Remarks on Arrival at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia.

THANK YOU very much. Pat and I wish we could shake hands with every person who has been so very kind to come out and welcome us on this occasion, but it happens that downtown there is going to be a very special ceremony, as you know, for the 90th birthday of the man we affectionately call "Uncle Carl" Vinson. It also is the 100th anniversary, as I understand it, of the Mercer Law School, one of the fine law schools in the country, and I understand this is the 150th anniversary of Macon, so I am here on a very good day.

The other thing I should say is this: that this happens to be the first time I have ever been to Macon, so I am glad, after this welcome--after this welcome I am going to make sure it is not the last time I have come to Macon. When I saw that we were going to arrive here at 1: 30, I said, "Why, there won't be much of a crowd. They will all be watching the Falcons." But they play tomorrow night, right? And who is going to win, Minnesota? It will be a fine game. It will be a lot better than the movie, you can be sure.

Let me say to you, too, that on this occasion, I know this country well through a coincidence. Many years ago, when I came from the west coast for the first time east, I went to Duke University, and my roommate for 3 years was a boy from Macon. He did not go to Mercer; as a matter of fact, he went to Emory University, which is also a fine university, you know, over in Atlanta. And we roomed together for 3 years.

Fie taught me a lot. As a matter of fact, he was the first man in our class, the brightest boy in the whole class. In fact, he made the best record at Duke of any man who has ever gone to Duke. And so, as you can imagine, I learned a lot from him, a lot about the law, but also a lot about the South.

When I came---of course, my folks are from the Midwest. I had gone to school in the Far West, and I studied all my history books, and we used to talk sometimes about, well, I called it the Civil War, and he said that isn't what it was, it was the War Between the States.

But sometimes we talked about the generals. Now I was raised with the belief-and I told him this--that Ulysses S. Grant, who later became President, was the greatest general of the Civil War. That is what I thought in my first year at law school. After Bill Perdue had brainwashed me for 3 years, he had Grant in fourth place. He had Robert E. Lee first, Stonewall Jackson second, and Joseph Johnston third.

But 'thank God that war is history. We can all be thankful this is one country-East, West, North, and South. We can all be thankful that there are people who will sacrifice for this country, who love it wherever they come from. We can all be thankful, too, 'that there are men and women who served in our Armed Forces in peacetime as well as in wartime, and that here at this great air base, that it played such a great role in the airlift, the greatest airlift that ever took place, and I congratulate the Robins Air Force Base for what they did in that air thing.

As a matter of fact, somebody gave me a little card. I am going to read it to you. It says, "Every day in Middle Georgia is Air Force appreciation day." How do you like that?

But now, on this occasion--and I will bring my remarks to a close so that we can get back down to the ceremonies at the Mercer University--just let me say that we can be thankful that this year, 1973, which has been in some ways a very hard year, but in other ways perhaps one of the very great years for America, we can be thankful that for the first time in I e years, the United States is at peace with every nation in the world. For the first time in 8 years, every American POW is home where he belongs, and as one of them said, they are proud they came home on their feet and not on their knees.

And when I see so many here of high school age, I guess all of you would agree that some of you will volunteer for the Armed Forces, but did you know for the first time in 25 years it is your choice. No one is going to be drafted. The draft is finished, and you can choose it if you want. And I urge many of you to go to our Armed Forces, because it is a great service, it is a service in the cause of peace.

I will simply conclude by saying that as I look at the events of recent months-the close situation we had in the Mideast, where the possibility of confrontation developed between great powers, and then it was settled because the leaders of those powers knew each other, were able to talk to each other and had decided long before that whenever they had differences they would talk them out rather than try to fight them out--we can look back to that, we can look back to the end of the war in Vietnam, but above everything else, what we want is a peace that will last.

I saw so many young children here. I see this one over here, and I saw a little baby in a mother's arms, and there is one over there--you see the one with the little purple sweater--and you wonder what kind of a world they .are going to have in the year 2000, when I won't be here, Mrs. Nixon will not be here, most of you will not be here. Is it going to be another war, or are we going to have peace?

Let me tell you that because we have opened communication with countries that we completely disagree with in philosophy-the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union--I believe that we can build a peace that will last, not just 10 years, but will last for a generation and more to come, because once every generation in this century we have had a war-World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam--and everybody said, "Well, that is the last," and it never was. I trust we can make this the last, but there is only one way that can happen.

America has got to be strong. America is the nation that can keep the peace in the the world. If we have a weak America, the danger of war will go up. If we have a strong America, there is a chance that our children and our grandchildren can grow up in peace. So help keep America strong, not just in its arms and not just in its industry but strong in its spirit, strong in its patriotism, strong in its love of the greatest country that civilization has ever known.

Thank you.