Remarks Upon Presenting the Vietnam Civilian Service Awards

Secretary Bundy, Director Marks, Ambassador Gaud, distinguished award winners, ladies and gentlemen:

Ambassador Lodge, we are delighted to have you here with us in the East Room today.

Every evening on television, every day in the newspaper, and every hour by cable, the reports of military action in Vietnam flow in here to us. We Americans know, far more immediately than other generations here at home have ever known before, the face of war abroad.

Yet most of us have seen only one face of this war--the face of combat.

There is also the face of need: of hunger, of sickness, of bewildered ignorance. That face is just as real as the face of combat. Its demands are just as urgent. Answering them will be just as crucial to the outcome in Vietnam.

Today, here in the East Room of the White House, where on other days we have honored the heroism of American fighting men, we have come here to salute six civilian Americans--who also risked their lives for freedom in Vietnam. One whom we honor-Francis Savage--lost his life there.

He, and these brave men and women beside me on the stage here this afternoon, threatened the enemy exactly as they served the innocent people of Vietnam. They worked to build what the enemy had fought to destroy. They sought to strengthen the hands of the very leaders whom the enemy sought to kill.

Since the first of this year, the Vietcong has killed almost 1,800 civilians--it has wounded another 3,300, and it has kidnapped more than 2,200.

The enemy's purpose is quite clear. It is to deprive South Vietnam of every hamlet or village leader--to deprive them of every teacher and worker--who tries to improve the life of his people. It is to so intimidate the Republic of South Vietnam that at last it will surrender in hopeless desperation and frustration.

It is difficult for most of us to understand this kind of methodical brutality. It is hard for most of us to grasp the meaning of this gangsterism--or to know the courage that it requires to build a nation and to build it under the constant threat of terror.

These men and women, no less than the leaders in the hamlets, know what it is to work within range of a sniper's rifle.

They, and thousands like them, fought a war against disease and fear and hunger while a war of combat raged about them. They faced the frustrations and heartbreaks that always accompany the building of a decent modern society; they faced danger on hundreds of roads and in thousands of hamlets; and still they built--and taught--healed and helped a people whom history has cruelly served.

While the Vietcong has carried on its campaign of terror, these men and women, and those who served with them

--helped build classrooms for more than a quarter million students; helped supply them with more than 11 million textbooks;

--built and stocked more than 12,000 health stations;

--gave 17 million inoculations against cholera and other diseases;

--treated 200,000 patients every month;

--helped to quadruple the production of fish and double the production of pigs;

--helped to irrigate 100,000 acres of land--four times more than in 1964.

Accomplishing these things has cost a great deal of money--and we and the Government of South Vietnam have provided it. But it has demanded something far more precious than money. It has demanded a passionate devotion to serving humanity, even at the risk of one's own life. It has required a willingness to live in remote villages and provincial capitals; a willingness to be lonely and afraid for long periods of time-to endure disease and deprivation--to seek right answers in an alien culture--to seek order in a land shaken by insurgency.

It requires, in short, a commitment as great as that we have come to expect of our fighting men in uniform in Vietnam.

Because they have lived and worked there, these men and women know that a free, secure, and healthy society will never come easily to Vietnam. They know there will be suffering and mistakes in the days ahead, as there have been in the past.

And we Americans should understand that that is the pain of progress. For our Nation was not born easily. There were times in those years of the 18th century when it seemed as if we might not be born at all.

During the hard days of the fighting for our independence there were some who would not fight at all. Some people would not pay taxes; some States would not meet their levies of men and money; some men were so devoted to colonial power that they fled abroad.

But there were--and we thank God for this--enough brave men and women to bear the burden; there were enough dedicated men and women to endure year after year of war and suffering; and there were allies who stood with us all through those darkest hours, until we finally prevailed. And after 13 years of war and political strife, we here in America prevailed.

Given that background, we ought not to be astonished that this struggle in Vietnam continues. We ought not to be astonished that that nation, racked by a war of insurgency and beset by its neighbors to the north, has not already emerged, full-blown, as a perfect model of two-party democracy.

Instead we might take heart that in the very midst of that war, only a few months after the enemy threatened to cut that nation in half

--the Vietnamese .people elected their own representatives to a Constituent Assembly, notwithstanding all the discouragements and terror that the Communist world could muster;

--that Assembly then wrote a democratic constitution;

--local elections were then held in the villages where security permitted, and more are planned for the near future;

--a national campaign for President and Vice President is now underway; the members of a new Senate will be chosen at the same time, and members of a House of Representatives in the following months.

It is with great pride that I acknowledge that all through that ordeal and painful emerging process a great American leader helped to guide those people with sound and solid advice. And we honor him, too, here today, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge.

Today's leaders in Vietnam, Chief of State Thieu and Prime Minister Ky, have given their very solemn pledge that they will support the outcome of fair elections, whoever wins.

I take that pledge most seriously.

In recent months I have conveyed to them--through personal letters, through Ambassador Bunker, Secretary McNamara, General Taylor, and Mr. Clark Clifford--my strong conviction that it is very vital for the elections in Vietnam to be free and to be fair.

We cannot pose impossible standards for a young nation at war. But given our concern and commitment, we can--and we should-expect of that nation every effort to make the elections truly representative of the people's will.

We fight in Vietnam to free that people's will from the grip of Communist terror. We fight so that the people themselves may choose, undaunted, those whom they wish to lead them. We fight to make election-instead of submission--possible.

I believe that those who are dismayed by the progress of the campaign so far should bear at least two things in mind:

In South Vietnam today, there are 11 candidates for President--some military, some civilian. They are free to attack the government, and most of them have done so.

They are free to take their case to the people, and most of them have done so and are doing so at this hour.

In North Vietnam today--North Vietnam--there are no candidates; there are no elections; there are no attacks on the North Vietnam Government, of which I am aware. And it amuses me that they are not even attacked here sometimes.

We also, I think, should take judicial notice, without being critical and without being fearful, that by exercising our rights under the first amendment that we should call to the attention of the people that the folks that are doing the most to keep us from having a fair and free election in Vietnam today are the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese themselves. There may be a time when their terroristic efforts could be brought to the attention of the American people.

Now, this is not to say that the campaign, or the election in the South, will go off without blemish.

This is only to say that an effort is being made, and a strong effort, with our very strong support and endorsement, to conduct an open election in a nation that is under fire from guerrillas and from terrorists and from aggressors and invaders. It is to suggest that this effort that we are making ought to be welcomed and encouraged. It is to invite attention to some of the similarities between the fight for democracy and freedom in Vietnam today, and the tough and confused struggle to build a new nation on our own continent just two centuries ago.

The events in Vietnam do not comprise a neat package. They are the products of a very long and very bitter struggle. They testify not just to man's imperfections, but to his indomitable spirit--that after decades of suffering still seeks freedom, still seeks to have its voice heard, still seeks to prevail over the voices of terror that surround it.

Now, to those of you who have come here to join me, I want to call to your attention these courageous Americans and ask you to share this honor with me of presenting to them on behalf of their fellow citizens, the highest commendations for their service to their country and for their service to freedom in Vietnam.