Dwight D. Eisenhower photo

Statement on East-West Contacts Delivered at the Geneva Conference.

July 22, 1955

ACCORDING to the adopted agenda, today we meet to discuss methods of normalizing and increasing the contacts between our nations in many fields. I am heartened by the deep interest in this question, which interest implies a common purpose to understand each other better. Unfortunately there exist unnecessary restrictions on the flow between us of ideas, of things and of people.

Like other questions we have considered during the past four days, this one cannot be considered independently or in isolation. All are related by their direct importance to the general objective of lessening world fears and tensions.

To help achieve the goal of peace based on justice and right and mutual understanding, there are certain concrete steps that could be taken:

(1) To lower the barriers which now impede the interchange of information and ideas between our peoples.

(2) To lower the barriers which now impede the opportunities of people to travel anywhere in the world for peaceful, friendly purposes, so that all will have a chance to know each other face-to-face.

(3) To create conditions which will encourage nations to increase the exchange of peaceful goods throughout the world.

Success in these endeavors should improve the conditions of life for all our citizens and elsewhere in the world. By helping eliminate poverty and ignorance, we can take another step in progress toward peace.

Restrictions on communications of all kinds, including radio and travel, existing in extreme form in some places, have operated as causes of mutual distrust. In America, the fervent belief in freedom of thought, of expression, and of movement is a vital part of our heritage. Yet during these past ten years even we have felt compelled, in the protection of our own interests, to place some restrictions upon the movement of persons and communications across our national frontiers.

This conference has the opportunity, I believe, to initiate concrete steps to permit the breaking down of both mild and severe barriers to mutual understanding and trust.

Now I should like to turn to the question of trade. I assume that each of us here is dedicated to the improvement of the conditions of life of our own citizens. Trade in peaceful goods is an important factor in achieving this goal. If trade is to reach its maximum capability in this regard, it must be both voluminous and world-wide.

The United Nations has properly been concerned in making available to the people of the under-developed areas modern technology and managerial abilities, as well as capital and credit. My country not only supports these efforts, but has undertaken parallel projects outside the United Nations.

In this connection the new atomic science possesses a tremendous potential for helping raise the standards of living and providing greater opportunity for all the world. World-wide interest in overcoming poverty and ignorance is growing by leaps and bounds, and each of the great nations should do its utmost to assist in this development. As a result new desires, new requirements, new aspirations are emerging almost everywhere as man climbs the upward path of his destiny. Most encouraging of all is the evidence that after centuries of fatalism and resignation, the hopeless of the world are beginning to hope.

But regardless of the results achieved through the United Nations effort or the individual efforts of helpful nations, trade remains the indispensable arterial system of a flourishing world prosperity.

If we could create conditions in which unnecessary restrictions on trade would be progressively eliminated and under which there would be free and friendly exchange of ideas and of people, we should have done much to chart the paths toward the objectives we commonly seek.

By working together toward all these goals, we can do much to transform this century of recurring conflict into a century of enduring and invigorating peace. This, I assure you, the United States of America devoutly desires--as I know all of us do.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Statement on East-West Contacts Delivered at the Geneva Conference. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/233306

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