Remarks Upon Presenting the President's Awards for Distinguished federal Civilian Service

Mr. Ball, ladies and gentlemen:

This is a very proud moment for those that we have come to honor, and for their families and coworkers as well. It is also a very proud moment for their country. Freedora is much more than merely security against aggression from other countries. Freedom, as our forefathers conceived it, meant the liberation of the individual from oppression by his own government.

Today, after nearly two centuries, the lasting contribution of the American Revolution remains the concept that law shall rule, that the people shall govern, that officials of government shall neither rule nor govern, but that officials shall only serve.

Thus, we are honoring the oldest and the noblest tradition of our system, as we honor these four able men for being in every sense faithful servants of our people. In the highest sense, we do much more today than honor fidelity alone. Faithfulness, honesty, and loyalty have so long been the rule of public service in our land that the infrequent and isolated exceptions receive and deserve the harshest and strictest censure.

The true purpose of these awards is to challenge the career service to meet the new and higher standards required for this new and changing age. Man's knowledge, man's capabilities, have never advanced so rapidly as in these times. If Government does not serve, Government becomes only a costly and intolerable disservice unless its departments and its agencies and its responsible officials strive without ceasing to adopt that advancing knowledge and capacity to the people's service. The new standard, the new goal of Government, and within Government, must therefore be the standard goal of excellence.

Each of the public servants that we honor today has in his field contributed a measure of excellence. In so doing they each epitomize what I believe is a new generation and a new breed of public servant. The day has passed when Government jobs are the easy jobs of our society, or when the public service is the refuge of those inadequate for the demands of private competition. Many of our society's most challenging and most demanding and most difficult and most important posts today are in the public sector. We need for those posts our best minds, our most able men and women. Nothing less, we think, will suffice. These are such men.

So on behalf of a fortunate Nation, made stronger by their service, I am proud this morning to salute them and to honor them with this highest award that the Nation can bestow for distinguished civilian service.

Mr. Doar, like all those honored today, has served under administrations of both parties. It is the hallmark of the ideal public servant that he is motivated not by desire to serve a party, but to serve all the people. Mr. Doar has made a basic contribution to our democracy as a vigorous champion of equal voting rights under the law enacted in 1957. I want to congratulate Mr. Doar especially for the high standards that he has set in its enforcement.

Dr. Friedman's career typifies the new kind of challenge being offered today within the public service. Back during World War II, one of his inventions permitted a major breakthrough in productivity in the manufacture of radio circuits. I understand the wartime saving in man-hours was more than 50 million, and that this invention is still as valuable now as it was 20 years ago. l)r. Friedman's creativity continues. He holds more than 50 patents, and nearly all of the new information we have accumulated in the past 15 years about the upper atmosphere has come from the experiments that Dr. Friedman conceived and designed or executed. I hope that the brilliant and ambitious young scientists of our colleges and universities will keep this in mind when they choose their career courses.

All of us know Lyman Kirkpatrick's remarkable and inspiring story. After a distinguished and brilliant career, he was felled in 1952 by polio. In 1953 he was back at work, traveling around the world as Inspector General of the CIA. His contribution to his country and to the free world has been equaled by few and exceeded by none in the years that he has been restricted by a handicap that many would have regarded as an excuse for simply giving up.

Since this is an election year, I guess I had better not say that Brom Smith is the most valuable man in the White House. But there are some of us here who think that Bromley Smith is a leading candidate for that title.

For more than 10 years he has done a most remarkable job of enabling the Presidency, under three Presidents, to be a more responsive and more vigilant and better informed office.

I am personally very grateful and personally very proud of you today.

Now if the recipients would all come around, we will have a picture together, and then we will have them individually with each and their family.