Remarks at the National Lincoln Sesquicentennial Dinner.

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice President, and Distinguished Guests:

It is natural, I think, that speaking last in such a program as this, that we should expect some duplication and repetition. But I should reassure you as I begin, by saying that my talk is only 5 or 6 minutes, so if there are these inevitable duplications, I may hope and pray that you do not find them lengthy or too boring.

Ninety-eight years ago today the President-elect of the United States boarded a train in Springfield, Illinois, to start the long journey to his Nation's capital. That same day a Washington newspaper reported the election in Montgomery, Alabama, of another president, Jefferson Davis, and from Fort Sumter came a report of "preparations for attack."

In bidding farewell to Springfield, Lincoln shared his innermost thoughts with old friends. In part, he said: "I now leave, not knowing when or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being Who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail."

Four years and two months later Abraham Lincoln was dead--but the union again united. Now, said Secretary of War Stanton, "he belongs to the ages."

But Abraham Lincoln belongs not only to the ages, but to all humanity. Immortality is his in the hearts of all who love freedom everywhere in the world.

Each year two million people visit the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.

In New Delhi, a Lincoln Society is establishing a museum in his honor. High school students in Tokyo last summer ranked him as the most respected of all world figures.

"Of all the great national statesmen of history," Russia's Tolstoy thought, "Lincoln is the only giant."

In the Caucasian Mountains, a wild chieftain asked of a visitor, "Tell us about the greatest ruler in the world. We want to know something about this man who was so great that he even forgave the crimes of his greatest enemies and shook brotherly hands with those who had plotted against his life."

The first President of modern China, Sun Yat-sen, found his three basic principles of government in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

For many years India's Prime Minister Nehru has kept, on the study table, a brass mold of Lincoln's right hand. "I look at it every day," Nehru tells us; "it is strong, firm and yet gentle . . . it gives me great strength."

The birth, 150 years ago, which we here honor, gave the Nation a son who a half-century later was summoned to lead our Republic through the tragedy of civil war. And as Lincoln fought for union and liberty he insisted always that "the struggle of today is not altogether for today-it is for a vast future also."

As we turn our eyes to that future, other words of his seem applicable. He said: "The tendency to undue expansion is unquestionably the chief difficulty. How to do something, and still not do too much, is the question .... I would not borrow money. I am against an overwhelming, crushing system. Suppose, that at each session, Congress shall first determine how much money can, for that year, be spared for improvements; then apportion that sum to the most important objects."

That the spirit of Lincoln be close at hand as we meet each successive challenge to freedom is the earnest hope of all Americans--indeed it is the hope of freedom's sentinels wherever they stand.

Pushing always ahead in our quest for a just peace and freedom for all men we can do no better than live by his prescription: "by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away."

Thank you very much.