My
friends, before I begin the expression of those thoughts
that I deem appropriate to this moment, would you permit
me the privilege of uttering a little private prayer of my
own. And I ask that you bow your heads:
Almighty
God, as we stand here at this moment my future associates
in the executive branch of government join me in
beseeching that Thou will make full and complete our
dedication to the service of the people in this throng,
and their fellow citizens everywhere.
Give
us, we pray, the power to discern clearly right from
wrong, and allow all our words and actions to be governed
thereby, and by the laws of this land. Especially we pray
that our concern shall be for all the people regardless of
station, race, or calling.
May
cooperation be permitted and be the mutual aim of those
who, under the concepts of our Constitution, hold to
differing political faiths; so that all may work for the
good of our beloved country and Thy glory. Amen.
My
fellow citizens:
The
world and we have passed the midway point of a century of
continuing challenge. We sense with all our faculties that
forces of good and evil are massed and armed and opposed
as rarely before in history.
This
fact defines the meaning of this day. We are summoned by
this honored and historic ceremony to witness more than
the act of one citizen swearing his oath of service, in
the presence of God. We are called as a people to give
testimony in the sight of the world to our faith that the
future shall belong to the free.
Since
this century's beginning, a time of tempest has seemed to
come upon the continents of the earth. Masses of Asia have
awakened to strike off shackles of the past. Great nations
of Europe have fought their bloodiest wars. Thrones have
toppled and their vast empires have disappeared. New
nations have been born.
For
our own country, it has been a time of recurring trial. We
have grown in power and in responsibility. We have passed
through the anxieties of depression and of war to a summit
unmatched in man's history. Seeking to secure peace in the
world, we have had to fight through the forests of the
Argonne, to the shores of Iwo Jima, and to the cold
mountains of Korea.
In
the swift rush of great events, we find ourselves groping
to know the full sense and meaning of these times in which
we live. In our quest of understanding, we beseech God's
guidance. We summon all our knowledge of the past and we
scan all signs of the future. We bring all our wit and all
our will to meet the question:
How
far have we come in man's long pilgrimage from darkness
toward light? Are we nearing the light a day of freedom
and of peace for all mankind? Or are the shadows of
another night closing in upon us?
Great
as are the preoccupations absorbing us at home, concerned
as we are with matters that deeply affect our livelihood
today and our vision of the future, each of these domestic
problems is dwarfed by, and often even created by, this
question that involves all humankind.
This
trial comes at a moment when man's power to achieve good
or to inflict evil surpasses the brightest hopes and the
sharpest fears of all ages. We can turn rivers in their
courses, level mountains to the plains. Oceans and land
and sky are avenues for our colossal commerce. Disease
diminishes and life lengthens.
Yet
the promise of this life is imperiled by the very genius
that has made it possible. Nations amass wealth. Labor
sweats to create and turns out devices to level not only
mountains but also cities. Science seems ready to confer
upon us, as its final gift, the power to erase human life
from this planet.
At
such a time in history, we who are free must proclaim anew
our faith. This faith is the abiding creed of our fathers.
It is our faith in the deathless dignity of man, governed
by eternal moral and natural laws.
This
faith defines our full view of life. It establishes,
beyond debate, those gifts of the Creator that are man's
inalienable rights, and that make all men equal in His
sight.
In
the light of this equality, we know that the virtues most
cherished by free people love of truth, pride of work,
devotion to country all are treasures equally precious
in the lives of the most humble and of the most exalted.
The men who mine coal and fire furnaces and balance
ledgers and turn lathes and pick cotton and heal the sick
and plant corn all serve as proudly, and as profitably,
for America as the statesmen who draft treaties and the
legislators who enact laws.
This
faith rules our whole way of life. It decrees that we, the
people, elect leaders not to rule but to serve. It asserts
that we have the right to choice of our own work and to
the reward of our own toil. It inspires the initiative
that makes our productivity the wonder of the world. And
it warns that any man who seeks to deny equality among all
his brothers betrays the spirit of the free and invites
the mockery of the tyrant.
It
is because we, all of us, hold to these principles that
the political changes accomplished this day do not imply
turbulence, upheaval or disorder. Rather this change
expresses a purpose of strengthening our dedication and
devotion to the precepts of our founding documents, a
conscious renewal of faith in our country and in the
watchfulness of a Divine Providence.
The
enemies of this faith know no god but force, no devotion
but its use. They tutor men in treason. They feed upon the
hunger of others. Whatever defies them, they torture,
especially the truth.
Here,
then, is joined no argument between slightly differing
philosophies. This conflict strikes directly at the faith
of our fathers and the lives of our sons. No principle or
treasure that we hold, from the spiritual knowledge of our
free schools and churches to the creative magic of free
labor and capital, nothing lies safely beyond the reach of
this struggle.
Freedom
is pitted against slavery; lightness against the dark.
The
faith we hold belongs not to us alone but to the free of
all the world. This common bond binds the grower of rice
in Burma and the planter of wheat in Iowa, the shepherd in
southern Italy and the mountaineer in the Andes. It
confers a common dignity upon the French soldier who dies
in Indo-China, the British soldier killed in Malaya, the
American life given in Korea.
We
know, beyond this, that we are linked to all free peoples
not merely by a noble idea but by a simple need. No free
people can for long cling to any privilege or enjoy any
safety in economic solitude. For all our own material
might, even we need markets in the world for the surpluses
of our farms and our factories. Equally, we need for these
same farms and factories vital materials and products of
distant lands. This basic law of interdependence, so
manifest in the commerce of peace, applies with
thousand-fold intensity in the event of war.
So
we are persuaded by necessity and by belief that the
strength of all free peoples lies in unity; their danger,
in discord.
To
produce this unity, to meet the challenge of our time,
destiny has laid upon our country the responsibility of
the free world's leadership.
So
it is proper that we assure our friends once again that,
in the discharge of this responsibility, we Americans know
and we observe the difference between world leadership and
imperialism; between firmness and truculence; between a
thoughtfully calculated goal and spasmodic reaction to the
stimulus of emergencies.
We
wish our friends the world over to know this above all: we
face the threat not with dread and confusion but with
confidence and conviction.
We
feel this moral strength because we know that we are not
helpless prisoners of history. We are free men. We shall
remain free, never to be proven guilty of the one capital
offense against freedom, a lack of stanch faith.
In
pleading our just cause before the bar of history and in
pressing our labor for world peace, we shall be guided by
certain fixed principles.
These
principles are:
(1)
Abhorring war as a chosen way to balk the purposes of
those who threaten us, we hold it to be the first task of
statesmanship to develop the strength that will deter the
forces of aggression and promote the conditions of peace.
For, as it must be the supreme purpose of all free men, so
it must be the dedication of their leaders, to save
humanity from preying upon itself.
In
the light of this principle, we stand ready to engage with
any and all others in joint effort to remove the causes of
mutual fear and distrust among nations, so as to make
possible drastic reduction of armaments. The sole
requisites for undertaking such effort are that in their
purpose they be aimed logically and honestly toward
secure peace for all; and that in their result they
provide methods by which every participating nation will
prove good faith in carrying out its pledge.
(2)
Realizing that common sense and common decency alike
dictate the futility of appeasement, we shall never try to
placate an aggressor by the false and wicked bargain of
trading honor for security. Americans, indeed all free
men, remember that in the final choice a soldier's pack is
not so heavy a burden as a prisoner's chains.
(3)
Knowing that only a United States that is strong and
immensely productive can help defend freedom in our world,
we view our Nation's strength and security as a trust upon
which rests the hope of free men everywhere. It is the
firm duty of each of our free citizens and of every free
citizen everywhere to place the cause of his country
before the comfort, the convenience of himself.
(4)
Honoring the identity and the special heritage of each
nation in the world, we shall never use our strength to
try to impress upon another people our own cherished
political and economic institutions.
(5)
Assessing realistically the needs and capacities of proven
friends of freedom, we shall strive to help them to
achieve their own security and well-being. Likewise, we
shall count upon them to assume, within the limits of
their resources, their full and just burdens in the common
defense of freedom.
(6)
Recognizing economic health as an indispensable basis of
military strength and the free world's peace, we shall
strive to foster everywhere, and to practice ourselves,
policies that encourage productivity and profitable trade.
For the impoverishment of any single people in the world
means danger to the well-being of all other peoples.
(7)
Appreciating that economic need, military security and
political wisdom combine to suggest regional groupings of
free peoples, we hope, within the framework of the United
Nations, to help strengthen such special bonds the world
over. The nature of these ties must vary with the
different problems of different areas.
In
the Western Hemisphere, we enthusiastically join with all
our neighbors in the work of perfecting a community of
fraternal trust and common purpose.
In
Europe, we ask that enlightened and inspired leaders of
the Western nations strive with renewed vigor to make the
unity of their peoples a reality. Only as free Europe
unitedly marshals its strength can it effectively
safeguard, even with our help, its spiritual and cultural
heritage.
(8)
Conceiving the defense of freedom, like freedom itself, to
be one and indivisible, we hold all continents and peoples
in equal regard and honor. We reject any insinuation that
one race or another, one people or another, is in any
sense inferior or expendable.
(9)
Respecting the United Nations as the living sign of all
people's hope for peace, we shall strive to make it not
merely an eloquent symbol but an effective force. And in
our quest for an honorable peace, we shall neither
compromise, nor tire, nor ever cease.
By
these rules of conduct, we hope to be known to all
peoples.
By
their observance, an earth of peace may become not a
vision but a fact.
This
hope this supreme aspiration must rule the way we
live.
We
must be ready to dare all for our country. For history
does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or
the timid. We must acquire proficiency in defense and
display stamina in purpose.
We
must be willing, individually and as a Nation, to accept
whatever sacrifices may be required of us. A people that
values its privileges above its principles soon loses
both.
These
basic precepts are not lofty abstractions, far removed
from matters of daily living. They are laws of spiritual
strength that generate and define our material strength.
Patriotism means equipped forces and a prepared citizenry.
Moral stamina means more energy and more productivity, on
the farm and in the factory. Love of liberty means the
guarding of every resource that makes freedom
possible from the sanctity of our families and the
wealth of our soil to the genius of our scientists.
And
so each citizen plays an indispensable role. The
productivity of our heads, our hands, and our hearts is
the source of all the strength we can command, for both
the enrichment of our lives and the winning of the peace.
No
person, no home, no community can be beyond the reach of
this call. We are summoned to act in wisdom and in
conscience, to work with industry, to teach with
persuasion, to preach with conviction, to weigh our every
deed with care and with compassion. For this truth must be
clear before us: whatever America hopes to bring to pass
in the world must first come to pass in the heart of
America.
This
is the hope that beckons us onward in this century of
trial. This is the work that awaits us all, to be done
with bravery, with charity, and with prayer to Almighty
God.
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