Remarks to the Staff of the U.S. Embassy in Montevideo.

MY FIRST COMMENT, my friends, is that this seems to be a very efficient embassy, because there are so few people compared to what I have run into in a good many places in the Far East and Mideast. The number seems to be kept down here, something that pleases my heart because I am quite sure that a lot of us make work for others.

I have just one little thought that may be worth while expressing: the very deep conviction that everybody in a foreign country from America is an ambassador. We have the head of a mission, and we call him Mr. Ambassador. But the more I have seen and known of foreign relations--and I've been in it for a good many years, because they started me off in the Philippines in 1935 after some training in Panama--I have come to the conclusion that America is judged by what each of us does, says, and how we act.

Now this is, in the mass, so terribly important that each individual is often very apt to forget it. And he says, "To hell with it, this is my life and I am going to live it as I please"--and so on. But when we undertake service, particularly in the United States Government, to a certain extent you have adopted a code, a code of conduct that demands the best you have in spirit and intelligence and perseverance.

I think, therefore, that each person here and in every other embassy can feel they have a very great responsibility.

But they can feel more than that. They have a great opportunity, because there is nothing that's going to be so important to these youngsters right here in the front--and their youngsters--than going about the work of producing a peace. Nothing can be more difficult, nothing more important.

But if each of us can feel he has done a little bit, whether it's a President trying to meet a crowd and make them believe that the United States truly wants peace, or whether it's a secretary who's showing always the courtesy and the politeness that some visitor expects, or if it's merely a good "Good morning" from an American as they pass someone on the street--I think this is one of the great jobs we can do outside, you might say extracurricular, because I know you are all busy.

But the fact is, if we can't make progress along this line, I am rather pessimistic about this poor old world. But I don't think we have to be pessimistic. We can do our part and possibly we will get representatives of other countries to do theirs.

And there is another place, where I have started meeting with some of my friends that are influential in corporations, to get them to try to tell these same things to their representatives abroad. Because if all of our commercial friends coming out looking for business, if they do it in a way that shows their concern in the country they are visiting, as well as their own pocketbooks, I think we will make tremendous progress.

I didn't mean to come out here to say anything more than "Hello," but when I see what I believe to be the great opportunity that lies in the hands of this collective group, I can't fail to say we serve America best when we are doing our job for the world best.

So, good luck to you, and while I probably won't be this way again, until after I am free at least--and if I am, maybe I will come down here and be one of these tourists of whom I speak.

Thank you--and good luck.