Remarks on the Three Missions of the Members of the Armed Forces.

[Recorded on film and tape and broadcast over the Armed Forces radio and television stations]

TO SPEAK to you men and women of the Armed Forces has always been, for me, a prize privilege. Naturally, on this occasion, I wish I could talk to you face to face--as I have many times in the past--for I want to talk to you about yourselves and three missions in which each of you is engaged.

The manner in which you discharge them affects directly the national security, the world leadership, the whole future of our country. In that light, you are the most important audience to whom I can address myself.

Your present mission is the security of the United States and the safe, prosperous existence for the free world partnership in which the United States is a principal member. Each one of you helps make the vast force whose evident might and alert readiness constitute the best insurance that this nation in these uneasy times can contrive for its security and its peace.

As soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, you wear the uniform of your Service proudly. You have every right to be proud. To your care is committed the guardianship of the Republic against the assaults of war.

But you have, too, a second mission, in no wise connected with arms and battle. Each of you is an Ambassador. Stationed at home, each of you can be a builder of a stouter national unity. Abroad, each of you can be a builder of goodwill and friendship among the Free World partners.

In this country, for instance, your duty station may be a community hundreds of miles distant from your home community, in a multitude of ways different from the ways in which you were raised. Those differences contribute vigor and variety to American life. At the same time, however, they can be the meat on which sectionalism and all its prejudices--even bigotry--fatten.

You can prevent that by your own day-to-day adjustment to changes from the accustomed, suppressing any prejudice against what may seem novel or strange, conducting yourselves so as to win respect and understanding for your home area and its ways.

Those of you who are stationed overseas certainly can be the most effective Ambassadors we might send to the peoples of our partner nations. No country in all history was so well represented as the United States was by your comrades of World War Two and of the Korean War. Sturdy in battle, they were nevertheless messengers of help and encouragement, often of inspiration, always of friendliness to the needy and distressed and the ailing behind the lines. The spirit of those men is strong in you, too. Express that spirit in words and in deeds to the peoples among whom you live, and you will be worthy representatives of this great Republic.

But your third mission is the most important of all three. It underlies and gives meaning to the other two. This is your mission as American citizens.

Your citizenship is many things--a heritage of great traditions and mighty achievements; a future that is bright with promise, of ever-increasing reward for human effort.

Your citizenship is responsibility, too. A responsibility to preserve unspoiled the sound and good and noble in your heritage. A responsibility to use the rights and opportunities for your own betterment and your families and your communities. A responsibility never to be content with what is now satisfactory, always to work for something better.

You cannot adequately discharge your responsibilities unless you are concerned about the sort of government we have, at every level of government--and do something about it.

You do that job by studying the issues and candidates, and talking them over with your comrades now, and your neighbors when you get home--by voting and getting others to vote in this election, and in every election of your lives.

Do not look on your vote merely as evidence of your loyalty to a political party, or of your enthusiasm for one of several candidates. Your vote is far more than that.

It is your decision on how your influence is to be felt in the government of your country, community or nation. That decision, made in honesty and integrity, is the fundamental expression of your American citizenship.

I know you will not shirk it, that you will vote if you possibly can for the party and for the candidates of your deliberate choice.