Remarks at the Presentation of a Bust of Adlai E. Stevenson.

Mr. Vice President, Mr. Secretary of State, members of the Stevenson family, Ambassador Goldberg, members of the Cabinet, distinguished Ambassadors and guests:

This day would have been Adlai Stevenson's 68th birthday.

Because the spirit of Adlai Stevenson's thought lives on, this ceremony is not an unhappy one--but rather it is an occasion for a very proud and grateful remembering.

I recall the time when President Kennedy appointed most of Adlai Stevenson's Chicago law firm to high Federal office. Ambassador Stevenson said, "I regret that I have but one law firm to give to my country." Considering the current situation with your law firm, Mr. Sharon--now that we have finally deprived you of Mr. Clifford--I hope that some of Mr. Stevenson's

Of course, it is not only Adlai Stevenson's law partners and political associates who follow his lead today. A generation of Americans came to political maturity through his wit and his insight.

They know that Adlai Stevenson--twice defeated for the Presidency---did not finally lose the political battles to which he committed himself. They learned from Adlai Stevenson that tenderness and toughness are not opposites. They learned finally that compassion and understanding are the wellsprings of freedom--and that they must be guarded with an uncompromising tenacity. Adlai Stevenson was proof that an "egghead"--as he called himself--can be both soft-hearted and hard-boiled.

When one speaks of this gifted man, it is best always to speak in his own words. Here is something of his wisdom.

"The contest with tyranny is not a hundred-yard dash--it is a test of endurance."

The month before he died he had this to say: "Retreat leads to retreat just as aggression leads to aggression in this still primitive international community."

In a letter written a few days before his death, he wrote: "Whatever criticisms may be made over the detail and emphasis of American foreign policy, its purpose and direction are sound."

It was Adlai Stevenson who said that "although America occasionally gags on a gnat, it has some talent for swallowing tigers whole."

And he said: "The costliest blunders have been made by dictators who did not quite understand the workings of real democracy, and mistook diversity for disunity."

But if Adlai Stevenson was tough, so too was he gentle; if he lived and served in the hard day-to-day world, so too did he have a vision of a better future for all mankind.

Twenty-three years ago in San Francisco, Adlai Stevenson helped to create the United Nations. He gave it the final 4 years of his remarkable life.

This sculpture, which I gratefully accept on behalf of the Government, will stand in the United States Mission to the United Nations.

On the day he died, I said: "He was an American. And he served America well. But what he saw, and what he spoke, and what he worked for is the shared desire of all humanity. He believed in us, perhaps more than we deserved. And so we came to believe in ourselves much more than we had."

Perhaps his belief in the United Nations was also more than its performance deserves--but I think not.

Franklin Roosevelt, and every President since, shared Adlai Stevenson's hopes for the United Nations. If we have sometimes been disappointed, we are not disheartened. In this institution--not yet 23 years of age-the world has fashioned an instrument that has--on many occasions--fulfilled the faith of its founders.

When it has failed, it has failed only at tasks where no other instrument of man has yet succeeded.

If it has not yet assured a lasting peace, disarmament, and the conquest of illiteracy and disease, it has helped to focus the world's concern on each of these.

No other organization has better represented the hope and the promise of mankind.

Pope Paul VI journeyed to the United Nations, just 3 months after Adlai Stevenson died. He said this: "One word more, gentlemen, one last word: this edifice you are building does not rest upon purely material and earthly foundations, for it would then be a house built on sand--above all, it rests on our consciences...."

Adlai Stevenson would have appreciated that. No man of our time better understood that the call of conscience is the highest calling.

In his time he called upon the conscience of his generation by his passionate eloquence and by his personal example.

How much we miss him was best summed up on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly, after a session devoted to eulogizing his career. One delegate, after the eulogies had been made, turned aside and said very simply, "If only Stevenson could have spoken."