs of
our people at home, your Government asks for slightly more than
one-fourth of that tax cut each year in order to try to hold our
budget deficit in fiscal 1968 within prudent limits and to give our
country and to give our fighting men the help they need in this hour
of trial.

For fiscal 1967, we estimate the budget expenditures to be $126.7
billion and revenues of $117 billion. That will leave us a deficit
this year of $9.7 billion.

For fiscal 1968, we estimate budget expenditures of $135 billion. And
with the tax measures recommended, and a continuing strong economy, we
estimate revenues will be $126.9 billion. The deficit then will be
$8.1 billion.

I will very soon forward all of my recommendations to the Congress.
Yours is the responsibility to discuss and to debate them- to approve
or modify or reject them.

I welcome your views, as I have welcomed working with you for 30
years as a colleague and as Vice President and President.

I should like to say to the Members of the opposition-whose numbers,
if I am not mistaken, seem to have increased somewhat- that the
genius of the American political system has always been best
expressed through creative debate that offers choices and reasonable
alternatives. Throughout our history, great Republicans and Democrats
have seemed to understand this. So let there be light and reason in
our relations. That is the way to a responsible session and a
responsive government.

Let us be remembered as a President and a Congress who tried to
improve the quality of life for every American-not just the rich, not
just the poor, but every man, woman, and child in this great Nation of
ours.

We all go to school-to good schools or bad schools. We all take air
into our lungs- clean air or polluted air. We all drink water-pure
water or polluted water. We all face sickness someday, and some more
often than we wish, and old age as well. We all have a stake in this
Great Society-in its economic growth, in reduction of civil strife-a
great stake in good government.

We just must not arrest the pace of progress we have established in
this country in these years. Our children's children will pay the
price if we are not wise enough, and courageous enough, and
determined enough to stand up and meet the Nation's needs as well as
we can in the time allotted us.

Abroad, as at home, there is also risk in change. But abroad, as at
home, there is a greater risk in standing still. No part of our
foreign policy is so sacred that it ever remains beyond review. We
shall be flexible where conditions in the world change-and where
man's efforts can change them for the better.

We are in the midst of a great transition- a transition from narrow
nationalism to international partnership; from the harsh spirit of
the cold war to the hopeful spirit of common humanity on a troubled
and a threatened planet.

In Latin America, the American chiefs of state will be meeting very
shortly to give our hemispheric policies new direction.

We have come a long way in this hemisphere since the inter-American
effort in economic and social development was launched by the
conference at Bogota in 1960 under the leadership of President
Eisenhower. The Alliance for Progress moved dramatically forward
under President Kennedy. There is new confidence that the voice of
the people is being heard; that the dignity of the individual is
stronger than ever in this hemisphere, and we are facing up to and
meeting many of the hemispheric problems together. In this hemisphere
that reform under democracy can be made to happen-because it has
happened. So together, I think, we must now move to strike down the
barriers to full cooperation among the American nations, and to free
the energies and the resources of two great continents on behalf of
all of our citizens.

Africa stands at an earlier stage of development than Latin America.
It has yet to develop the transportation, communications,
agriculture, and, above all, the trained men and women without which
growth is impossible. There, too, the job will best be done if the
nations and peoples of Africa cooperate on a regional basis. More and
more our programs for Africa are going to be directed toward
self-help.

The future of Africa is shadowed by unsolved racial conflicts. Our
policy will continue to reflect our basic commitments as a people to
support those who are prepared to work towards cooperation and
harmony between races, and to help those who demand change but reject
the fool's gold of violence.

In the Middle East the spirit of good will toward all, unfortunately,
has not yet taken hold. An already tortured peace seems to be
constantly threatened. We shall try to use our influence to increase
the possibilities of improved relations among the nations of that
region. We are working hard at that task.

In the great subcontinent of South Asia live more than a sixth of the
earth's population. Over the years we-and others-have invested very
heavily in capital and food for the economic development of India and
Pakistan.

We are not prepared to see our assistance wasted, however, in
conflict. It must strengthen their capacity to help themselves. It
must help these two nations-both our friends-to overcome poverty, to
emerge as self-reliant leaders, and find terms for reconciliation and
cooperation.

In Western Europe we shall maintain in NATO an integrated common
defense. But we also look forward to the time when greater security
can be achieved through measures of arms control and disarmament, and
through other forms of practical agreement.

We are shaping a new future of enlarged partnership in nuclear
affairs, in economic and technical cooperation, in trade
negotiations, in political consultation, and in working together with
the governments and peoples of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

The emerging spirit of confidence is precisely what we hoped to
achieve when we went to work a generation ago to put our shoulder to
the wheel and try to help rebuild Europe. We faced new challenges and
opportunities then and there-and we faced also some dangers. But I
believe that the peoples on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as
both sides of this Chamber, wanted to face them together.

Our relations with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are also in
transition. We have avoided both the acts and the rhetoric of the
cold war. When we have differed with the Soviet Union, or other
nations, for that matter, I have tried to differ quietly and with
courtesy, and without venom.

Our objective is not to continue the cold war, but to end it.

We have reached an agreement at the United Nations on the peaceful
uses of outer space.

We have agreed to open direct air flights with the Soviet Union.

We have removed more than 400 nonstrategic items from export
control.

We are determined that the Export-Import Bank can allow commercial
credits to Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia, as well as
to Romania and Yugoslavia.

We have entered into a cultural agreement with the Soviet Union for
another 2 years.

We have agreed with Bulgaria and Hungary to upgrade our legations to
embassies.

We have started discussions with international agencies on ways of
increasing contacts with Eastern European countries.

This administration has taken these steps even as duty compelled us
to fulfill and execute alliances and treaty obligations throughout
the world that were entered into before I became President.

So tonight I now ask and urge this Congress to help our foreign and
our commercial trade policies by passing an East-West trade bill and
by approving our consular convention with the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union has in the past year increased its long-range
missile capabilities. It has begun to place near Moscow a limited
antimissile defense. My first responsibility to our people is to
assure that no nation can ever find it rational to launch a nuclear
attack or to use its nuclear power as a credible threat against us or
against our allies.

I would emphasize that that is why an important link between Russia
and the United States is in our common interest, in arms control and
in disarmament. We have the solemn duty to slow down the arms race
between us, if that is at all possible, in both conventional and
nuclear weapons and defenses. I thought we were making some progress
in that direction the first few months I was in office. I realize
that any additional race would impose on our peoples, and on all
mankind, for that matter, an additional waste of resources with no
gain in security to either side.

I expect in the days ahead to closely consult and seek the advice of
the Congress about the possibilities of international agreements
bearing directly upon this problem.

Next to the pursuit of peace, the really greatest challenge to the
human family is the race between food supply and population increase.
That race tonight is being lost.

The time for rhetoric has clearly passed. The time for concerted
action is here and we must get on with the job.

We believe that three principles must prevail if our policy is to
succeed:

First, the developing nations must give highest priority to food
production, including the use of technology and the capital of
private enterprise.

Second, nations with food deficits must put more of their resources
into voluntary family planning programs.

And third, the developed nations must all assist other nations to
avoid starvation in the short run and to move rapidly towards the
ability to feed themselves.

Every member of the world community now bears a direct responsibility
to help bring our most basic human account into balance.

I come now finally to Southeast Asia- and to Vietnam in particular.
Soon I will submit to the Congress a detailed report on that
situation. Tonight I want to just review the essential points as
briefly as I can.

We are in Vietnam because the United States of America and our allies
are committed by the SEATO Treaty to "act to meet the common danger"
of aggression in Southeast Asia.

We are in Vietnam because an international agreement signed by the
United States, North Vietnam, and others in 1962 is being
systematically violated by the Communists. That violation threatens
the independence of all the small nations in Southeast Asia, and
threatens the peace of the entire region and perhaps the world.

We are there because the people of South Vietnam have as much right
to remain non-Communist- if that is what they choose- as North
Vietnam has to remain Communist.

We are there because the Congress has pledged by solemn vote to take
all necessary measures to prevent further aggression.

No better words could describe our present course than those once
spoken by the great Thomas Jefferson:

"It is the melancholy law of human societies to be compelled
sometimes to choose a great evil in order to ward off a greater."

We have chosen to fight a limited war in Vietnam in an attempt to
prevent a larger war-a war almost certain to follow, I believe, if
the Communists succeed in overrunning and taking over South Vietnam
by aggression and by force. I believe, and I am supported by some
authority, that if they are not checked now the world can expect to
pay a greater price to check them later.

That is what our statesmen said when they debated this treaty, and
that is why it was ratified 82 to 1 by the Senate many years ago.

You will remember that we stood in Western Europe 20 years ago. Is
there anyone in this Chamber tonight who doubts that the course of
freedom was not changed for the better because of the courage of that
stand?

Sixteen years ago we and others stopped another kind of
aggression-this time it was in Korea. Imagine how different Asia
might be today if we had failed to act when the Communist army of
North Korea marched south. The Asia of tomorrow will be far different
because we have said in Vietnam, as we said 16 years ago in Korea:
"This far and no further."

I think I reveal no secret when I tell you that we are dealing with a
stubborn adversary who is committed to the use of force and terror to
settle political questions.

I wish I could report to you that the conflict is almost over. This I
cannot do. We face more cost, more loss, and more agony. For the end
is not yet. I cannot promise you that it will come this year-or come
next year. Our adversary still believes, I think, tonight, that he
can go on fighting longer than we can, and longer than we and our
allies will be prepared to stand up and resist.

Our men in that area-there are nearly 500,000 now-have borne well
"the burden and the heat of the day." Their efforts have deprived the
Communist enemy of the victory that he sought and that he expected a
year ago. We have steadily frustrated his main forces. General
Westmoreland reports that the enemy can no longer succeed on the
battlefield.

So I must say to you that our pressure must be sustained-and will be
sustained- until he realizes that the war he started is costing him
more than he can ever gain.

I know of no strategy more likely to attain that end than the
strategy of "accumulating slowly, but inexorably, every kind of
material resource"-of "laboriously teaching troops the very elements
of their trade." That, and patience-and I mean a great deal of
patience.

Our South Vietnamese allies are also being tested tonight. Because
they must provide real security to the people living in the
countryside. And this means reducing the terrorism and the armed
attacks which kidnaped and killed 26,900 civilians in the last 32
months, to levels where they can be successfully controlled by the
regular South Vietnamese security forces. It means bringing to the
villagers an effective civilian government that they can respect, and
that they can rely upon and that they can participate in, and that
they can have a personal stake in. We hope that government is now
beginning to emerge.

While I cannot report the desired progress in the pacification
effort, the very distinguished and able Ambassador, Henry Cabot
Lodge, reports that South Vietnam is turning to this task with a new
sense of urgency. We can help, but only they can win this part of the
war. Their task is to build and protect a new life in each rural
province.

One result of our stand in Vietnam is already clear.

It is this: The peoples of Asia now know that the door to
independence is not going to be slammed shut. They know that it is
possible for them to choose their own national destinies-without
coercion.

The performance of our men in Vietnam- backed by the American
people-has created a feeling of confidence and unity among the
independent nations of Asia and the Pacific. I saw it in their faces
in the 19 days that I spent in their homes and in their countries.
Fear of external Communist conquest in many Asian nations is already
subsiding-and with this, the spirit of hope is rising. For the first
time in history, a common outlook and common institutions are already
emerging.

This forward movement is rooted in the ambitions and the interests of
Asian nations themselves. It was precisely this movement that we hoped
to accelerate when I spoke at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore in April
1965, and I pledged "a much more massive effort to improve the life
of man" in that part of the world, in the hope that we could take
some of the funds that we were spending on bullets and bombs and
spend it on schools and production.

Twenty months later our efforts have produced a new reality: The
doors of the billion dollar Asian Development Bank that I recommended
to the Congress, and you endorsed almost unanimously, I am proud to
tell you are already open. Asians are engaged tonight in regional
efforts in a dozen new directions. Their hopes are high. Their faith
is strong. Their confidence is deep.

And even as the war continues, we shall play our part in carrying
forward this constructive historic development. As recommended by the
Eugene Black mission, and if other nations will join us, I will seek a
special authorization from the Congress of $200 million for East Asian
regional programs.

We are eager to turn our resources to peace. Our efforts in behalf of
humanity I think need not be restricted by any parallel or by any
boundary line. The moment that peace comes, as I pledged in
Baltimore, I will ask the Congress for funds to join in an
international program of reconstruction and development for all the
people of Vietnam- and their deserving neighbors who wish our help.

We shall continue to hope for a reconciliation between the people of
Mainland China and the world community-including working together in
all the tasks of arms control, security, and progress on which the
fate of the Chinese people, like their fellow men elsewhere,
depends.

We would be the first to welcome a China which decided to respect her
neighbors' rights. We would be the first to applaud her were she to
apply her great energies and intelligence to improving the welfare of
her people. And we have no intention of trying to deny her legitimate
needs for security and friendly relations with her neighboring
countries.

Our hope that all of this will someday happen rests on the conviction
that we, the American people and our allies, will and are going to see
Vietnam through to an honorable peace.

We will support all appropriate initiatives by the United Nations,
and others, which can bring the several parties together for
unconditional discussions of peace--anywhere, any time. And we will
continue to take every possible initiative ourselves to constantly
probe for peace.

Until such efforts succeed, or until the infiltration ceases, or
until the conflict subsides, I think the course of wisdom for this
country is that we just must firmly pursue our present course. We
will stand firm in Vietnam.

I think you know that our fighting men there tonight bear the
heaviest burden of all. With their lives they serve their Nation. We
must give them nothing less than our full support-and we have given
them that-nothing less than the determination that Americans have
always given their fighting men. Whatever our sacrifice here, even if
it is more than $5 a month, it is small compared to their own.

How long it will take I cannot prophesy. I only know that the will of
the American people, I think, is tonight being tested.

Whether we can fight a war of limited objectives over a period of
time, and keep alive the hope of independence and stability for
people other than ourselves; whether we can continue to act with
restraint when the temptation to "get it over with" is inviting but
dangerous; whether we can accept the necessity of choosing "a great
evil in order to ward off a greater"; whether we can do these without
arousing the hatreds and the passions that are ordinarily loosed in
time of war--on all these questions so much turns.

The answers will determine not only where we are, but "whither we are
tending."

A time of testing-yes. And a time of transition. The transition is
sometimes slow; sometimes unpopular; almost always very painful; and
often quite dangerous.

But we have lived with danger for a long time before, and we shall
live with it for a long time yet to come. We know that "man is born
unto trouble." We also know that this Nation was not forged and did
not survive and grow and prosper without a great deal of sacrifice
from a great many men.

For all the disorders that we must deal with, and all the
frustrations that concern us, and all the anxieties that we are
called upon to resolve, for all the issues we must face with the
agony that attends them, let us remember that "those who expect to
reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigues of
supporting it."

But let us also count not only our burdens but our blessings-for they
are many.

And let us give thanks to the One who governs us all.

Let us draw encouragement from the signs of hope-for they, too, are
many.

Let us remember that we have been tested before and America has never
been found wanting.

So with your understanding, I would hope your confidence, and your
support, we are going to persist-and we are going to succeed.