Remarks at the Conference on Foreign Policy for Leaders of National Nongovernmental Organizations.

Secretary Rusk, distinguished guests:

Secretary Rusk and I are very pleased to welcome you here today. Your presence, I think, proves a very basic truth about our American democracy--that is that foreign policy is the people's business. It is not restricted to any favored few. It is the proper concern of every American who is interested in his Nation's destiny.

The primary business of our foreign policy is to build a world in which we and our children and our neighbors throughout the world may live in freedom and may live in dignity.

The heritage of 5,000 years of human civilization then hangs on our success.

I have said many times that these are years of testing. I have said that what is being tested is the will of America--not the capacity of America. We have the will; we have the strength; we have the power. But the test is--do we have the will; do we have the spirit to succeed?

History has elected to probe the depth of our commitment to freedom. How strongly are we really devoted to resist the tide of aggression? How ready are we to make good on our solemn pledges to other nations?

Since the end of World War II, Americans-regardless of political party--have answered, not with words, but with deeds, with billions through the Marshall Plan, to give new life to a shattered Europe; with leadership in creating the United Nations and all the collective security arrangements that meant to insure that no aggressor ever again would doubt the resolve of free men to stand up and to defend freedom.

We demonstrated with a tireless quest for rules to keep the nuclear beast in his cage and with foreign aid programs to help lift the less developed countries--containing two of every three citizens of the free world--to help them to true independence.

Now, these are the basic themes of what American foreign policy is all about. They have been essentially the same for more than 20 years now, under all administrations-Republican and Democratic.

They are the same themes that are being challenged at this moment and defended by our men in Vietnam. There in South Vietnam, aggression fights not only on the battlefield of village and hill and jungle and city--the enemy has reached out to fight in the hearts and minds of the American people.

He has mounted a heavy and a calculated attack on our character as a people, on our confidence and our will as a nation, on the continuity of policy and principle that has so long and so proudly marked America as the real champion of man's freedom.

Let no single American mistake the enemy's major offensive now. That offensive is aimed squarely at the citizens of America. It is an assault that is designed to crack America's will. It is designed to make some men want to surrender; it is designed to make other men want to withdraw; it is designed to trouble and worry and confuse others.

But it is, in effect, an assault that is designed to crack your country's will.

We are the aggressor's real target because of what we represent.

When we are gone, I ask you, what other nation in the world is going to stand up and protect the little man's freedom anywhere in the world?

Yes, the enemy seeks more than the conquest of South Vietnam. He seeks more than the collapse of all of Southeast Asia. He seeks more than the destruction of the Pacific dream where a new and a prospering Asia sees its hopeful future.

Aggression at this moment is striking in Vietnam at the very root of life--at the very idea of freedom--at the right of any man or any nation to live with its neighbors without fear, to find its own free destiny, and to determine it for itself.

We cannot fail these anxious and these expectant millions. We just must not fail ourselves.

We must not break our commitment for freedom and for the future of the world. We have set our course. We will pursue it just as long as aggression threatens it.

And make no mistake about it--America will prevail.

This afternoon I am reminded of another day many years ago--the year was 1937 and I had just returned to Washington as a young Congressman in my twenties. That, too, was a time of grave challenge. But it was also a time of great hope and great promise.

You may recall that there were great popular movements in those days against any violence in international affairs. Well-meaning, sincere, good people around this entire country were pledging themselves never to bear arms. They were castigating our Government for any involvement beyond our own shores. They were even refusing to spend $5 million to fortify Guam.

President Roosevelt went to Chicago one night in 1937. He delivered a speech which still holds much for all of us today. Franklin D. Roosevelt warned the world that night that the shadow of aggression threatened not only the nations that were immediately in the aggressor's path, but it threatened the future of all free men and women.

On that night in Chicago he asked the nations of the world to "quarantine the aggressors."

For liberty and independence can be secure only if free men resolve to draw a line, to stand on it, and to hold it.

President Roosevelt called for "a concerted effort in opposition to those violations of treaties and those ignorings of humane instincts which today are creating a state of international anarchy and instability from which there is no escape through mere isolation .... "

Well, that was 1937. It took some time and it took a world catastrophe to wake men up and for them to finally hear that message when we were attacked.

So, let this generation of ours learn from the mistakes of the past. Let us recognize that there is no resigning from world responsibility. There is no cheap or no easy way to find the road to freedom and the road to order. But danger and sacrifice built this land and today we are the number one nation. And we are going to stay the number one nation.

Our forefathers asked no quarter of the beast and the plague and the hunger that they found when they came to the new world.

In the words of a great President, Abraham Lincoln, "with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in."

I ask your help in finishing that work. Thank you and good night.