Remarks in Indianapolis at a Ceremony Marking the 150th Anniversary of the State of Indiana.

Governor Branigin and Mrs. Branigin, Mayor Barton and Mrs. Barton, Senator Hartke and Senator and Mrs. Bayh, Congressman Jacobs, my many friends from both parties from the Congress, distinguished Governors, ladies and gentlemen:

First, Mrs. Johnson and I are deeply in your debt--the people of Indiana, your distinguished Governor, your two Senators, and the entire delegation--for asking us to come here today, and for coming here to join us in this visit to the people of this great State.

I am happy to be out here among you on this summer day at what I like to think is the crossroads of America.

It seems to me that we are going to have a busy, long, hot day. Someone pointed out that the English language has 400,000 words in it. And by the end of today I think I shall have been using all of them. You can be sure that I am not going to use all of them here at noon, though. I am just going to use about 10 percent of them.

One hundred and fifty years ago the great State of Indiana entered our Union. We were a young and a very weak nation in those days. But we faced an uncertain future on an untamed continent with one unfailing asset: our strength, then as now, was in the people of this country.

That hasn't changed in 150 years.

It is from these people that the President of this country gathers his own strength. So today I have come back to Indiana.

I.

I was here several times in 1964, and not entirely by accident. I came here for a purpose.

I came to say, and I did say, and I quote: "Our military might is greater than that of all the other nations of the world combined. But we must be wise as well as strong. We must be reasonable and never rash. We must be intelligent and never impulsive. We must be resolute but never reckless."

That is still good American policy. But the world has changed since 1964. The Communist leaders in North Vietnam listened with only one ear as we spoke. They heard only half of what we said. They misjudged our deep desire for peace as a sign that they could take over South Vietnam while we looked the other way.

They heard us say: "The most important thing to you is whether we have peace in the world."

But they did not hear us say: "in order to have peace we must have strength."

They heard us say: "We are going to keep our hand out."

But they did not hear us say: "We are going to keep our guard up."

They heard us say: "We do not want war; we do not believe in rattling our rockets or talking about dropping our bombs."

But they did not hear us say: "We must always be alert."

They heard us say: "The cause is much too great to be reckless."

But they did not hear us say: "The stakes are much too high to be negligent."

And so they acted. They pushed the accelerator of aggression to the floorboard. They drove straight for their destination: the independent nation of South Vietnam.

What would have happened if we had let them get there?

II.

First, the people of South Vietnam would be living against their will under the Communist regime of Hanoi. The evidence is clear:

--The guerrilla war in South Vietnam was inspired by Hanoi;

--It was organized in Hanoi;

--It is directed in Hanoi;

--And it is today being supplied from Hanoi.

If success had come, then the spoils would have gone to Hanoi. South Vietnam would be securely in the orbit of the Communists. They would have cut South Vietnam in half by the middle of last year. By now they could have really finished the job.

When the Communists took over North Vietnam, more than a million people--double the city population of the great city of Indianapolis; one-fourth of the entire population of the great State of Indiana--packed up and went south to live. They voted against communism the only way they were permitted to vote--with their feet.

Their journey and their agony would have been in vain if the Communists conquer the South.

So, in South Vietnam almost a million people have moved out of their villages to escape the terror of the Vietcong. They are living as refugees until they can return to their homes.

They would never be safe if the Communists move in.

Since 1959, when serious fighting began on orders from Hanoi, the South Vietnamese have already suffered more than 100,000 casualties. The United States would have had to lose 1,400,000 people, on a proportionate basis, to equal their sacrifice.

But it would all have been in vain if the United States had abandoned Vietnam.

So I ask all of those who wonder if South Vietnam is "worth it" to think about what would have happened to the millions of South Vietnamese who want to build their own country.

They may not look like we do. They don't speak the same language that we do. They may not even think like we do. But they are human beings. We promised them, by treaty, to help protect their independence. And America doesn't break its promises. We are going to stay there.

If the American people need any reminder of the kind of enemy we face, the kind of enemy that seeks to take over South Vietnam, they can read reports this morning in their morning paper, they can hear it over their radio--where the Vietcong attacked, on yesterday, the United States Naval Hospital in Danang.

At least three of our men who were patients in that hospital were injured. That is typical of the way the Communists fight. Because they cannot hope to win on the battlefield, they rely on terror and on attacks against the wounded and the innocent.

There are people who denounce air strikes against oil depots in North Vietnam in my own country; but they remain strangely silent when the Communists in the South turn their mortars on an American hospital or blow up a bus load of farmers or murder the mayor of a Vietnamese town. I just wish they would ask themselves if their standard of judgment is really fair.

Second, a victory by the Communists in South Vietnam will be followed by new ambitions in Asia.

The Communists have taught us that aggression is like hunger--it obeys no law but its own appetite. For this reason they have gambled heavily on success in the South.

The leaders of free Asian nations know this better than anyone. If South Vietnam falls, then they are the next targets. North Vietnam's effort to impose its own system on South Vietnam is a new form of colonialism. The free nations of Asia want it stopped now. And many of them are standing there by our side, helping us stop them now.

Third, a Communist victory in South Vietnam would inspire new aggression in the rest of the world.

Listen to me while I repeat the words of North Vietnam's top military commander. I want you to hear what he says:

"The war has become"--in his words-"the model of the national liberation movement of our time. If the special warfare that the United States imperialists are testing in South Vietnam is overcome, then it can be defeated anywhere in the world."

Let me repeat to you those last words: "... it can be defeated anywhere in the world."

Now what he really means is this: If guerrilla warfare succeeds in Asia, it can succeed in Africa. It can succeed in Latin America. It can succeed anywhere in the world.

The Communist attack in Korea failed in the 1950's. It failed because the world clearly saw that it was aggression and the world rallied to defeat it.

The Communist attack of the 1960's is different. Armies do not now march across borders in force. They steal in through the night. They drop grenades into markets. They plant land mines in the hearts of villages. They kidnap the mayors of small provincial towns. They kill the schoolteachers and the leaders.

If they get away with this in South Vietnam, they will try it somewhere else--anywhere in the world.

So far their adventures in aggression have not worked.

Communist Cuba today is on a downhill slide.

The young nations of Africa quickly realized that the Communists were out to steal their independence. The young nations of Africa have rejected the Communists in one place after another.

The people of Indonesia found the strength and the courage to turn back the threat of Communist domination. They want to build a truly independent nation-and a hundred million people have been saved from communism.

Inside Communist China there is a struggle for power. There is a great debate going on today on the future of policy. It is obvious that their past policies have failed. In time, we hope and we believe that the mainland Chinese will come to terms with their neighbors and the rest of the world.

These have been discouraging setbacks for the militant Communists who have an eye on other people's freedom. But I assure you today: nothing would bring new heart to their cause quicker than a Communist success in South Vietnam.

And that just must not happen.

I have come here today to join you in this great heartland of America to declare to the people of this country and to the people of all the world that it just will not ever happen.

We are not going to run out on South Vietnam. We are not going to break America's word. However long it takes, we will persist until the Communists end the fighting or until we negotiate an honorable peace.

III.

Americans are a forward--looking people. This is a great part of our strength. We don't walk away from our problems. We walk into them. We meet them head on. Sometimes we make mistakes, sometimes big ones; but then we get up and we try again. We are determined to succeed.

We are determined in this great land of ours to have both a high rate of growth and to keep our price levels under control.

We are determined to provide political and social justice to all our citizens--and to make sure that our laws are obeyed.

We are determined to make the cities of this land better and our farms more prosperous.

We are determined to provide all of our citizens with the best education and all of our people with the best medical care available.

We are determined to keep this Nation a beautiful place to live in and to eliminate poverty from our society.

There is something else we are going to do, too, and Indiana is a good place to say it again: We are going to keep the American farmer right at the heart of the progress of this Nation.

Your executive department and your Congress are interested in the farm people. I think as a farm boy; I know something about farm problems. I still do a little farming myself and I try to stay in touch with what is happening to the American farmer.

Farmers' prices for the first half of this year, 1966, are 9 percent higher than they were last year. Gross farm income has climbed $49 billion, 10 percent more than it was a year earlier and 28 percent higher, gross, than it was in 1960.

Net farm income has reached almost $17 billion already for the first 6 months of 1966. That is more than 18 percent from a year earlier.

The average farm net income is up more than 20 percent from a year earlier. Here in Indianapolis, where people know that when the farmers prosper the rest of the land prospers, I want to make this pledge: We are going to continue to see that the farmers of this Nation have prosperity.

And we are going to do these things. But I want to make it clear that as long as I am President, we are also going to meet our obligations in the world.

We are going to keep our word.

We are going to stand for freedom in Vietnam until it is obtained.

So I am confident that if we unite together, if we work shoulder to shoulder, if we pull together and keep our traces tight, that these things can be done in this country:

--if we will just have faith in each other and in our common goals;

--if we have faith in the strength of this land;

--if we go forward in the spirit of that great American who said, "... through present wrong the eternal right; and step by step, since time began, I see the steady gain of man."

We are here today to see the steady gain of man. We are enjoying a liberty and a freedom and a prosperity never enjoyed by any people in history. We have built it, we have developed it ourselves, and we are going to keep it.

So to you good people of Indiana, we say thank you for this warm welcome. It is as warm as the day itself. We appreciate your coming here to greet us. We expect to have lunch in your great city and to visit other parts of your State.

As long as we are permitted to serve you, we are going to try to remember the kind of people you are, the kind of hopes you possess, the kind of desires that belong to you. Because we think that your hopes, your desires, are the hopes and desires not only of the people of America, but libertyloving people everywhere in this world.

Thank you and goodby.