Remarks to the Members of the Iowa Trade Mission.

I AM HAPPY to welcome you from out where the tail corn grows--to this little garden of ours where the sharp thorns grow.

I am glad Governor Hughes is with you.

I was afraid his dog might get loose again and you would have to leave my good friend behind, running through the streets of Des Moines.

It has been said that traveling makes men wiser, but less happy. I hope you return to Iowa, after your trade mission, both wiser and happier. Having bought a few Iowa hogs myself, I have full respect for your trading abilities.

As long as we have been a nation, peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations have been our aims--as Thomas Jefferson once said.

Those are still our aims--and will be always.

In this world, in these times, America seeks no domination over foes, no domination over friends. There is no war we want to fight--except to join with other nations to war on war itself.

When you are in Europe--visiting the cities and the peoples there--I hope you will each speak from your own hearts to convey to them how deeply runs the commitment of Americans to peace for all mankind.

America is a land of many interests around the world--for our cause is the cause of all mankind. But the peoples of the lands you will visit are ever close to our hearts, bound there by blood and beliefs forever. So, also, the heart of America's purposes and policies is concerned with the strength, the safety, the stability, and the greater success of the Atlantic lands and peoples.

In Europe--and in America, too--there are now, as there are always, those who would divide us and set us against one another. Such efforts have never succeeded-and they will not succeed now.

This Nation, this Government, this administration have no foes in the capitals of the free world. We have no feuds to follow, no vendettas to vindicate, no profound differences to pursue or prolong. We seek only--and always--to fashion with our friends in Europe and other free lands stronger supports for the security that keeps the peace and the progress that promises prosperity.

Central to our purposes with Europe--and all the world--is our desire to foster increasingly free trade and peaceful commerce.

You residents of Iowa know the value of trade. You know what trade means to Iowa farmers, what it means to Iowa manufacturers, what it means to more than 100,000 jobholders in your State.

Last year our exports reached the record level of $25.2 billion--30 percent above the level in 1960. Agricultural exports of the United States rose 14 percent in the last calendar year--to $6.3 billion. Foreign markets took the output of 1 out of 4 acres of American farmland.

Free trade is both sensible economics and sane politics. And I believe we must move together in that direction.

Old obstacles are obvious. Old myths are many. But the time has come when all nations must think far beyond the thinking they have done before. If the people of the world are to raise up their incomes, step up their growth, and lift up the standards by which men live, this is essential.

In our increasingly interdependent world, there is no room for the restrictiveness that leads to counter-restriction--and finally to the rivalries and conflict that undermine the foundations of free alliances and the pillars of peace.

On your journey abroad, I wish you good luck and Godspeed.