Remarks to the Members of the World Press Institute

Mr. Fisher and members of the World Press Institute staff, outstanding young journalists:

It is a great privilege and pleasure to web come all of you, especially Mr. Johnson from Stockholm.

You come from continents and countries that I have enjoyed greatly in the past--from the Middle East, from South America, from Asia and Africa, from India and Italy, Switzerland and Sweden, England and France.

One of you has come in from Greece. Once I attended your Trade Fair and I asked my daughter to say a few words to your friendly citizens. She talked long and learnedly about the birthplace of Alexander the Great, and all the rich history of northern Greece and Macedonia. And when she had finished no one in attendance was even willing to listen to me.

I won't make that same mistake today. But I do wish that we could have a press conference, with me asking the questions and you giving the answers.

Americans have always been the respecters of the views of our visitors. Nowhere are views from other lands and other peoples more respected than in this White House.

Our country--our whole Nation--is, after all, the creation of peoples of all countries, and cultures, and colors, and creeds. In our veins flow the blood of all men. And that is why, in our hearts, we have for 189 years regarded America's cause as really the cause of all mankind.

The great meaning of America is that men of all nations can live together in understanding and in peace. That is the great challenge, and the great opportunity, and the great responsibility that is facing you and facing your profession--that is, to foster understanding among men so that there may be peace among nations.

Seventy percent of the world's peoples today lack the means of being informed about developments in their own countries, much less in other countries. Of Africa's 236 million people, less than 3 million actually receive newspapers. Nearly half the countries of the Middle East have no daily press at all. And so it goes on all around the world.

But we are so happy to observe that a new day is dawning, and you and I and all of us are living now the moment of one of history's great breakthroughs.

In the 18th century the world was altered by the political revolution. In the 19th century it was changed by the industrial revolution. Now, in this 20th century, the world is being changed as never before by the scientific revolution--the revolution of human knowledge.

It is no dim and distant dream to envision the day when men everywhere will be able to receive in their homes telecasts from satellites of sessions of the United Nations.

I was delayed for a moment in greeting you not by telecasts from the United Nations, but from a telephone call from what I hope will be the new United States Representative to the United Nations, who is going before the Foreign Relations Committee in the morning to be confirmed and, we hope, to be sworn in here at the White House as soon as he has been confirmed.

Yes, no technology is changing more rapidly or more dramatically than the technology of communications, which will permit communication between nations and people. And surely from these better communications will come better understanding between all of us.

But the meaning of this revolution, and the meaning of this breakthrough, runs far beyond the impact upon any one technology. The advances of science are rendering obsolete the old thinking, the old theories, the old doctrine and dogma about relations between nations.

Young and less developed nations have an opportunity today to bypass the hundred years of the industrial revolution and begin to enter the mainstream of the 20th century. New nations with a minimum of trained scientists can share, and can benefit, from the vast store of already existing scientific knowledge.

They can benefit from modern medicine to free their people of disease and of early death, and to extend life expectancy. They can benefit from advances made in agriculture and produce more food to feed their growing population. And we are trying so hard to encourage them and to help them and to get them to develop their agriculture better.

They have the hope nations never had before of building better lives for their people, regardless of their size or their power or their wealth or their past history.

So, it is a great and grand and thrilling vision that opens before mankind as we meet here this afternoon. And we of America are moved by that vision. We are moved by it in all that we do at home and all that we do in the world.

For if the dream is to become the reality, peace must be preserved for mankind, and peace is the purpose of all that we do.

There are those who would force human hopes and aspirations back into the darkness of the past by aggression, by terror, by oppression, by war. But we believe that mankind has outrun the darkness of those dogmas which subjugate man's body and which imprison man's soul.

We believe that mankind should have a choice, and we believe that mankind does have a choice today. We think he can choose the way of life, the way of peace, the way of freedom, the way of justice through the liberation of his mind and his soul.

And we believe that is the choice that men of all continents and of all cultures and all colors and creeds will really ultimately make if they are permitted to choose their way in peace.

The strength that we have and the success that we enjoy and the spirit that swells within the soul of America is mobilized and committed to one end--that end is to preserve the peace so that men everywhere can choose for themselves the way they want to go, in this dawning age of opportunity in which we are privileged to live.

I am glad that I am privileged to welcome you here and to make these observations. These are trying moments in our relations with other nations.

Yesterday I talked to a thousand brilliant leaders of the field of education in this country, not just about the programs that will involve advancement and adventure for our own citizens here at home, but about the great progress that we can make in the field of international education.

While we will be true to our commitments, we will keep our treaties, we will join in protecting freedom in the world. And we think that strength will be required to preserve that freedom.

At the same time, we will do everything within our power to see that, while strength is maintained on the military front to preserve freedom from aggression, there will be equal strength on the political, and on the diplomatic, and on the economic front that will try to find ways of avoiding contests. At the same time, we are prepared to deal with them, if we must.

I want to take a moment, if you will, before I return to my other appointments, to meet each of you individually. I want to ask you to convey to your leaders, and to your fellow men, our hopes and aspirations and best wishes for their success and their advancement.

We are not concerned just with 190 million people in this country. We are devoutly interested in all the 3 billion people of the world.

We are organizing, and planning, and mobilizing to win the wars that we have declared--and we will win them. And those wars are wars on poverty--it was being fought in the House of Representatives today, and we won a while ago by five votes. The wars on ignorance--we are making great advances there. The educational program this year has never been equaled in this country before. Wars on diseases-while our life expectancy has improved a great deal with the years, we are not at all satisfied with it. And we have a half-dozen far-reaching, comprehensive health measures that will not just confine our efforts to our own people but will help us to help others in the world, and provide leadership in improving the health and in some of the problems of population and other matters.

So, we are committed to win the wars that we have declared on the ancient enemies of mankind: ignorance, illiteracy, poverty, and disease.

And it will be a great day in the world when we can say that victory is ours against those ancient enemies in all lands.

Thank you very much.