Message to the Inter-American Investment Conference Held in New Orleans.

[Recorded on film]

MAY I first express a warm welcome to all of you at the Inter-American Investment Conference in New Orleans. Your conference is the kind of concrete "let's-see-what-we-can-do-together" demonstration that can make a valuable contribution to our hemispheric concept of "the good partner."

I am particularly pleased that this conference has been organized by private businessmen of the Americas for the growth of private business between the Americas.

I do not mean that the Government of the United States can or should be uninterested or refuse to participate in inter-American economic development. Quite the contrary.

There are and will be many opportunities for both direct and indirect Government participation--sometimes in partnership with private initiative; sometimes through the kind of stimulus which may be furnished by the operation of special tax inducements such as Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey referred to at the Rio Conference; sometimes through a device such as the International Finance Corporation designed to make increased development funds available and also provide for the eventual transfer of the project to private ownership.

But behind all private plans and projects, behind Government help, behind a New Orleans Conference or a Rio Conference, behind the words, the dollars, and the blueprints, there must exist the essential ingredient of faith--North American faith in Latin America, and Latin American faith in North America.

And if today I had to choose only one thought to leave with you, it is the thought of our North American faith in the future of Latin America--economically, culturally, politically, and spiritually.

Each of us in this Western Hemisphere is possessed of many blessings--compared to many other areas of the world. Compared to hundreds of millions of the world's people, our blessings are superabundant.

Should we not, therefore, clasp hands in fraternal friendship, and so conduct ourselves that these blessings shall be multiplied for the good of all?

And so to you conferees of the first Inter-American Investment Conference, I say with all my heart, may good fortune attend your gathering.