Remarks at the Luncheon Given in Honor of the President by King Mohamed V

Your Majesty:

My staff and I are grateful for the great honor you have done us in inviting us to your home, to your table. We have, with you, broken bread, we have shared your food. We are proud that in this sister republic, a sister republic of ours, that we have been enabled to see you and talk with you and with your people.

I could not fail to tell you how deeply we have been impressed by the warmth and indeed the stupendous size of the crowds that greeted us as we came along the road.

I am grateful also for your quick recognition of the reasons for the shortness of my visit. I too wish I could remain longer in this beautiful country. Then I could better appreciate the advances your government and your people have made in education, housing, and commerce-and the general well-being of Morocco. I am grateful also that you have given voice to my own conviction that the friendship between our countries has weathered the test of time.

Moroccans and Americans are old friends, between whom any differences which may arise will always be worked out in sympathy and in understanding.

Your Majesty has honored me in linking my name with the cause for which the Second World War was fought. When I last was in Morocco, I shared with others a heavy responsibility: to win the war which the tyranny of Hitler began, to win it, as Your Majesty has aptly said, for freedom and the dignity of nations and of men.

My mission today is different. This time I represent the American people, bringing to Morocco the message of peace and friendship in freedom. We Americans hope that Morocco and all countries will join us in the effort to assure that devastating war shall not again pit human against human and threaten all of civilization--and even human survival. We Americans seek the rule of law among men and among nations. We are ready to join with all people in its attainment. But so long as the forces of aggression are at large, we must remain strong, in arms, in industrial might, in our faith in ourselves and in our God.

Our strength is for the defense of freedom, the freedom of ourselves, our friends, who with us believe that man was created to be free, to be his own master.

Now, Your Majesty, I thank you for myself, for those with me, for all the American people. The warmth of the welcome from you and the Moroccan people is heartwarming evidence of friendship toward America and Americans--a friendship that I assure you we reciprocate fully.