Remarks at a Ceremony Commemorating the Establishment of the People-to-People Program.

I WOULD LIKE to be permitted just a personal word as I stand here with Mrs. Eisenhower on this occasion of the General's birthday.

I think back to those days in this house when she, as the First Lady, presided with such dignity and such great credit to America and to the world. I think, too, of General Eisenhower and particularly of those last days. Last days can be sad days, but I think Mrs. Eisenhower would agree they were great days--great days because the General, to the very last, spoke of his family. He spoke of his country, and he spoke of those causes that were very, very close to his heart.

I remember asking him shortly before he died, as he looked back over almost 60 years of public service, what he really rated the highest--and what a choice he had: commander of the armies that brought victory in World War II against aggression that would have otherwise swept Europe and possibly the world; President of the United States in which he brought peace to the Nation and kept the peace for 8 years; and then a distinguished career after he left the Presidency, in which he continued to give leadership on the highest ideological plane to the people of this Nation and to the people of the world.

It was interesting to note that the President often told me that among his activities that had not received as much publicity, of course, as the crusade in Europe and the Presidency and the end of the war in Korea, was the People-to-People program.

Six times after I left the Vice Presidency and before I came to this house in January of this year, I took trips around the world. Mrs. Eisenhower remembered that all six times I came to call on General Eisenhower, sometimes in California, and sometimes in Gettysburg, to get his advice about the affairs of the world and matters that I might discuss when I was abroad. He never failed to mention the fact that he had a tremendous interest in the People-to-People program, in the Eisenhower Fellows, another program that I might see abroad.

To show you the immense impact that one part of the whole People-to-People program can have, I recall one country I visited on one trip. There were six members of a cabinet in that country who had been Eisenhower Fellows. They started as young people in the People-to-People program and in a young country they moved up.

I think that if General Eisenhower were to look back on those great years of his service to the Nation he would put very high on the list People-to-People; and he would urge all of his friends to support it--support it because it is truly one of those paths to peace that we must explore and that we must expand--expand it not only among peoples who are allies and friends, but expand it between those areas of the world that potentially might be enemies but that should be friends, whose peoples certainly should be friends.

That is why in this administration we strongly support not only the People-to. People program as it presently exists, but we hope that it can be expanded more and more to an exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union, between the United States and other Eastern European countries, and, eventually, we would hope, also between the United States and that great potential power of people that exists in mainland China.

All of these things are our goals, and all of these things will happen. They will happen in our time.

I would like to add just one other word with regard to the conversation with the General that I am sure Mrs. Eisenhower has often recalled because he has spoken to me as well as to others in these terms.

He had a very friendly smile. When General Eisenhower walked into a room, he just lit it up when he smiled. We all remember that.

But beneath that friendly smile all of us who knew him know that there was a very hard intelligence which knew the costs of war and also knew the costs of maintaining a peace.

Because he knew that balance, because he knew what war was and, knowing what it was, hated it so much, he was able to provide leadership that ended a war and kept the peace.

That, of course, is the responsibility we have today.

But this is what I particularly remember that he said. In his last days, particularly, he talked about history--the history of this Nation, the history of the world. And as he talked about history, he made what I thought was a very simple but a very profound comment about the United States of America in this century.

He said: "The debate in the United States of America in this century has never been about whether we should have war. The debate in the United States of America has always been about how we can achieve peace." Putting it more simply: "The debate," as he put it, "was never between people who wanted war and those who wanted peace, it was always between Americans deeply devoted to keeping the peace, maintaining the peace."

Yet, we have had four wars in this century.

And he responded to a question as to how he could justify the fact that that was an historical occurrence with his statement that "Americans were always debating about peace rather than war." He said: "In World War I, President Wilson said it was a war to end wars. We went to Europe for the cause of peace. In World War II, President Roosevelt said the American frontier is on the Rhine, and we went to Europe because we wanted peace and we knew that it was necessary to stop aggression if we were to have peace. In the Korean war, the question was not any desire on the part of the United States to wage war but to defend the cause of peace, the right to exist of a nation that was living in peace and whose identity and existence was threatened by those who were bent on war."

And so it is also in Vietnam. There is debate about this war. But let us understand that the debate is not about any desire of the American people for war. The debate is about peace--how to achieve it, how best to achieve it.

Honest men and honest women can disagree about those means, but let the world understand: The American people want peace. We believe in peace. We have fought our wars in this century because we wanted peace. And we want to bring the war in Vietnam to an end in a way that will promote not a temporary but a lasting peace.

I think I have spoken or paraphrased what General Eisenhower said to many visitors in those last days before he died.

Finally, may I say that with regard to the People-to-People program, sometimes I suppose those little things you do--receiving a foreign student, spending some time with some individual who may come in from a foreign country--seems rather inconsequential when you weigh it against the great decisions that have to be made in the Congress or in the State Department or in the White House.

But looking far down that road, down that road to the end of this century when, I am confident, we will have a world of peace, we must remember: Those young people you talk to today from foreign lands will be the leaders of those lands tomorrow. And the fact that they have been here, the fact that they know from visiting our homes and our offices that Americans are a people dedicated to peace--this fact will make them leaders in the cause of peace just as the American people, I know in the future, will always be dedicated to the cause of peace.

Thank you.