Remarks at a Reception for the Members of the Citizens' Advisory Committee on Recreation and Natural Beauty.

Mrs. Johnson, Mr. Vice President, Mrs. Humphrey, Mr. and Mrs. Rockefeller, Members of the Cabinet, Members of the Congress, members of the Citizens' Committee, and my fellow Americans:

This is really a day to remember. This happening may turn out to be one of the more impressive demonstrations of "flower power" and architectural power, too, for that matter, and urban planning power, too, and political and business power, too--power which, used with vision, power which, used with imagination, can and will shape a newer and a better country.

Many years ago, John Burroughs wrote these words, "I am in love with this world. It has been my home. It has been my point of outlook into the universe. I have never bruised myself against it nor tried to use it ignobly."

Since the death of that great American naturalist, there have been many of us who also were in love with this world. But like too many suitors, we have been somewhat careless lovers. We have many times just taken our world for granted.

Sometimes we have done this in the name of progress. Often we have done it through sheer neglect. We have used our world ignobly.

Now, the time has come when we cannot be so careless. Unless we do better, we may suffer through a stark emergency of the environment. We may create a hostile world:

--a world to bruise ourselves against;

--a world of sprawling cities, unplanned or badly planned;

--a world whose water is full of sludge, whose winds are full of soot;

--a world whose landscape has been totally neglected, stripped, marred, and wasted. All of this need not happen if we choose well, and particularly if we plan well and if we act well.

We have not been inactive these last 4 years. We have saved more. We have built more. We have preserved more than ever before in our history.

More than 2,200,000 acres of new park lands have been set aside for the American people. We have passed many major laws to save our rivers and our coasts and our lakes from water pollution. We have acted decisively to prevent the pollution of 67,000 miles of our American waterways. We have acted to try to clean the air of our congested cities.

There are some, I know, who see beautification as a frill, as an extra, or as something that is luxurious enough to postpone.

Well, they make me impatient because I am convinced that beauty and order in our environment are not frills. I am convinced that they are urgent necessities because they will determine whether our grandchildren can live in a decent land or whether they will be surrounded by glittering junk heaps.

When Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Lasker and their many other hard-working colleagues put some playground equipment in the schoolyards, when they improve some neighborhood park, when they plant an avenue of flowering trees, then I think their shovels dig deep into the future of this land because those shovels, while digging deep, are really changing the lives of our children.

When Stewart Udall saves a redwood forest, when his voice and his leadership help us put another national park within easy reach of every citizen, when he convinces the Congress that they should join us in trying to dot the areas near the big cities with some recreational spots, when more park land comes into the public domain than ever before, then the lives of our people are being changed and we are grateful for these gifts of vision and devotion.

When Laurance Rockefeller, that quiet and patient and persistent servant of the people who just spoke to you, reclaims a wilderness or sponsors another new conservation project, he enriches not only the landscape, but the lives of the people.

When Nat Owings designs a grand avenue for our Capital, he builds a monument to our Nation's vision.

When the planners and businessmen and architects work to try to save and improve our cities, I think that they are literally saving our lives.

These efforts are what history is going to remember us by.

I remember the leader in the Senate when I first came there in this field. He is present with us today, Senator Paul Douglas. I want to acknowledge his influence on my thinking and I think it has been influential on the thinking of all other Americans.

So I hope that when the history of our time is written, that that history will write of us: "Their cities were places for people, and not just places for freeways. Their highways were designed not only by engineers, but by conservationists and by urban planners. Their business and their civic leaders joined hands to try to overcome the blight and the decay and the pollution--and they won. They lived satisfying lives in a setting worthy of free men. Theirs was truly an age of beauty."

My friends, that is no pipe dream. It is a blueprint for action.

Today, here in the East Room, we can celebrate some progress, some action. I am sending to the Congress a message that will call for 26 new wilderness areas--all the way from Maine to California.

I ask these forward-looking, progressive members of the Senate Interior Committee who are here with us, and the members of the House Committee, and all of those interested in conservation and in our children to recognize that we are taking a major step in an attempt to save another precious and another neglected resource. And that is the score of islands which lie off of our coasts and our lakes.

We have, in the 1960's, begun a great program to save the Nation's seashores. We now have a necklace of national seashores on all three of our coasts--the Atlantic, the Gulf, and the Pacific.

Today I am directing the Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Udall, to prepare a major program to save the wild islands. They represent some of the most magnificent, unspoiled beauty spots that are left in our continent. We must get an island conservation and recreation program going soon. We must get it going before it is too late.

Now, we have come to the point where we meet to sign an order designating our beloved and distinguished Vice President as Chairman of the Council on Recreation and Natural Beauty. He will give it vitality; he will give it vision. He will give it leadership, as he gives everything that he touches.

Mr. Vice President, this order doesn't spell out a role for Mrs. Johnson, but I rather suspect, if my experience is worth anything to you--I said to one of the Senators yesterday, "It is a shame I don't have a relationship with you like I do with Mrs. Johnson; when we have our differences, we talk them over with each other and then we go on our way, but when we have differences with the Senate, we use the processes of the Associated and United Press"--so Mr. Vice President, I suspect that you are going to be getting some advice from Mrs. Johnson from time to time, just as I do.

I am not competing with Drew Pearson, but I expect you will take it--just as I do.

In any event, to those of you who have spent your time and your talent and your resources in trying to help clean up this country-trying to give us better air and better water and better land and beauty spots and places where we can rest and where our children can play--I want to personally, on behalf of all of my countrymen, say to each of you leaders: We thank you.

We are very proud that you are interested in things like this. We are very grateful that you have inspired us and given us leadership and--yes--strength, and even sometimes, a little comfort.

Thank you very much.