Message to the Congress Transmitting Annual Reports on the Foreign Assistance Program for 1966 and 1967.

To the Congress of the United States:

One of the clearest lessons of modern times is the destructive power of man's oldest enemies. Where hunger, disease and ignorance abound, the conditions of violence breed.

For two decades, this lesson has helped to shape a fundamental American purpose: to keep conflict from starting by helping to remove its causes and thus insure our own security in a peaceful world.

Four Presidents and ten Congresses have affirmed their faith in this national purpose with a program of foreign assistance.

The documents I transmit to the Congress today--the Annual Reports of our Foreign Assistance Program for fiscal 1966 and 1967--detail this program in action over a 24-month period. Their pages describe projects which range from the training of teachers in Bolivia to the fertilization of farmland in Vietnam--from the construction of a hydroelectric dam in Ethiopia to inoculation against measles in Nigeria. The reports tell of classrooms built and textbooks distributed, of milk and grain fortified with vitamins, of roads laid and wells dug, and doctors and nurses educated.

These are accomplishments largely unnoted in the swift rush of events. Their effect cannot be easily charted. But they are nonetheless real. In the barrios and the rice fields of the developing world they have helped to improve the conditions of life and expand the margin of hope for millions struggling to overcome centuries of poverty.

But the fundamental challenge still remains. The forces of human need still stalk this globe. Ten thousand people a day--most of them children-die from malnutrition. Diseases long conquered by science cut down life in villages still trapped in the past. In many vast areas, four out of every five persons cannot write their names.

These are tragedies which summon our compassion. More urgently, they threaten our security. They create the conditions of despair in which the fires of violence smoulder.

Our investment in foreign aid is small. In the period covered by these reports, it was only 5 percent of the amount we spent for our defense.

The dividends from that investment are lives saved and schools opened and hunger relieved. But they are more. The ultimate triumphs of foreign aid are victories of prevention. They are the shots that did not sound, the blood that did not spill, the treasure that did not have to be spent to stamp out spreading flames of violence.

These are victories not of war--but over wars that did not start.

I believe the American people--who know war's cost in lives and fortune--endorse the investment for peace they have made in their program of foreign aid.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

The White House

January 22, 1968