Toasts of the President and President Goulart

Ladies and gentlemen:

I know that I speak for all of us in welcoming our distinguished guest, the President, here to the White House.

Brazil and the United States have been very intimately bound together, but I don't think it's explained so much by geography because, after all, we are separated by great distances, nor is it represented, I think, by a common cultural experience, because our cultural experience has been somewhat different. I think what has bound us together is the sense of great adventure by those who settled both our countries, in coming to the New World for a similar purpose which was a free life.

The purpose of the governments of Brazil and the United States since revolutionary days has been to maintain that free life. Our task I believe, Mr. President, is to prove that the free life and the abundant life go hand in hand. And that is the central responsibility, of course, of those who occupy positions of responsibility in the Americas in the sixties--to prove that prosperity and the fruitful experience go hand in hand with liberty.

If we can do that, we shall have succeeded. If we cannot do that, then of course our failure will be most awesome.

So I am delighted to have you visit the United States. Our relations are that of allies and partners by choice, and I hope that in the coming months and years that it would be possible for us to work more and more intimately together for the best interests not only of this hemisphere but of the entire free world.

Mr. President, we also want to express our high esteem for you personally for having taken over the affairs of your country at a critical time, and having worked as vigorously as you have to bring the promises of freedom to your people. This is what we want to do here. So we welcome you, a long way from your country.

I hope all of you will now join and drink with me to the people of Brazil, its government-and particularly to the President.