Good evening. Like many of you, I'm spending tomorrow with family. And we'll say grace and carve the turkey and thank God for our many blessings and for our great country.

This holiday also marks the adjournment of Congress. And I've worked with Congress, extending my hand across the party aisle, advancing legislation to free our streets of the fear of crime and drugs. We proposed ways to clean the air, the water, and the land around us, and we've joined with the Nation's Governors to enter an historic compact to better our schools. And especially touching is that so many Americans have answered the call for community service, the Thousand Points of Light, by rolling up their sleeves and pitching in for the hopeless, the helpless -- each volunteer, a beacon of light for someone who has lost his way.

And this will be a very special Thanksgiving. It marks an extraordinary year. But before our families sit down tomorrow, we will give thanks for yet another reason: Around the world tonight, new pilgrims are on a voyage to freedom, and for many, it's not a trip to some place faraway but to a world of their own making.

On other Thanksgivings, the world was haunted by the images of watchtowers, guard dogs, and machineguns. In fact, many of you had not even been born when the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961. But now the world has a new image, reflecting a new reality: that of Germans, East and West, pulling each other to the top of the wall, a human bridge between nations; entire peoples all across Eastern Europe bravely taking to the streets, demanding liberty, pursuing democracy. This is not the end of the book of history, but it's a joyful end to one of history's saddest chapters.

Not long after the wall began to open, West German Chancellor Kohl telephoned, and he asked me to give you, the American people, a message of thanks. He said that the remarkable change in Eastern Europe would not be taking place without the steadfast support of the United States -- fitting praise from a good friend. For 40 years, we have not wavered in our commitment to freedom. We are grateful to our American men and women in uniform, and we should also be grateful to our postwar leaders. You see, we helped rebuild a continent through the Marshall plan; and we built a shield, NATO, behind which Americans, Europeans could forge a future in freedom.

For so many of these 40 years, the test of Western resolve, the contest between the free and the unfree, has been symbolized by an island of hope behind the Iron Curtain: Berlin. In the 1940's, West Berlin remained free because Harry Truman said: Hands off! In the 1950's, Ike backed America's words with muscle. In the 1960's, West Berliners took heart when John F. Kennedy said: "I am a Berliner." In the 1970's, Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter stood with Berlin by standing with NATO. And in the 1980's, Ronald Reagan went to Berlin to say: "Tear down this wall!" And now we are at the threshold of the 1990's. And as we begin the new decade, I am reaching out to President Gorbachev, asking him to work with me to bring down the last barriers to a new world of freedom. Let us move beyond containment and once and for all end the cold war.

We can make such a bold bid because America is strong and 40 years of perseverance and patience are finally paying off. More recently, quiet diplomacy, working behind the scenes, has achieved results. We can now dare to imagine a new world, with a new Europe, rising on ...
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