Statement by the President Announcing the New Freedom Share Savings Notes.

ON May 1st the United States Treasury will offer a new savings note. It is called a Freedom Share. It carries a higher rate of interest. It is a cheerful companion to the popular Series E savings bond. Introducing this Freedom Share to the American people is the key thrust in our 1967 Share in Freedom bond campaign.

Freedom must be at all times defended, because it is at all times besieged. Not all of us are called to fight on the battlefield. Many of us must quietly and firmly do what we can and all that we must here at home. Buying bonds, regularly, is as important to this Nation in the long reach of history as almost anything we can do.

We can do no less than those who fight and die for our freedoms. Last year, American servicemen bought almost $350 million worth of savings bonds--close to $90 million in the last quarter alone. Battle honors come hard in Vietnam, because the price of honor is often the price of life. Yet in jungle and hamlet--on shipboard and airfield--there is one trophy that every American unit prizes. It is not the enemy's flag. It is the Minuteman Flag that symbolizes 90 percent or better participation in the payroll savings plan.

Throughout Vietnam, there are scores of units who fly those flags for all our countrymen to see. I have seen them in Vietnam. They are declarations of our faith, and they declare that we are still the people that the poet saw--with "the flash of freedom in their souls and the light of knowledge in their eyes."