Remarks at the National Reactor Testing Station, Arco, Idaho.

Thank you, Governor Smylie, thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Chairman Seaborg and Governor Smylie, Senators Church and Jordan, Congressmen White and Hansen, former Congressman Ralph Harding, Governor Calvin Rampton of Utah, Mr. Chuck Herndon, candidate for Governor, Mr. Bill Brunt, candidate for Congress, my friend Chairman Holifield of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Congressman Wayne Aspinall of Colorado, Under Secretary of Interior Carver, your own citizen, the Chairman of the FCC, Mr. Rosel Hyde, Admiral Raborn, former Director of CIA, all public officials, Members of Congress, ladies and gentlemen:

When Hernando Cortez returned to Spain after exploring the New World, he recommended to Charles I that a passage to India be opened by digging a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. Charles consulted his advisers and then rejected the recommendation because, as he later explained, "It would be a violation of the Biblical injunction: 'What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.'"

I have often wondered what King Charles would have said if faced with the decision to split the atom. For in that act was not only the putting asunder a part of creation; it contained the potential for destroying creation itself.

We have come to a place today where hope was born that man would do more with his discovery than unleash destruction in its wake.

On this very spot the United States produced the world's first electricity from nuclear energy.

Only 3 years ago plans were announced for the first private nuclear powerplant that would be competitive without any Government assistance. Since then, there have been more than 20 such installations announced by public and private utility companies. Orders have been placed for power reactors with a combined capacity of more than 15 million kilowatts--more than enough electric power for the homes of all the people of Idaho and seven other Western States.

By 1980, nuclear power units will have a capacity of more than 100 million kilowatts of electrical power--one-fifth of our national capacity at that time.

This energy is to propel the machines of progress; to light our cities and our towns; to fire our factories; to provide new sources of fresh water; and to really help us solve the mysteries of outer space as it brightens our life on this planet.

We have moved far to tame for peaceful uses the mighty forces unloosed when the atom was split. And we have only just begun. What happened here merely raised the curtain on a very promising drama in our long journey for a better life.

But there is another, and there is a darker, side of the nuclear age that we should never forget. And that is the danger of destruction by nuclear weapons.

It is true that these nuclear weapons have deterred war.

It is true that they have helped to check the spread of Communist expansion in much of the world.

It is true that they have permitted our friends to rebuild their nations in freedom.

But uneasy is the peace that wears a nuclear crown. And we cannot be satisfied with a situation in which the world is capable of extinction in a moment of error, or madness, or anger.

I can personally never escape, for very long at a time, the certain knowledge that such a moment might occur in a world where reason is often a martyr to pride and to ambition. Nor can I fail to remember that whatever the cause--by design or by chance--almost 300 million people would perish in a full-scale nuclear exchange between the East and the West.

This is why we have always been required to show restraint as well as to demonstrate resolve; to be firm but not to walk heavy-footed along the brink of war.

This is why we also recognize that at the heart of our concern in the years ahead must be our relationship with the Soviet Union. Both of us possess unimaginable power; our responsibility to the world is heavier than that ever borne by any two nations at any other time in history. Our common interests demand that both of us exercise that responsibility and that we exercise it wisely in the years ahead.

Since 1945, we have opposed Communist efforts to bring about a Communist-dominated world. We did so because our convictions and our interests demanded it; and we shall continue to do so.

But we have never sought war or the destruction of the Soviet Union; indeed, we have sought instead to increase our knowledge and our understanding of the Russian people with whom we share a common feeling for life, a love of song and story, and a sense of the land's vast promises.

Our compelling task is this: to search for every possible area of agreement that might conceivably enlarge, no matter how slightly or how slowly, the prospect for cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the benefits of such cooperation, the whole world would share and so, I think, would both nations.

Common reasons for agreement have not eluded us in the past, and let no one forget that these agreements--arms control and others--have been essential to the overall peace in the world.

In 1963, we signed the limited test ban treaty that has now been joined by almost 100 other countries.

In 1959, the Antarctic Treaty--which restricted activity in this part of the world to peaceful purposes--was signed by the United States and the Soviet Union. It has now been joined by all countries interested in Antarctica.

In 1963, the United Nations unanimously passed a resolution prohibiting the placing in orbit of weapons of mass destruction.

When I first became President--almost my first act--I informed Premier Khrushchev that we in the United States intended to reduce the level of our production of fissionable materials and we hoped that he and the Soviets would do likewise. Premier Khrushchev agreed.

I believe that the Soviets share a genuine desire to enlarge the area of agreement. This summer we have been negotiating with the Soviet Union, and other nations, a treaty that would limit future activity on celestial bodies to peaceful purposes. This treaty would, for all time, ban weapons of mass destruction, not only on celestial bodies, but also in orbit around the earth.

Ambassador Arthur Goldberg, our Ambassador to the United Nations, has just informed me that much of the substance of this treaty has already been resolved. Negotiations were originally recessed on August 4 of this year, but the Soviet Government has now indicated its willingness to pursue them again as soon as possible. The Soviet Union has joined with us in requesting that all of the countries participating in the negotiations be prepared to resume discussions on the 12th day of next month. I am confident that with good will the remaining issues could be quickly resolved.

We are also seeking agreement on a treaty to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

This treaty would bind those who sign it in a pledge to limit the further spread of nuclear weapons and make it possible for all countries to refrain, without fear, from entering the nuclear arms race. It would not guarantee against a nuclear war; it would help to prevent a chain reaction that could consume the living of the earth. I believe that we can find acceptable compromise language on which reasonable men can agree. We just must move ahead, for we-all of us--have a great stake in building peace in this world in which we live.

In Southeast Asia the United States is today fighting to keep the North Vietnamese from taking over South Vietnam by force.

That conflict does not have to stop us from finding new ways of dealing with one ann other. Our objective in South Vietnam is local and it is limited: We are there trying to protect the independence of South Vietnam, to provide her people with a chance to decide for themselves where they are going and what they will become.

These objectives, I think can be attained within the borders of Vietnam. They do not threaten the vital interests of the Soviet Union or the territory of any of her friends. We seek in Southeast Asia an order and security that we think would contribute to the peace of the entire world--and in that, we think, the Soviet Union has a very large stake.

It is the responsibility, then, of both of us to keep particular difficulties from becoming vehicles for much larger dangers.

For peace does not ever come suddenly or swiftly; only war carries that privilege. Peace will not dramatically appear from a single agreement or a single utterance or a single meeting.

It will be advanced by one small, perhaps imperceptible, gain after another, in which neither the pride nor the prestige of any large power is deemed more important than the fate of the world.

It will come by the gradual growth of common interests, by the increased awareness of shifting dangers and alignments, and by the development of confidence.

Confidence is not folly when both are strong. And we are both strong. The United States and the Soviet Union are both very strong, indeed.

So what is the practical step forward in this direction? I think it is to recognize that while differing principles and differing values may always divide us, they should not, and they must not, deter us from rational acts of common endeavor. The dogmas and the vocabularies of the cold war were enough for one generation. The world must not now flounder in the backwaters of the old and stagnant passions. For our test really is not to prove which interpretation of man's past is correct. Our test is to secure man's future and our purpose is no longer only to avoid a nuclear war. Our purpose must be a consuming, determined desire to enlarge the peace for all peoples.

This does not mean that we have to become bedfellows. It does not mean that we have to cease competition. But it does mean that we must both want--and work for and long for--that day when "nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore."

I think those thousands of you who are here today at this most unusual event, at this most unusual place--the National Reactor Testing Center--know, perhaps more than your other 190 million Americans, just what a great force nuclear energy can be for peace, and just how much the liberty-, freedom-loving Americans have that as their number one objective. If we could have our one wish this morning, it would be that infiltration would cease, that bombs would stop falling, and that all men everywhere could live together without fear in peace under a government of their own choosing.

Thank you for the courtesy that you do Mrs. Johnson and myself to come here and meet with us.