Statement by the President on the Anniversary of V-E Day.

ON THE FIRST anniversary of V-E Day the people of the United States remember with grateful pride the men and the women of the United Nations whose unstinted sacrifices made the victory possible. The year that has passed has made us realize with greater awareness the nature of their gift to this and succeeding generations. They gave us not justice, but the opportunity to achieve it, not security, but the opportunity to win it, not peace, but the opportunity to make it. Let each of us judge for himself how well in the past year we have used what came to us at such great price.

These opportunities will not be ours forever. Unless we take advantage of them fully, quickly and selflessly, they will slip from our grasp. A year after V-E Day, the opportunities that it brought to build a just, secure and peaceful world are still with us. To the extent that we maintain our unity within ourselves and with other peoples, and to the extent that we dedicate ourselves wholly and unselfishly to the mighty tasks confronting us, they will become on succeeding anniversaries not narrowing but expanding vistas of the hopes of man.