Remarks to the Presidential Scholars of 1970.

Dr. Wallis, Presidential Scholars, and our guests:

I appreciate this opportunity to come over and personally to congratulate you for the awards you have received. As you can imagine in a day in the life of a President, he has many meetings of this kind and each time I get a little folder telling me about the group that I am to receive. Usually it indicates that those who are being honored are being honored in a very material way, I mean by that a prize of money or some fancy gift or something like that.

So, I looked over this group and I saw that it was the elite of all of the high school • and secondary, graduates for the year 1970. Out of 3 million the 119 that are here, according to Dr. Wallis, these are the best. So, I thought, of course, that since you were selected as the best out of 3 million, that you would be receiving something that was something you could take home with you.

I find you get a medallion. I find, on the other hand, that there is no award in the material sense that we usually think of awards, no money prize, no grand state gift, such as Presidents just exchanged, as with the President of Venezuela whom I just escorted out of the White House a few moments ago. But then it occurred to me that to you, the graduates of this class of 1970, what you have received and the recognition you receive is more important than a prize of material value.

The medallion, the fact that a very distinguished group of educators have selected you from all this Nation as the top scholars in the country, this is something that money cannot buy. It is something that money cannot reward. It is something also that you will carry with you the rest of your lives, I hope very proudly, because we expect a great deal from you. I very much expect that several in this room will enter public life. Some of you will run for office. Some of you will win, some of you will lose. I have done both, so I know what can happen.

Some of you will end up in the Congress and maybe the Senate and, who knows, you may be standing here some day. I am not sure. But, whatever the case may be, the fact that you have been selected as Presidential Scholars means that the Nation has a stake in you, a stake in you as the leaders of the future, as those who, 10, 15, 20 years from now, will be affecting the great decisions for this Nation and the world.

I would like to tell you what the world is going to look like and what the Nation is going to look like 10 years from now, 15 years from now. I can only say that we are trying, as we can in our generation, to make this Nation and this world a better place for you to live in.

The war, the very difficult war in which we are presently engaged, that will be concluded, of course. We trust that we can conclude it in a way that will provide a better opportunity to avoid not only that war, but others like it in the future.

But beyond that, I think of the divided world that we live in, the world divided between--we think of the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. I think of the talks that are now going on in Vienna, where we are trying to limit the escalation of nuclear arms. There is hope that we will have some success in those talks. If we do have success, and I believe there is a good chance we will have success, it means the world you will live in, after you finish college 4 years from now, will be a safer world than it otherwise would be.

Then, further down the road, I think of another part of the whole international scene that often we do not adequately think of in terms of what the future may be. I think not only of the Soviet Union, a superpower like the United States, I think of the other half of the Communist world, Communist China, 700 million people, not yet a superpower, but 700 million people isolated not only from the United States and the free world but isolated from the Communist world. And I think of what a dangerous world it would be and what an unhappy world it would be if those 700 million people, 10 years from now, when you will have been out of college 5 or 6 years, or 20 years from now when you will have been out 15 years, if those 700 million, who will then be 800 million or 900 million, are still living in angry isolation from all the rest of the world.

What can we do about it? Nothing that can be done in a day, a week, a month, or a year. But we can begin. We can begin that process which will, I trust, leave a world, when you come on the scene, come on the scene as active participants in your communities, your States and your Nation, whether in political life or in private life, that will leave a world in which we will not all have the same political systems, in which we will not all have affection for each other because it will never be that way---but a world in which we can have reasonable safety and a world in which there can be communication between all peoples in the world.

I think that is possible, looking way down the road, way down the road to the year 2000 when you will not be as old as I am today, but almost. Looking down then, I would hope that all of you would be able to move throughout this whole world and know all of the people in it as you know the people in your own country.

Then, finally, I come back to this country because this is the heart of the whole matter. If we are unable to solve the problems of living together in the United States, it is very difficult for us to be effective in using our enormous influence in affecting other countries in solving the problems that they have.

So, sometimes when people come to see me and they talk about these great international problems and they say, "Well, my interest is: What are you going to do about the problems of the Soviet Union and how are you going to settle the Common Market situation and get Britain in, and what are you going to do about the German problem, and what about the Alliance for Progress in Latin America? What is the future of Africa? What about the Mideast which is bubbling up ready to explode again and all these world-shaking problems?" I sometimes try to bring them back to the problems in the United States and in their own communities because I can tell all of you, and all of you know this, that what happens in your college, in your university, in your city, in your State, can have an enormous effect on the future of this world in which we live.

What I am really trying to say is this: I don't know where each of you will end up, whether in government or out, and if in government, whether local government, State government, or national government, but I do know that everything you do is going to matter. I do know that not because we ask for it, but because the wheel of history turned in such a way that we have it, that the United States of America is the only nation in the free world that has the power and the influence that can determine whether freedom does survive in the world over the next 25 years. Whether it does survive is going to depend on the quality of our leadership and whether it survives does not depend simply on the quality of leadership of the President or Senators, or the rest determining these earth-shaking international problems, but it is going to particularly depend upon the quality of leadership in( our communities, each one of them.

Everything you do really matters, because when any part of our country is isolated, when any part of it is torn apart, when there is hatred in any part of the country or prejudice, it hurts the whole country. So, anything that you can do to alleviate that, anything that you can do in a very small way can be very, very big.

There is nothing that is small where the United States is concerned. This is a great nation. It is a strong nation. It has many weaknesses, but with all of its weaknesses, we must remember there are peaceful ways to change them.

As I think of the Presidential Scholars, those who finish high school this year and of the years you have ahead, I can only say, don't have this idea that you sometimes hear, I know, from television and in the columns and maybe even from a few professors, not, of course, from Dr. Wallis, but the idea that, well, this is a terrible time to be alive. We have got a war in Vietnam. We have problems with the Soviet Union; the Mideast is ready to go up. We have racial problems at home-our universities, the alienation of youth, and all that.

I don't want to sound Pollyannaish. I would be the last to suggest our problems are not enormous; they are on my desk and on my mind every day, every hour that I am awake. But I do say this and I say it because I deeply believe it. You are very fortunate to be born and to be living in the United States of America, because what you do, the life you live does matter, because the United States does matter and that it what really counts.

At this time in history, the United States, and its leadership, is going to have an enormous impact on the future of the world for the next century. That is why I think the Presidential Scholars of 1970, while they will look back on a year of turmoil, and they will look forward to what they think are years of uncertainty, will also say, what a fortunate time to be alive because the challenges are great. And what a fortunate time to be alive and to be recognized as the top scholars of your class, as those that we are counting on.

I simply congratulate you for being selected. I wish you the very best. I wish you success in everything that you undertake in the future and I know that the country is going to be better off because this Commission had the good sense to select you. I hope these meetings have given you some inspiration, have lifted you a bit so that when you go back you will go on through college and then give the leadership which America needs, needs from its youth, and needs from its older people who will remember that they also once were young.

Thank you.