Remarks at a Ceremony for the Awarding of Honorary Degrees to President Johnson and President Diaz Ordaz of Mexico

Mr. President, Mr. Chairman, President Diaz Ordaz, Chairman Mahon, and members of the board:

This has been a very rich and satisfying experience for me today to spend with my friend from across the border.

We talked about how we would continue our efforts developed in the laboratory to rid our cattle of the screwworm pest. We talked about how we could profitably utilize peaceful uses of atomic energy and the very great desalting experiment that our technicians are carrying on together. We exchanged views about the improvement of our plant life and our food supply.

I thanked the distinguished President for leading the world in developing a new strain of wheat that is now being used in underdeveloped nations in many continents because of the vision and the foresight of the people of Mexico.

I think it is quite appropriate that a technological institution like Texas Tech--agricultural, scientific, one interested in the future of all humanity--should confer the doctorate degree on my distinguished friend, President Diaz Ordaz. I should like also to express my sincere appreciation to you for the high honor that you have conferred upon me.

Texas Tech received its first students in the small west Texas town of Lubbock 40 years ago. Four decades have seen rapid change and growth for that school.

As we know, every advance in technology has opened the door to greater advances. One of the most important goals of my administration has been to make certain that our educational institutions are prepared for what some have called the knowledge crisis. So preparing young people for the world that they will live in is a harder task than ever before.

Two teachers talked about it at some length this afternoon in the Oval Room.

I know if President Diaz Ordaz and I had our wish tonight, certainly high on that priority would be that we would like to see the four persons out of every ten in the world who cannot recognize "cat" or "dog," or spell or read or write, have the opportunity for all the education that they could take.

President Diaz Ordaz, as you know, spent some of his rather remarkable career in the classroom. I think that Texas Tech does itself a great honor in recognizing that here this evening.

Chairman Mahon is here with us. Education has a good friend in the man who invited us to have this ceremony here this evening. I don't know that all of you international guests recognize it or not, but George Mahon is Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

He is a friend of education. We are spending about $12 billion a year on education. That is about three times as much as we were spending 3 years ago.

After he invited me to this very unique and unusual procedure of conferring a degree on two Presidents in the Rose Garden of the White House, I considered it very carefully. I recognized the precedents that might be involved. But it occurred to me that maybe Chairman Mahon might become an even better friend of education, if I accepted his invitation. So here we are.

President Diaz Ordaz will recall that at Punta del Este we agreed to join the efforts of all nations in this hemisphere in advancing science and technology. We know that we must give these liberators of mankind unprecedented encouragement and impetus.

I trust that President Diaz Ordaz will view this degree this evening from Texas Tech as a token of America's very high regard for him and for all of his people-and as a symbol of the willingness of our schools and our universities to join with those of Mexico in a common effort to advance the cause of learning throughout our hemisphere, because there could be no more worthy objective or goal than for us to have a hemispheric goal of defeating the ancient enemies of illiteracy, ignorance, and disease in this hemisphere.

And at Punta del Este one of the most eloquent voices was that of the great President of Mexico.

We believe, as a result of our meeting here for these 3 days together, that we will not only resolve many matters of mutual interest, but that we will undertake some new goals that could truly benefit not only all the people of the hemisphere, but all humankind.

This week I spoke with two prime ministers from Southeast Asia. And oddly enough both of them talked to me about the food supply of the world and the problems that they had. Both of them talked about the great experiment that we had cooperated in with the Philippine Government in making and developing a new strain of rice.

Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma of Laos told me that in an 800-acre experimental plot where they once grew 1,200 pounds of rice per acre, they are now growing 7,000 pounds of rice. To a starving world, that means a great deal.

As a result of what the people of Mexico have done under the distinguished leadership of the Mexican Government, the cooperation of one of our great benefactors of this country, the Rockefeller Foundation, we now have what is referred to the world over as a Mexican strain of wheat--Mexican wheat.

It produces two and three times as much yield per acre as the old strain.

So, we hope that in the days to come we can have more new rice strains and more new wheat strains, and more efforts in the field of educating our children and healing our sick because those are really the only goals that count. If we can spend trillions on armaments, as we have in this century, a few billions in education might teach us enough to love our fellow man instead of fight him.

So, to the board of directors, the distinguished president of Texas Tech, and all those involved in this invitation, we say thank you very much.