Address Opening the Meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the American Republics.

Mr. Secretary, Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen:

It is an honor to open this meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the American Republics. I am happy to extend to you a wholehearted welcome to our country and to our Capital City. On behalf of the United States, I hope that this will be a most satisfactory and successful meeting.

This is the fourth meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the American Republics. This meeting, like the earlier ones, is held at a time of international danger. When the first meeting was held, in 1939, war had just broken out in Europe. As that conflict spread to nation after nation, and threatened to extend to all parts of the world, the Foreign Ministers of the American Republics held two more meetings in 1940 and in 1942 to plan a common course of action against the common danger.

As a result of our concerted efforts, our countries did not become a theater of war. The nations of this hemisphere succeeded in protecting the American Continents from invasion. And, as a result of our common efforts, the people of the Americas were able to contribute power and resources which turned the tide against aggression and brought victory to the forces of freedom.

Today, we meet again to consider our common defense. We meet again to work out ways and means by which our united strength may be employed in the struggle for freedom throughout the world.

The American Republics all owe their national beginnings to the same set of ideals-the same concepts of human and international freedom. We have all followed and we will continue to follow two basic principles. First, we believe that international affairs should be based upon cooperation among free and independent nations, and not upon coercion or force. Second, we believe that the aim and purpose of government is to promote the welfare of all the people--not just the privileged few.

These principles have long been the basis of relations among the American Republics. The same principles are now embodied in the Charter of the United Nations where they have become the foundation of a new society of nations. The statesmen of the American Republics have shown their continuing devotion to these principles by the great and constructive work they have done in creating and strengthening the United Nations.

Today, these principles are under relentless attack from a center of power which denies the whole concept of human freedom-whether it be spiritual freedom, or economic freedom, or political freedom.

Communist imperialism attacks and undermines national independence and international cooperation. In their place, it substitutes the rule of force. Communist imperialism also seeks to destroy the system of government that serves the welfare of the people. Instead, it sets up a system under which the people exist only to serve the purposes of the government. As a result the Soviet system is one of unbridled power, imposing slavery at home and aggression abroad.

The aggressive expansion of the Soviet power threatens the whole world. In Europe we see it trying to engulf the nations from which we have drawn our cultural beginnings. If Soviet subversion and Soviet armed force were to overthrow these nations, the consequences for all of us in the Western Hemisphere would be disastrous. We would lose those cultural and religious ties which mean so much to us. The international trade on which we are so dependent would be violently disrupted. Worst of all, we would be confronted by a hostile power on the shores of the Atlantic, capable of using the great economic resources of our conquered friends to strike across the ocean at our own independence.

We must not and will not let that happen. We in the Western Hemisphere must help the free men of Europe who are resisting Soviet expansion.

In the Far East, Communist imperialism presents us with another threat. There we see many new nations emerging, as our own countries once did, from colonial status to full independence. For these new nations we of the Western Hemisphere have the greatest feeling of fellowship. But Communist imperialism has fallen upon these new nations with its weapons of internal subversion and external attack. It seeks to overpower them before they are strong enough to stand alone.

If Soviet communism were to be successful in this venture, it would be a terrible blow to the bright promise of the principles of freedom and peace which we uphold. The great manpower of Asia would become one of the instruments of the aggressive expansion of the Soviet system toward our own hemisphere.

Both to the east, therefore, and to the west, we are confronted by great perils. Our future progress, our very survival, lie in the defense of the world order of free nations of which we are a part. Our very existence depends upon the success of those principles which our countries stand for, and which we have supported in the United Nations. There is no safety for any of us in abandoning these principles. There will be no security in the world without the United Nations. Powerful and productive as the Western Hemisphere is, we cannot make it safe by building a wall around it.

Instead of withdrawing into our hemisphere in a hopeless attempt to find security through retreat, we must concert our defenses and combine our strength in order to support men in Europe and Asia who are battling for freedom. That is the only course that can lead to security or peace or freedom for us or for men anywhere in the world.

Recognition of this fact lies behind the aid the United States has given to the rebuilding of Europe. It lies behind the struggle the free nations are now waging in the hills of Korea. The resistance of the United Nations to aggression in Korea--a resistance that has the firm approval of all the nations represented here--is of momentous importance. It has shown that the free nations are determined to defend their ideals of national independence and human welfare.

The issue in Korea is the survival of the principles on which we have built our countries. The principal of national independence and self-government is at stake there, as well as the principle that government shall be for the welfare of the people. If justice and order do not prevail in Korea, they will be in danger everywhere in the world.

Heroic sacrifices are being made in Korea to check the forces of aggression and to protect us against the terrible destruction and vastly greater sacrifices of a world conflict. By standing firm in Korea and by preparing to meet aggression elsewhere we are doing our best to prevent a third world war.

This meeting in Washington, therefore, must consider not only what should be done to improve the defense of this hemisphere, but also what measures we can best undertake to support and strengthen the United Nations in its effort to establish world peace.

We meet here as a region which has already, in the solemn treaty of Rio de Janeiro, announced its intention to defend itself through cooperative action. We are pledged to resist the common foe.

We must now plan as a primary task for the strengthening and the coordinated use of our defense forces in this hemisphere. We must also consider how we may best use our strength to support the cause of freedom against aggression throughout the world.

The success of our defense program depends upon our economic strength. In these troubled times, defense production must have prior claim upon our economic resources. We shall have to increase the production of strategic materials. We shall have to divert manufacturing capacity to defense purposes.

These necessities will create many difficult practical problems for our countries to solve. There will be shortages of basic materials and other commodities. There will be limitations on certain kinds of capital expansion.

The first step in solving these problems is to face them in a spirit of cooperation. We must recognize that we are engaged, as good neighbors, in a common enterprise that is vital to our survival as free and democratic nations. We must establish the principle of sharing our burdens fairly. We must act together to meet essential civilian needs, and at the same time we must act together to be sure that scarce supplies are limited to essential uses. We must try to prevent wild and speculative price movements in our international trade, whether in raw materials or manufactured products.

Our defense needs are not, of course, limited to the things that go into the making of weapons. We need to build up our economic strength in a much broader way. It is essential to our security that we constantly enlarge our economic capacity. Our defense needs include, in many cases and in many areas, more food, better education, and better health services. They include, in certain cases, the building of roads, dams or power plants.

We must remember that the real strength of the free nations lies in the will and determination of their peoples. The free nations stand for economic progress and social advancement. They grow in strength by going forward along the road of greater economic opportunity for all.

Over the last 10 years our countries have made great economic progress. In most of the countries represented here, national income is at least twice what it was in 1939.

An important factor in our advance is the program of technical cooperation which we have joined together to carry out. Joint projects for spreading technical knowledge have already made notable achievements in improving the health, education, and living standards of our people. We intend to press on with this kind of activity.

The American Republics are full of breathtaking possibilities for future economic development. These possibilities can be made realities only if we work and plan together for a long time ahead. I like to think, for example, of the possibility of developing the vast areas of wilderness, such as the eastern slopes of the Andes, and turning them into new and fertile farmland. And I like to think of a project about which I talked to the President of Chile, which contemplates the diversion of water from those high mountain lakes between Bolivia and Peru for making a garden on the coast of South America to the west for Chile and Peru, and in return giving Bolivia a seaport on the Pacific. I had a very pleasant conversation with the President of Chile on that subject. And I like to think of the development of the Parana, Paraguay, and Uruguay Rivers. Think what wonderful possibilities are in those great waterways for development.

And those are only samples, for all over the continent of South America there are greater resources undeveloped than were ever in these United States of America. And I know that we can develop them for the welfare of the whole world as well as for ourselves.

I like to think of the possibilities of industrial development in your countries. I remember with pride the part which this country played, even during the troubled times of the last war, in helping to create a steel industry in Brazil. I think with satisfaction of the progress that has been made by Chile and other countries in setting up factories and hydroelectric projects in recent years.

Our countries do not have unlimited resources to devote to the creative developments such as these. We cannot do as much, in the midst of a defense emergency, as we could in normal times. But we must do all we can.

It is the genius of our democratic type of society that we are constantly creative and constantly advancing. We hold out to all people the prospect of bettering their condition, not in the dim future, not after some terrible and bloody upheaval, but steadily through the years, in the simple activities of our daily life.

In our countries we do not measure our prosperity by the power of the state. We do not measure the progress of our society in terms of military might. We do not measure our advancement in terms of the profits or the luxuries of the few. Our yardstick is the welfare of the many. We think in terms of the average man--how he lives, what he can buy, and the freedom he enjoys. These are the standards by which we measure our development.

And, by these standards, we are marching steadily forward. And we shall continue that march!

Our vision of progress is not limited to our own countries. We extend it to all the peoples of the world.

We know that people are very much alike in their basic aspirations wherever they may be or whatever language they may speak. We recognize that the people of Russia, the people of the Soviet satellite states, are very much like us in what they want for themselves and for their children. We hope that some day they will find it possible to turn their leaden from their present path of tyranny and aggression.

Our goal is self-development, not imperialism.

Our goal is peace, not war.

Our goal, not only for ourselves but for all peoples, is a better world--materially, morally, and spiritually.