Remarks to Members of the International Executive Service Corps.

Ladies and gentlemen:

We are delighted to have this talented group of businessmen visit us in the White House this morning.

George Washington, our first President, once advised that we should let our discourse with business be short and comprehensive.

Brevity is always a good rule but on the subject of free government and free enterprise working together, sometimes I am more comprehensive, I think, than I am short.

The program that we are launching today is, I think, an inspiring example of sane and sensible, responsible and constructive cooperation between Government and private enterprise.

I have been somewhat amused, in the 7 months I have been in this office, that when you take the position that employers and employees should get along and can work together and that Government need not be an irritant or an antagonist to either, that they say you are talking out of both sides of your mouth, that you should either be for business and against labor or for labor and against business, or for Government and against them both.

Well, I believe that our strength in the world today will depend on our ability to unite all the strength of the free enterprise system which is made up of employers and employees encouraged, led, and supported by their Government which is their servant and not their master.

You men are rendering a valuable service to our national objectives abroad which neither Government nor business nor labor could do so well alone nor could do so well apart. You are making a most important contribution of high potential to the economic development of the free world, and the preservation of the free world may well depend on our success to see that economic development succeeds.

I want to express my appreciation this morning and my heartiest congratulations to the Congress, to all of those who have participated in this development, especially to Mr. Rockefeller, Mr. Linowitz and the members of this committee, to the members of this board, to the organizations which have given their cooperation and their support, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Industrial Conference Board, and to other groups.

From my perspective, it is the breadth of the consent rather than the details of the execution that is the most meaningful aspect of the International Executive Service Corps.

With man's knowledge and capacity changing so dramatically and so rapidly, we of the free industrialized nations must recognize the reality of a great and grave gap developing between ourselves and other nations and the world of the next 50 years-knowledge itself will be the great power, knowledge itself will be the great force and the great wealth of the earth.

So, unless we concentrate today on diffusing knowledge and unless we concentrate on sharing it widely, we can foster a most unwelcome sort of structure among the nations of the earth.

The International Executive Service Corps is a most welcome pioneering effort to explore a new field, a field in which the horizons will broaden to infinity during the next half century. New nations cannot and will not develop new economies to support their independence and their freedom unless they have access to the kind of new information and new guidance which can only be imparted by exchanges such as this program contemplates.

While some may not see it yet, no sector of our society has changed more rapidly or will continue to change more dramatically than the private sector of our private enterprise system.

If I may, I would like this morning to pay my personal high regards to one man here who personifies the change that I am mentioning--the Administrator, David Bell. Mr. Bell occupies about the most difficult post in American public life. He is a whipping boy for everybody who wants to give anybody a whipping, but I am proud to say that he has brought to this post the kind of lean and tough and forward-looking mind that characterizes both the new management of business and the new administrator of Government.

Such men, I believe, represent the kind of excellence that we must set as our standard for the future.

I would say the greatest disappointment that I have really had in Government in 7 months is the request that I have made of other people to come in and help us do distasteful and disagreeable and tough jobs, but they have always found that their family had problems, their wife was sick, or their daughter was going off to college, or they just couldn't spare the time to help save the Republic.

Now, I think that these men this morning are setting an example of "can do" people, and I hope that it will be an example that other men and women in private life will follow.

I am hopeful that as we progress in raising the remuneration of public service that we can attract to Government many more men like Dave Bell, and I am hoping if the Senate acts favorably on the pay bill that we can keep the good ones we have now.

A good many of them, a few weeks ago-after the House defeated the bill and before we resurrected it--were leaving to go back to draw two or three times as much in private industry. Good men are not an expense in managing an operation so vast and as modern as Government. Good men are the best investment that we can make.

So, I want to congratulate you, and I want to thank you, and I want to express the hope that this program will pay generous dividends. I hope and expect it will set a pattern for the future which will benefit our country and our cause and all that we do.

I would like to ask Mr. Linowitz and Mr. Rockefeller if they feel free to do so to tell us about the plans of their corps. I know that they will bear in mind that some of you gentlemen who have just come from Florida and have not been exposed to this sun may not want to stay out here too long this morning, but we do appreciate your being here.

I hope to get to meet with you for a few moments after the ceremony. I thank you for your public service and we will have pictures when Mr. Linowitz and Mr. Rockefeller conclude.