Remarks at 11th Annual Washington Conference of the Advertising Council.

I THINK this is about the shortest introduction I have ever had.

One of the continuing problems of government, of course, is how to keep in touch with the grass roots, how to get into the understanding of the last citizen, in the remotest hamlet, the things that he should know about his government, so that he can make intelligent decisions, and how conversely, government is to know what those people are thinking. So, if nothing else, you can detect when there is a misunderstanding of facts or, indeed, maybe just a failure to have the facts that government could provide.

Among all the agencies that have served a useful purpose in this regard, none has been more effective than this agency--the Advertising Council. Your accomplishments are referred to constantly in the circles of the administration, and always in terms of the greatest admiration and respect, and a feeling of obligation for what you are doing.

I want to make this very clear because some of the things I would like to talk about may intimate that I think you have been guilty of some failures. I don't mean it in that sense either. But I do mean that I believe there is a tremendous opportunity for all Americans in certain fields. Of all the people who are capable of taking advantage of those opportunities, this body by its past record would seem to be among the foremost.

I don't think it is necessary to point out that life has become intricate. And here at home, among the intricacies of living, the intricate relationship that each individual has toward his government and toward his community and everything else, has been one of the reasons why we have necessarily had educational bodies of which this is one.

But when we enter the international field we run into complexities that seem almost to dwarf our understanding of what we are doing to ourselves when we accept, let us say, paternalistic gifts of the government, without understanding for that we may be surrendering some of our ancient liberties.

Today there is a great ideological struggle going on in the world. One side upholds what it calls the materialistic dialectic. Denying the existence of spiritual values, it maintains that man responds only to materialistic influences and consequently he is nothing. He is an educated animal and is useful only as he serves the ambitions--desires--of a ruling clique; though they try to make this finer-sounding than that, because they say their dictatorship is that of the proletariat, meaning that they rule in the people's name--for the people.

Now, on our side, we recognize right away that man is not merely an animal, that his life and his ambitions have at the bottom a foundation of spiritual values. Now this--these facts seem to make it very odd that we fear the inroads that communism is making in the capture of the minds and souls of men.

They are, too. They are winning great adherents in many areas of the world. And we wonder why. And then we say, "But we are the ones that glorify the human; our doctrines ought to appear to the man in Burma or in Viet-Nam or Formosa or Mid-Africa, or the Middle East."

Something is happening. And we are not presenting our case very well. Now we do know that, of course, man has his materialistic side, and his physical side, and there has got to be a decent, materialistic basis for the development of his culture, his intellectual capacity, and the attainment of his spiritual aspirations. So we can't neglect that; we neglect it at our peril. It is in that field that we have got to meet our enemy very successfully.

For example, as we try to hold together the free world and try to lead it to cooperate spontaneously in its opposition to communism, we develop methods by which each country--each nation--and each individual, indeed, if we can bring that about-can achieve a continuous rise in his living standards to achieve that physical state of well-being, where these other things can occupy his attention and lead him on to a more solid partnership with a country such as ours.

So we develop a trade plan. Now a trade plan, my friends, is not just an altruistic method to open markets to the access of people all over the globe. Like all other foreign policy, its genesis is the enlightened self-interest of the United States. But it is in recognition of this fact, that if the United States itself is to prosper, it must have means by which it can sell its products and therefore it has to buy others.

But on top of that, it is a means of leading the free world to an understanding that this physical, intellectual, spiritual being, man, can cooperate under this kind of system effectively and to his greater advancement, rather than to surrender to the blandishments of communism.

Now these are complicated subjects. When we talk about these principles, they have a different application in every subject, in every nation, indeed they have a different application in every sector of our own country.

But it would be fatal, in my opinion, here at home to allow the accumulated minor objections of each district or of each industry, because of real or fancied damage, to an enlightened trade policy, to defeat us in this great purpose of the economic union--a legitimate economic union of the free world in order that it may cleave to these great spiritual truths, which in turn make it a unity in opposing communism.

What I am trying without benefit of developed argument, is to express to you what is in my heart and mind, to convince you that, valuable as your work is at home--as much as it must be continued in combating those who are losing confidence and faith in our country--that we must undertake the task of laying before the people of the world the facts of today's life. Those are the facts of today's struggle, and the ways and means by which we may all cooperate to the greater security of all, and to the greater prosperity of all.

To say that the solution of such a problem can be accomplished without acute pain being suffered here and there, or by some locality or by some group, would be completely silly. Of course, there is going to be pain in every cure. There is pain to the operation that restores usefulness to a broken leg, or any other kind of operation. We are not going to do any of these things without a price. But if we understand ourselves what we need to do in the world to advance our own interests, economically and from the standpoint of security, to achieve and maintain the values that we see in private enterprise--understanding how that means communion and trade with other countries--then we can undertake the task of helping others to understand it also.

It is a very subtle job, I should say. The United States cannot be in the position of just preaching to others and say, "See how successful we are. Now you just get on the bandwagon and do the same way and you will have the same results." Everybody has got to take these great principles and interpret them in his own way, applying things in his own way to his own task. Otherwise it would not be freedom, and it would not be the kind of decision in which we believe. We believe that everybody should, so far as possible, decide for themselves.

Now this is what I honestly am convinced of: that unless we make it possible, through enlightened methods, for the free world to trade more freely among the several parts of that free world, we are not going to win the ideological battle. I do not expect us to fail in this process. But I do believe that every American, dedicated to his own country and proceeding from that place, can be helpful if he tries (a) to get his fellow American to understanding what is really going on in the world, and (b) to get others to understand it without necessarily preaching at them.

I am not pleading for any special form or any special detailed method of doing this. Groups such as this have great staffs. You dig out the facts. You put them together. From those facts you draw reasonable conclusions and then you take those conclusions as the basis of a plan that you start out to place before others and get them to accept it.

So I am really pleading for an intelligent look at the great world today. How quickly you will find that every problem in the great world affects us at home. We cannot escape them. We are part of it. We are intertwined. Our future and lives, even our freedoms, may be intertwined with theirs. If we can work that one out, we can help the world forward in this kind of union, one that is based upon our great spiritual belief that man is a dignified individual and is not the slave of the state; that every man has a right to aspire toward intellectual advancement, cultural advancement, and with a decent economic base on which to do these things.

If we get to going forward in that concept and each doing his legitimate and proper part, there is no more chance for communism in the world than there would be for one of us to take off and fly to the moon without the aid of science.

So I came over here this morning, first, to say thank you very much for what you have done, and to say that in my belief what you can do is far greater than all you have accomplished in the past. I think I have met every year with this group. There is no group I would rather meet with. I believe in you. I believe in what you are doing. And I believe that, therefore, because you are so good, you can't put any limit, geographical or otherwise, on your work.