Remarks to Delegates to the International Conference on Agricultural and Cooperative Credit

It is a pleasure indeed to have you come to Washington and to pay a visit to the White House. I am vitally interested in the work which you have been studying. I am more than vitally interested in the successful operation of what we call the point 4 program. It is a program to help people to help themselves. It is a program to help the development of the natural resources of all these great countries for the benefit of the people themselves who live in the countries who own the resources.

It has wonderful implications, in that if it can be successfully operated all around the globe, the improvement of the living standards and conditions of all the people in the world will be affected.

And if that is done, our objective will be attained, because that will be the greatest contribution that we can make to peace in the world.

It is starving people and people who have grievances against their overlords that cause revolutions and that contribute to the Communist movement, which in the long run is the greatest totalitarian force in existence in the world today--the greatest force for evil that ever has been in existence.

There isn't any difference between the manner in which the totalitarian so-called Communist States treat their inhabitants and the way in which Hitler treated his people. They are exactly parallel in the way they manage things, only they call them by different names.

What we are trying to do is get the free peoples of the world to understand that freedom of action, and freedom of approach-such as you have been studying here today--is much the better way to get prosperity and a better standard of living in the world.
I am more than happy that you have had a session with the University of California, one of our great universities; and I sincerely hope that these meetings and these instructive conferences can be continued over the years.

You see, I am going to be out of a job on the 20th of January, but I don't want this program which was inaugurated under the good Dr. Bennett to be stopped on that account. And I don't think it will, because you people can keep it going.

And I want to say to you that this country has no ambitions territorially to dominate any country in the world. We have all we can do to take care of our own country.

I want to call your attention to one thing in particular. We have neighbors on the south of us. We have neighbors on the north of us. You won't find those neighbors in any way alarmed or afraid of the great Republic of the United States. We are their friends, and they know we are their friends. They know we have no ulterior motives on their resources, or their peoples, or their political setup.

Now if we could get the whole world to feel that way, if we could get the neighbors of the Soviet Republic to feel that way, if the Soviet Republic would act to its neighbors as we act to ours, I don't think there would be any chance for a third world war.

Peace is what I want. And I think this organization, and this program, will make a greater contribution to peace than any other one thing that could happen in the world.

Thank you very much.