Remarks Upon Arrival at Torrejon Air Force Base, Madrid

Generalissimo, Ladies and Gentlemen:

First of all, let me assure you of my satisfaction that at long last I have fulfilled an ambition of mine, almost of a lifetime, to come to Spain, to Madrid, and to see the Spanish people.

More than four and a half centuries ago, your great Admiral, Columbus, sailed on a voyage which changed the course of history. Not long after that, America began its long role on the world scene.

Since then, Spanish men and women have explored and settled; preached and taught; Spanish culture and language have flourished in the New World beyond the dreams of Isabella and Ferdinand.

In my own country, from Florida to California, across the thousands of miles of the United States, the memory of Spanish explorers and builders, soldiers, and missionaries, lives imperishably in the names of rivers and cities--and even States of the United States of America.

My own life, in part, has been spent against the background of history made by Spanish pioneers. I was born in Texas where de Vaca traveled and the comrades of de Soto wandered after his death. I was raised in Kansas which Coronado reached, and I spent some years in the far-off Philippines.

But I do not come here to recall our ties of old and recent times, important though they are.

I come to this nation, one of the ancestors of the Americas, with a message from the American people to the Spanish people, looking for a brighter future in cooperative labor for the noblest of all human causes: peace and friendship in freedom.

On this mission, I say to Spain and the Spaniards: let us work together so that in our own day we may see a long advance toward a world free from aggression, from hunger and disease--free from war and free of the threat of war.

Let us work together so that we may pass on to our children a golden promise that mankind will achieve peace with justice friendship in freedom.

By this visit I hope to bring to all of you the personal assurance of America's determination to work toward the attainment of that goal, striving always for stronger bonds of understanding and high purpose between Spain and the United States.

Thank you very much indeed.