Address at the Annual Luncheon of the Associated Press, New York City

Mr. McLean, Mrs. Secretary Hobby, and ladies and gentlemen:

Always, I feel it is a special privilege when I can meet with men and women of the newspaper profession. Our newspapers have traditionally been a guarantee that truth will reach every part of our own country and all the free peoples of the world. I have heard you referred to as a one-party press. If this is true, I do trust that the slogan, the purpose, the aim of your party is to spread the truth. If that is so, I apply for membership. Never was it more important than it is today that the people of the entire world have free access to the truth.

Recently I read a story about one particular segment of the newspaper community of America and how it helped spread the truth even beyond the barriers devised against its communication-into the homes of the Communist-dominated lands.

Some twenty thousand newspaper boys voluntarily conducted a fund-raising campaign for the Crusade for Freedom. That Crusade brings truth to those behind the Iron Curtain, to people who otherwise could not have it. Of course, the boys' campaign is not one of the normal functions of the American newspapers-but the incident gives heartening evidence of newspaper people's unflagging interest in the maintenance of freedom and of human hope for peace.

Certainly, I am inspired by the knowledge that boys of this nation will freely give of their time and their energy--and more important, their hearts--to help bring information of today's world to those whose masters provide them nothing but propaganda.

In this day, every resource of free men must be mustered if we are to remain free; every bit of our wit, our courage and our dedication must be mobilized if we are to achieve genuine peace. There is no age nor group nor race that cannot somehow help.

Just over two years ago I had an opportunity to appear before the American Society of Newspaper Editors. I then pledged your Government to an untiring search for a just peace as a fixed and abiding objective. In our search for peace we are not bound by slavish adherence to precedent or halted by the lack of it. The spirit of this search influences every action of your Administration; it affects every solution to problems of the moment.

It prompted my proposal before the General Assembly of the United Nations that governments make joint contributions of fissionable materials to an International Atomic Energy Agency for peaceful research--so that the miraculous inventiveness of man may be consecrated to his fuller life.

It inspired last week's offer of polio information, research facilities and seed virus--so that Dr. Salk's historic accomplishment may free all mankind from a physical scourge.

It provides the reason for a plan that, after lengthy study, I am able now to announce. We have added to the United States Program for Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy an atomic-powered merchant ship. The Atomic Energy Commission and the Maritime Administration are now developing specifications. I shall shortly submit to the Congress a request for the necessary funds, together with a description of the vessel.

The new ship, powered with an atomic reactor, will not require refueling for scores of thousands of miles of operation. Visiting the ports of the world, it will demonstrate to people everywhere this peacetime use of atomic energy, harnessed for the improvement of human living. In part, also, the ship will be an atomic exhibit; carrying to all people practical knowledge of the usefulness of this new science in such fields as medicine, agriculture and power production.

The search for peace likewise underlies the plan developed for expanding foreign trade embodied in H.R. No. 1 now before the Congress.

In every possible way, in word and in deed, we shall strive to bring to all men the truth of our assertion that we seek only a just and a lasting peace.

There is no precedent for the nature of the struggle of our time.

Every day, in our newspapers, we are confronted with what is probably the greatest paradox of history.

Out of an instinctive realization of the horror of nuclear war the hunger of virtually every human being on this planet is for tranquil security, for an opportunity to live and to let live, for freedom, for peace. And yet, defying this universal hunger, certain dictatorships have engaged in a deliberately conceived drive which periodically creates alarms and fears of war.

In our uneasy postwar world, crises are a recurrent international diet; their climaxes come and go. But so they have--in some degree--since the beginning of organized society. By their effect on human action, the peril within them is either magnified or diminished.

A crisis may be fatal when, by it, unstable men are stampeded into headlong panic. Then--bereft of common sense and wise judgment--they too hastily resort to armed force in the hope of crushing a threatening foe, although thereby they impoverish the world and may forfeit the hope for enduring peace.

But a crisis may likewise be deadly when inert men--unsure of themselves and their cause--are smothered in despair. Then, grasping at any straw of appeasement, they sell a thousand tomorrows for the pottage of a brief escape from reality.

But a crisis is also the sharpest goad to the creative energies of men, particularly when they recognize it as a challenge to their very resource, and move to meet it in faith, in thought, in courage. Then, greatly aroused--yet realizing that beyond the immediate danger lie vast horizons--they can act for today in the light of generations still to come.

The American people, one hundred sixty-four million of us, must recognize that the unprecedented crises of these days-packed with danger though they may be--are in fullest truth challenges that can be met and will be met to the lasting good of our country and to the world.

Two great American objectives are mountain peaks that tower above the foothills of lesser goals. One is global peace based on justice, mutual respect and cooperative partnership among the nations. The other is an expanding American economy whose benefits, widely shared among all our citizens, will make us even better able to cooperate with other friendly nations in their economic advancement and our common prosperity.

The fundamental hazard to the achievement of both objectives is the implacable enmity of godless communism. That hazard becomes the more fearsome as we are guilty of failure among ourselves; failure to seek out and face facts courageously; failure to make required sacrifices for the common good; failure to look beyond our selfish interests of the moment; failure to seek long-term betterment for all our citizens.

Recognizing the ruthless purposes of international communism, we must assure, above all else, our own national safety. At the same time we must continue to appeal to the sense of logic and decency of all peoples to work with us in the development of some kind of sane arrangement for peace.

But when a nation speaks alone, its appeal may fall on deaf ears. Many nations must combine their voices to penetrate walls of fear and prejudice, and selfishness and ignorance.

The principal objective of our foreign policy, therefore, as we search for peace, is the construction of the strongest possible coalition among free nations. The coalition must possess spiritual, intellectual, material strength.

In things spiritual, the common effort must be inspired by fairness and justice, by national pride and self-respect. It must be based on the inalienable fights of the individual who--made in the image of his Creator--is endowed with a dignity and destiny immeasurable by the materialistic yardstick of communism.

In things intellectual, the coalition must manifest such common sense and evident logic that all nations may see in it an opportunity to benefit themselves. Certainly, it must proclaim the right of all men to strive for their own betterment--and it must foster their exercise of that right.

In things material, the friendly partnership must be sinewed by expanded economies within all its member nations, mutually benefiting by a growing trade volume that must be joined in realization that their security interdependence is paralleled by their economic interdependence.

By sound economic thinking and action, we Americans can hasten the achievement of both our great goals--peace among the nations; a widely shared prosperity at home.

We have an unmatched production system. But even our economy will not thrive if confined to our own land. So to sustain our own prosperity and economic growth we must strengthen the economic bonds between us and others of the free world. Thus we confront the communist with a vast and voluntary partnership of vigorous, expanding national economies whose aggregate power and productivity, always increasing, can never be successfully challenged by the communist world.

The issue is clean-cut. Either we foster flourishing trade between the free nations or we weaken the free world and our own economy. Unless trade links these nations together, our foreign policy will be encased in a sterile vacuum; our domestic economy will shrink within its continental fences. The enlargement of mutually beneficial trade in the free world is an objective to which all of us should be fully dedicated.

Ours is the most dynamic economy yet devised by man, a progress-sharing economy whose advance benefits every man, woman and child living within it.

Last year, our Gross National Product exceeded 357 billion dollars. Twenty years ago few would have believed such an achievement even a remote possibility.

Nevertheless, continuation of current rates of increase will bring us by 1965 to 500 billion dollars or more as our Gross National Product. This will mean a tremendous advance in the living standards of the American people.

But a 500 billion dollar economy by 1965 can be achieved only within the framework of a healthy and expanding free world economy.

Trade expands markets for the increased output of our mines, our farms and our factories. In return we obtain essential raw materials and needed products of the farms and factories of others. Likewise, the markets provided here for the products of other free world countries enable them to acquire from us capital equipment and consumer goods essential to their economic development and higher living standards.

American agriculture sells abroad from one-fourth to one-third of major crops such as wheat, cotton and tobacco. Without these export markets there can be, under current conditions, no enduring prosperity for the American farmer.

American factories and labor likewise have an important stake in foreign trade. Last year this country sold over 9 billion dollars of industrial products abroad. Over 3 million workers-American workers--are directly dependent on exports for their jobs. Jungles the world round are being tamed today by American bulldozers; new mines are being opened by our drills and equipment; fields that have been cultivated by hand for centuries are yielding new harvests to our agricultural machines; our automobiles, trucks and buses are found wherever there are roads; and new industries to employ the teeming millions within the underdeveloped nations are being equipped with our machine tools.

The expansion of our foreign trade should proceed on an orderly basis. Reductions in tariffs and other trade barriers, both here and abroad, must be gradual, selective and reciprocal. Changes which would result in the threat of serious injury to industry or general reduction in employment would not strengthen the economy of this country or the free world. The trade measures that I have recommended to the Congress were prepared in recognition of these facts.

Now, to abandon our program for the gradual reduction of unjustifiable trade barriers--to vitiate the Administration proposals by crippling amendments--would strike a severe blow at the cooperative efforts of the free nations to build up their economic and military defenses. It could result in increasing discrimination against our exports. It could lead to widespread trade restrictions and a sharp contraction in world trade. This would mean lowered production and employment at home. It could mean a retreat to economic nationalism and isolationism. It would constitute a serious setback to our hopes for global peace.

Two-way trade, I believe, is a broad avenue by which all men and all nations of good will can travel toward a golden age of peace and plenty. Your Administration is committed to help building it. I personally believe it is to the common good of all 164 million of our people and I shall not relax my personal effort towards its achievement.

We shall succeed, given the support of all who unaffrighted by crises--are prepared to act on today's problems while they work for tomorrow's better and happier life. The accomplishment of this goal is worthy of the best effort of all Americans. Through you--you who gather here--and all your associates dedicated to the mission of spreading the truth, a more rapid progress can be made.

As we build a richer material world, we must always remember that there are spiritual truths which endure forever. They are the universal inspiration of all mankind. In them, men of both the free world and the communist world could well find guidance. Do we remember those words of our faith--"All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them"?

Do we remind ourselves that a similar thread of peaceful and lofty exhortation reveals itself in the words of every one of the world's historic religious leaders? Every one of them--their followers today people great nations.

The Far East, the Middle East, the Near East, the West--Asia and Africa and Europe and the American hemisphere--all alike possess in their heritage the same universal ideal. Why then should we permit pessimism to slow our efforts; despair to darken our spirits?

Cannot we convince ourselves and others that in cooperation there is strength?

Cannot you, men and women of the pen, propagate knowledge of economic truth just as your professional forebears spread the truths that inspired our forefathers to achieve a national independence? For when all people, everywhere, understand that international trade--peaceful trade--is a fertile soil for the growth of a shared prosperity, of all kinds of cooperative strength, and of understanding and tolerance, the fruits thereof will be another historic step on the road to universal peace.

I thank you, President McLean and ladies and gentlemen, for the honor you have accorded me by allowing me to appear before you.