Toasts of the President and Chancellor Adenauer of the Federal Republic of Germany
Mr. Chancellor, Mr. Vice President, My Friends:
Mr. Chancellor, we should like very simply but very sincerely to welcome you and your party to this country. We realize that in this room--among your associates--is much of the leadership of modern democratic Germany. With the German people, we believe that we share many great ideals and aspirations. Among those are the ideals and aspirations that pertain to the great concepts of human liberty and dignity.
We have admired the courage--the persistence--with which you, Mr. Chancellor, have advanced this kind of thinking in modern Germany. And, sir, I assure you that we are quite certain that no other individual of modern times has been more effective than you in helping to translate these ideals into practical policy.
So it is with a great deal of satisfaction that I ask the company to rise and to drink a toast to the German people and to President Heuss. President Heuss.
Note: The President proposed this toast at a luncheon given for the Chancellor in the State Dining Room of the White House. Chancellor Adenauer responded (through an interpreter) as follows:
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:
Your President was kind enough yesterday to invite me to come to his farm in Gettysburg.
Now you have been friendly and kind enough, Mr. President, to invite me to lunch here in this room today, and to propose a Toast to the German people and to President Heuss.
I may say, Mr. President, that you enjoy with the German people the greatest trust and confidence, the greatest prestige and respect. The United States of America may be convinced that Germany will never forget what' the United States has done for the German people in these years of greatest misery and greatest distress. And I may assure you, sir, that we--as you--will firmly stick to these ideals of which we have spoken: the ideals of liberty and democracy.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Toasts of the President and Chancellor Adenauer of the Federal Republic of Germany Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/233333
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