Remarks at the High School Football Stadium, Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Dr. Bradbury, Mr. Vice President, Senator Anderson, Congressman Montoya, Congressman Morris, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls:

Senator Anderson just said, "Well, I don't know how well they dress here, but they've got brains." But I think you look very well, and I want to tell you that we are delighted to have you, to have a chance to come and express our greetings to you.

The United States, which has a great faculty for self-criticism, highly developed, and quite rightly values it as one of our essential freedoms, I think fails to take into account what an extraordinary burden and what an extraordinary job this country has done over the last 17 years in the defense of freedom. All around the world there are hundreds and millions of people, and dozens of countries who would not be free if it were not for the will and the courage and the power of the people of the United States of America; 180 million people who are the keystone in the whole arch of the whole fight for freedom around the world, being the mainspring of containment of the Communist empire which numbers a billion people and stretches over great reaches of Asia and Europe.

Why have we been able to do it? We have been able to do it in part because nature was generous to us and we have a rich country. We have been able to do it in part, the greater part, because our people, reluctantly in many cases, were willing to take up the burdens that were placed upon us at the end of the second war, and have borne those burdens for so many years in so many different parts of the world, and the result is that today the United States offers for the defense of Europe the largest force in NATO. The United States maintains the largest navy in the world. The United States maintains the largest Strategic Air Force in the world. The United States today has hundreds of our sons and brothers in Viet-Nam and Thailand and all around the globe who in some cases are fighting and in some cases dying for the maintenance of other countries' freedom as well as their own.

And lastly, I think this country has performed its great function because, as Senator Anderson has said, its people have had brains, and we have appreciated the cult of excellence, and we have developed that talent in a way which has served our country and served mankind. There is no group of people in this country whose record over the last 20 years has been more pre-eminent in the service of their country than all of you here in this small community in New Mexico.

We want to express our thanks to you. It's not merely what was done during the days of the second war, but what has been done since then, not only in developing weapons of destruction which, by an irony of fate, help maintain the peace and freedom, but also in medicine and in space, and all the other related fields which can mean so much to mankind if we can maintain the peace and protect our freedom.

So you here in this mountain town make a direct contribution not only to the freedom of this country, but to those thousands of miles away. And therefore, I am proud, as President of the United States, to come here today and express our thanks to you, and to also tell you how much I've admired from some years ago, from reading an article about the kind of schools that you run here and the kind of boys and girls that you're bringing up. We hope from them the same kind of service that you have rendered.

Thanks to you all.