Statement by the President Upon Signing Bill Continuing the Military Aid Program.

I HAVE today signed S. 3809, the act which will enable our country to continue military aid to certain free nations of the world.

The overwhelming support for this act among the Members of Congress is a further mark of the unity of purpose of the American people in support of the foreign policy of the United States. Such support serves to remind those bent on aggression that they dare not count on a division of opinion among our people to help them gain their evil ends.

We are today engaged in a serious undertaking in the Far East--carrying out our responsibility as a member of the United Nations. Side by side with us, under the flag of the United Nations, stand other members of the United Nations who have joined to put down the raw aggression which would deprive the people of the Republic of Korea of their freedom.

This spectacular breach of the peace does not lessen our concern in those other places in the world where aggression would likewise affect the collective security of the free nations.

We are bound by a solemn pledge to regard an attack on any of the members of the North Atlantic Treaty as an attack on us. This pledge recognizes that the fate of the United States and that of Western Europe are bound together. The act signed today is a further step toward the common goal of the North Atlantic Treaty nations. Our goal is to create the kind of strength which will deter potential aggressors from attacking so formidable and united a group, and to defeat aggression, should it come.

This act will permit the United States to make a significant contribution to that goal by providing some of the equipment and materials which our European partners urgently need in building up the strength they require. What we provide will be used, under the recent determination of the North Atlantic Council, to equip balanced collective forces of the North Atlantic Treaty nations which are now being created.

In Greece, in Turkey, and in Iran, this act will permit us to continue to help keep those bastions strong and determined--free of alien influence, and free to grow and develop in their own way.

The act also authorizes military assistance to Asia and the Far East, in parts of which direct conflict is now going on.

The military assistance authorized by this act, the economic assistance and the other foreign aid measures we have undertaken-indeed, our entire foreign policy--recognize one central fact--that today the freedom loving nations are determined to stand together to preserve their freedom.