Remarks on Presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Manlio Brosio, Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Note: The President spoke at 11:25 a.m. in the East Room at the White House.

On the same day, the White House released a biography of Mr. Brosio and a fact sheet on the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Mr. Brosio responded to the President's remarks as follows:

Mr. President:

I am honored, happy, and proud of this distinction you have awarded to me more than I could ever say. It is for me an undeserved and, in any case, an unexpected privilege to receive the Medal of Freedom after the few Europeans who have already received it, and alongside such personalities as Paul Henri Spaak and Jean Monnet, two names which represent, in my mind, the highest virtue and merit of great European and great Atlantic men to a degree which I have always admired and by far never reached.

Another special reason of satisfaction for me is to receive this award from you, Mr. President, and as far as I know, as the first European to whom you have presented it. You know, Mr. President, that our acquaintance is not recent. You mentioned it. It goes back to the time when, in '55, you were Vice President, and after those 6 years of my mission as Ambassador of Italy in Washington, to the intermediate 7 years in which you were preparing your comeback, and our relationship continued.

In all that time, my admiration and trust in you has never failed, and in these last years of Presidential responsibility, facing tremendous world and national problems, old and new, it has never diminished. Indeed, it has increased with the size of your difficulties and of your statesmanlike courage.

So my thanks to you today are genuine, and strengthened by a personal touch which I hope you appreciate. But I believe that the deepest reason for my satisfaction today is my conviction that your generous gesture is directed not only, and perhaps not mainly, toward a man worthy or unworthy, as he may be, but to an institution and to a policy. I see it as a reaffirmation of fidelity and attachment to the Atlantic Alliance as the main foundation of the foreign policy of the United States and of free Europe.

Of this fidelity and attachment, you have given during your term of office repeated demonstrations in deeds and in significant gestures. Your first visit to Europe at the very beginning of your term in 1969 was to Brussels and to the seat and the Council of NATO. Later on, when the problems of the Mediterranean and of American forces in Europe required your attention, you met with us in Naples and reassured us of your unfailing support.

Now, as I withdraw from NATO, you have chosen to stress again the basic importance of the links the United States has with it. This is most appropriate in a moment of great hopes and of great uncertainty in our Western free world. The might of the Warsaw Pact is growing. The trade and monetary difficulties within the free world are now at a serious turning point. The situation in the Middle East is difficult, and in the Far East is obscure. The third world is anxious and restless.

At the same time, we are today as near as we have ever been to the promising possibility of real negotiations and honest understanding between East and West and Europe, which requires all our good will and our attention.

In these critical moments, critical in a positive, no less and indeed even more than in a disturbing, sense, the link between Europe and North America remains vital and decisive. We must overcome our differences and draw from their settlement a stronger basis for pursuing and accomplishing together our unfulfilled mission of civilization: peace and freedom.

I am stepping down today, a small wheel in a continuing movement, which can easily be replaced. Your recognition will remain with me not only as a cherished memory but as a pledge for all of us, a pledge of loyalty and solidarity between Americans and Europeans.
Thank you very much.