Remarks to the Staff of the U.S. Embassy and the American Community in Karachi.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Wherever an American Embassy is established anywhere in the world, that is a bit of America--that is American territory. Now, in spite of that fact of international law, anybody that is working in an Embassy, attached to it, duties in connection with it, is nevertheless a guest of the country in which he resides.

We hope of course that Americans, by their customs, their practices, the beliefs and convictions they bring with them, can have some little influence on the country itself. In turn, they have the problem and the duty of learning.

One of the great duties of an Embassy is to keep the American Government informed of the developments, the progress, the thinking, the aspirations and the hopes and the worries and the dangers that a country feels.

Now this puts on us all a responsibility, a great responsibility. If all of us recognize the dangers that now exist in the world, the tensions and the potentialities for destruction that have been brought about and brought to us by science, there is more than ever a great responsibility to bring about this mutual understanding out of which peaceful negotiation and eventually peace with justice can be achieved.

Now I am particularly interested about these young people right here in front of me. The world as we have known it is going to be different from what they are going to know. And even at these very tender ages, they must learn what is happening in the world, what is developing, and how they themselves can be masters of their own fates and make this a better place in which to live.

Every one of these young people here, Cub Scouts and older and younger--you have yourselves a great job to do, to make the children with whom you play or with whom you go to school, to understand that America wants to be friends with them, to learn more about them, what makes them "tick," why do they have customs different from yours-learning what this all means.

Now I don't mean to say this is a study in the school. This is what we learn by absorption. It is what we as older people learn by absorption that sticks better with us than those things that they try to jam into our heads with a ruler back in the little red schoolhouse, or by merely giving you a grade for the examinations that you didn't want to take in the first place.

But by absorbing and living with people, we learn things. And by your politeness to others, readiness to live and learn from them, rather than just to fight and argue because they are different, that is the kind of thing of which peace is made.

We are all filled with prejudices, preconceptions sometimes based upon religion, other times by race or because we say someone is of a different class, or something of that kind. We try to throw them out as we grow older.

Our problem now is that these kids, these youngsters, have fewer of them than we did. So that understanding grows as they grow. And then we will have a better world.

Now, just a personal word. Probably I am almost as passionately American as anyone could possibly be. I think that I get no thrill in the world quite so much as whenever I see a group of Americans, particularly in another country. Like all people in the uniformed services, I have roamed the world. It has always been a very wonderful thing when I can live and be closer with my American friends, than I think normally we did, because we thought we were in a little bit of a strange land. I am sure I did not take advantage of all the opportunities that were mine, to overcome my prejudices and to learn more fully from these other peoples, their conceptions of everything, from their God to their daily work.

These are the things we need to do. And old as I am, I have at least learned this much: that I have to work at it just as hard as anybody else.

Take one of these youngsters, say one of them is 9 years old, add 60 years to the year in which we now are, that would be two thousand and seventeen when this individual will be attaining my fairly venerable years. This world is going at such a rapid state, they need to know more than we did. They must do it. And you as parents can have no more precious and worthwhile duty than to give them the opportunity to live so far as we can on a basis of a moral code that within human capabilities eliminates prejudices and misconceptions, misapprehension and fear.

Now as usual, whenever I start to talk extemporaneously, I haven't the slightest idea what I am going to say. But I want to tell you this: that the thoughts I have just so haltingly attempted to describe are very deep within me, and while they may not be profound, I do hope all of you, from the youngest one here who is having a little trouble keeping her robe wrapped around her properly, to the oldest person in this audience, at least will ponder them.

Thank you a lot for coming out. It's a great honor you have done me to be here.