Address at the National War College

General Craig and gentlemen:

You men are engaged in one of the most important studies that Americans can engage in today. You are studying our national policy in its broadest sense. Our national policy is not simply our foreign policy or our military policy or our domestic policy. It is a combination of all three. The international domestic policies which a nation follows are the foundations of its foreign policy. Unless the domestic policy is sound, you can't have a foreign policy; and its military policy also is based on the soundness of the domestic policy. What we can do and ought to do abroad depends upon the kind of nation we are at home.

We are, above all else, a peaceful nation, and what we want most in the world today is peace, a just and lasting peace, a peace that will release the constructive and creative energies of mankind, and increase the happiness of men and women everywhere.

Our national policy, the policy you are studying, in all its aspects, is simply a policy designed to reach that objective. It is a policy for world peace.

You who are privileged to study here have an opportunity that is available nowhere else in this great country of ours. You are given facts that cannot be generally made public. You can look at the problems confronting the United States in the woad today clearly, steadily, and as a whole. I am sure you appreciate this opportunity, and understand how important this background will be in the positions of high responsibility you will occupy when you leave here.

I want to talk to you today about this policy for peace and what our country has been doing to put it into effect since the end of World War II. There has never been a greater need than there is now to think about these matters clearly and comprehensively. We must try to do this with detachment and without partisan bias. The situation of the world is such that anything less than our clearest and wisest judgment may be disastrous to our future.

If we look back over what we have done since the end of World War II, I think we can say that we have been successful in laying the foundations for a future structure of peace. Things which were merely principles in 1945, and only blueprints in 1947 and 1948, have now become established realities--growing and living institutions.

We have done a great deal and we have done it very rapidly in the past 7 years. Some of our policies have been successful and some have not, but by and large it can be said that we have created the basic framework that is necessary to resist aggression and to uphold the principles of the United Nations. Whether that structure will succeed depends upon a number of factors, including the degree to which we give it material support. But the progress we have already made gives us confidence that we can succeed.

At the end of World War II, the people of the United States were anxious to return to peaceful concerns. We wanted to forget about the problems of national security and national defense. We were, indeed, too eager to do this, and, in our hasty demobilization, we impatiently threw away a great deal of what we needed.

A little more than 7 years ago, in a speech which I made in New York on October 27, 1945, I pointed out that we needed to continue to have strong armed forces, and a universal military training program. I said that we needed these things in order to enforce the terms of the peace, to fulfill the military obligations which we were undertaking as a member of the United Nations, and to protect the United States and the Western Hemisphere.

To many people these statements sounded like strange talk back in 1945. In those days few of us realized that we would need strong defenses and trained manpower. Some people still don't see why we have to have universal military training.

But the intervening years have proved that this was the right position to take in 1945. A new danger was then beginning to appear--a danger which has since become quite familiar. This was the refusal of one of our former allies to cooperate in the efforts of the free nations to build a world peace. That nation--that former ally--set out to expand its own power by taking advantage of the weariness and yearning for peace that were prevalent throughout the world in the chaotic aftermath of World War II.

This threat was global. It was sustained and persistent. It included political subversion, economic stratagems, and military and diplomatic pressure. It was aimed at all free nations--wherever weakness might appear--and most particularly at the nations in Europe and Asia bordering on the territory dominated by the Soviet Union.

To meet this threat we had to devise new plans and programs.

We had to develop measures that were new, that went beyond many of our traditions and experiences. I think that we have met this problem, and on the whole we have met it successfully. The American people did develop new measures to meet this postwar threat to freedom. These measures have by now become so familiar to us that many of us tend to forget what they are designed to do.

Our first objective is to preserve peace in the world. Our determination to do that was very clearly stated, I think, in the same speech I made in October 1945, setting forth the principles that were to guide us in international affairs. I said then that we do not seek for ourselves one inch of territory in any place in the world, but that we are prepared to use our military strength to fulfill our obligations as a member of the United Nations. Along with this, I stressed our conviction that it is essential that there be no territorial changes which are not in accord with the freely expressed wishes of the people concerned, and that no government be imposed on any nation by force by any foreign power.

That was said in 1945. We recognized at that time that there were limitations on what this country could do to make that declaration effective. We knew we could not prevent subversion or conquest everywhere in the world. But we engaged ourselves to stand firmly behind the United Nations, and to use our resources to make freedom secure for ourselves and for others.

Our first problem was to help the free nations strengthen themselves as rapidly as possible. The war and its aftermath had seriously weakened them. Destruction, economic chaos, hunger, political turmoil, all appeared to open the way for Communist subversion. The human misery and confusion in Europe and Asia aroused Communist expectations of easy opportunities for expansion. The free nations had to have new internal strength before they could resist Communist pressure.

In 1947 we moved to help the people of Greece. Their national independence was threatened by foreign intrigue, guerrilla war fare, and military pressure. We gave them military and economic aid.

Greece did not lose its independence. The elements that were trying to destroy that independence were defeated. The Greek people recovered, to stand beside the people of Turkey in defense of freedom and stability in the area of the eastern Mediterranean.

Next, we moved to bolster the internal strength of the nations of Western Europe. By their own efforts alone they were unable to recover from the terrible economic devastation of the war. Communist imperialism, using political weapons, was moving rapidly to take over their governments. We set out to give to these peoples economic assistance, and a sense of hope and confidence in the future.

Moving ahead another step in our program to keep the peace, we signed the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949. This joined the free nations of the Atlantic area in a pact which was something much more than a traditional military alliance. It was a permanent partnership in the task of maintaining and assuring the peace. It brought the countries of Western Europe into closer economic and military unity.

These measures have, up to now, been successful. Never has the United States made a better investment in security. I want to repeat that. Never has the United States made a better investment in security. It has been said that we have poured money down a rat hole when we helped the European nations to recover. That is just as untrue as it is possible for any statement to be.

The peoples of Western Europe did not succumb to panic and despair; they did not yield their freedom to internal subversion or to outside intimidation. The peoples of Western Europe are not in Communist hands today, and they are not going to be. The economies of these countries recovered, despite embittered efforts of the Communists to prevent it.

Today, the military potential of these Western European peoples is growing. This is of tremendous importance to the world. The men and machines of Western Europe are a key factor in preserving peace and freedom. If they should fall under Communist control, the scales of world power would shift drastically in favor of Communist imperialism.

You know, our productive capacity is 50 percent of the world's capacity. And Western Europe has 30 percent of the world's productive capacity. And the Soviet Union 20 percent. If the Soviets get Western Europe, they will be on a 50-50 basis with us, and that is the objective of our foreign policy.

Now, to prevent that from happening, we have also had to meet Communist efforts to gain control over the two great peoples on the western and the eastern borders of the Soviet Union: Germany and Japan. Here, too, we have been largely successful.

That part of Germany not occupied by Communist. Forces--and it is the greater part--has been enabled to maintain its freedom. We have helped it toward a position of full sovereign equality in the community of free nations. We hope that it will become an important part of the newly-emerging united Europe.

On the other side of the world, the Communists have also been thwarted in seeking the political capture of Japan, with its industries and its trained manpower. We have signed with the Government of Japan a fair and generous treaty of peace. We have shown our confidence in the Japanese people.

Now, I want to call the attention of you gentlemen to something that has never before happened in the history of the world. For the first time, a victorious power--the greatest power in the history of the world--has helped its enemies to recover. It has not left its enemies to starve, or struggle, or maybe go into the Communist orbit. It has helped them to recover. And that is the reason we are reasonably safe in the world today. It has never been done before. Study your histories.

Another step in carrying out our policy for peace was taken when we joined with other free countries in the Pacific area in a series of security arrangements.

This whole policy of ours met its greatest test when the Communists attacked the Republic of Korea. That was the great challenge--that was the crisis that decided whether we meant what we said, or whether we were really determined to support the United Nations and the concept of international law and order.

I believe the Communists were bent on testing the authority of the United Nations and the strength of the free countries, by force, sooner or later. If the test had not come in Korea, it would have come somewhere else. But it came in Korea, and that was where we had to meet it and where we had to stop it.

The Communist aim was to bring South Korea under Communist domination, to demoralize the resistance of the free nations to communism, and to prepare the way for attacks elsewhere. The Communists have failed to achieve this end. But our aim, which was to repel the attack, to support the Charter of the United Nations, and to prevent the piecemeal conquest of other free nations--that aim has been achieved.

This conflict has taken tragic sacrifices. It has caused impatience and disagreements among us. But in spite of this, we have stood firm.

By every possible means we have been trying to restore peace and security in Korea. The Communists have refused the opportunity we offered for an honorable end to the fighting. The result is a terrible and a serious problem. But while we deal with this problem, let us not lose sight of how much we have already accomplished by the fighting in Korea.

If the attack had been allowed to succeed, the United Nations would have been shattered, and all our hopes of building up a collective security system for the free nations would have been destroyed. If we had failed to meet the test there, the free world today might well be in retreat before communism on a dozen other fronts.

The foreign policy we have developed in these last 7 years is not a negative policy. It is not simply a design to resist communism. It is much more than that. It is a program of going forward, overcoming want and poverty, and enlarging freedom. Behind the shield of defensive alliances and military strength, it is our purpose to help people to improve their conditions of life--to create a world in which democracy and freedom can flourish. This is a part of our total policy which is uppermost in my concern. It is an affirmative, creative, and constructive policy.

Through the point 4 program, through measures of economic development, we are moving to bring modern technological progress within the reach of other peoples, so that they can help themselves to raise their standard of living.

I sent the engineer for TVA to the Mesopotamia Valley and had him make a survey of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. And he came back and reported to me that if those rivers were in a condition to be used as the Tennessee River now is being used, that valley would support 20 million people in luxury; and we wouldn't have any Near Eastern problem, if that were the case.

This kind of activity comes naturally to us. It is close to the helping-hand tradition of the American frontier. But today it has a new significance. For the majority of the people of the world live in what are called "underdeveloped areas." These people are determined to conquer poverty and disease and misery. We can show them how to do it. With patience and understanding, we can help them adapt the methods of modern science to their own needs.

Our programs of technical cooperation, our information programs, our exchanges of books and exchanges of people, all are intended to broaden the horizons of freedom and progress in the world. This affects education, it affects news distribution, it affects farm management, it affects industrial management. Furthermore, they are a vital weapon against Communist imperialism. They show that the genuine road to progress is the way to freedom. They show that the deeds of free men are better than the false promises of communism.

In carrying out these steps I have been describing, we have experienced both successes and failures. In this great world struggle there have been some burdens we could not undertake because our resources are not unlimited.

China was one of those. With all our material help, and that material help was very great, the Government of China was not able to save itself.

Let no one think that this administration underestimates the effects of the Communist victory in China. We know that the capture of the great Chinese people by a clique of ruthless Communist fanatics was a tragic loss to the cause of peace and progress in Asia and elsewhere. We hope it will not be an irrevocable loss.

It is very easy now to look at some particular part of the whole world problem and say we did the wrong thing there. But those who criticize past decisions rarely look at the entire balance sheet of our assets and commitments and tell us what things we should have dropped in order to do the things they think we should have done. They forget that our power is not unlimited and that we cannot commit ourselves everywhere.

You know, it's easy enough for the Monday morning quarterback to say what the coach should have done, after the game is over. But when the decision is up before you--and on my desk I have a motto which says "The buck stops here"--the decision has to be made. That decision may be right. It may be wrong. If it is wrong, and it has been shown that it is wrong, I have no desire to cover it up. I admit it, and try to make another decision that will meet the situation. And that is what any President of the United States has to do. Just bear that in mind.

I do believe, however, that we have succeeded in the main purposes to which we have set ourselves and our resources. We have demonstrated to the Communists that their expansionist efforts will be checked.

The sum total of the actions which we have taken, and which I have briefly described, has now brought us, I believe, to a situation in which it should become clear to the Soviet leaders that they cannot gain their objectives by the use of force. They know this country is becoming strong. They know the strength and unity of the free nations is mounting. They can gain nothing from war but catastrophe.

And I want to say to you gentlemen that another world war with all the implications that it has, and with the terrible weapons which we have developed, would end civilization. We don't want that to come about. And I want you gentlemen to use every means at your command to prevent that terrible catastrophe from coming about.

In recognizing our progress, we must not belittle the dangers that still lie ahead.

The Soviet leaders have not abandoned their purposes. They are persistent and determined. Even if they turn away from outright aggression, they still hope to win. More and more I think they are placing their hopes of victory on factors in the free world which they think will work to their advantage. They are placing their hopes above all on the differences and disagreements among the free countries, particularly between ourselves and the others. To this end they are conducting against the people of the United States the most shameless, cynical, and terrible campaign of vilification that has ever been conducted against an entire people anywhere. Some of our peanut politicians conducted that sort of campaign in the last election.

We must not underrate the dangers this involves. Our great wealth and our responsibilities as a leading world power have led to much resentment and misunderstanding, even among other free and friendly peoples.

The aid programs we have carried out, along with all the good they have done, have led to much oversensitiveness and to many unhealthy reactions. Giving aid is not easy, either for those who give or for those who receive.

Those of you who know your history remember that Aristides, who straightened out Athens, gave Athens a wonderful government. Finally earned for himself the title of "The Just," and was banished for that very reason. He was standing by the pen in which they threw the shards when they voted to ostracize a man. And he asked one of the people who said he ought to be ostracized, why he did it. "Well," he said, "I am just damn tired of hearing Aristides called 'The Just'!"

These difficulties are frequently exaggerated, but we will be foolish to underrate their importance. They involve some serious dangers. If we wish to proceed successfully with our policy for peace, we must meet this present phase of the Communist challenge, as we have met others in the past. We must make a real effort to overcome the things that tend to divide us from our friends and allies.

If this is done--if we are able to preserve unity and confidence among the free nations--we need not be panicky today about the state of the world. We are not on the losing side. The world is not about to collapse around us.

We have a clear and consistent policy for peace. It is not a perfect one. No course of action ever is. It needs constant improvement and reevaluation. It needs constant revision. But it has proven basically a sound and rugged policy, in line with the feelings of our people and the requirements of the situation.

The future historians may recognize some mistakes. I think maybe they will find a lot of them, but I think they will find more good things than they will mistakes. But on balance, I believe they will say that never in history did a great nation respond so effectively and promptly to new and unaccustomed problems as did this Nation in the past 7 years; and never was a greater or more enlightened effort expended for a nobler purpose--world peace.

One of our greatest dangers today is the danger of impatience. It is the danger that we will sell ourselves short--that we will underrate our own accomplishments. It is the danger that we will break away from the best path, just because it is long and stony, and uphill and rough, and because there are times when we cannot see over the top of the hill. It is the danger that we will take hasty or erratic action, and thereby sacrifice the very real and impressive achievements already in our hands.

What we need in this coming period is faith in ourselves, courage to do the difficult and distasteful things, consideration and forbearance for our allies, without whose confidence and help our purposes will not be accomplished.

To guide us on this path will soon be the responsibility of new people. No statesmen have ever had a heavier responsibility than these men will have. Let us see that they are given the type of support they need to do their work. Let us tell them frankly when we think they are wrong. But let us support them wholeheartedly when they are right. Let us work with them for peace and freedom in the world, and for progress and security in our own country.

If we do these things, I am sure we can continue to move forward, and with God's help, we will have a better and a safer world.