Remarks Upon Proclaiming 1965 as International Cooperation Year.

IF YOU have never been late to a meeting you won't understand my position, but I do ask your indulgence and I do thank you very much for what I hope is your understanding.

I have been running late all morning. I didn't know we had as many majority leaders in the Congress as we have. They are all hoping that they can go home this week. I am hoping that they go home, too.

I have just left more ex-presidents of the American Bar Association than I ever realized existed, but since they were "Lawyers for Johnson," I am glad they were there. I had to meet with them, so please forgive me and I promise to try not to be so tardy in my public appointments in the future.

I am very proud to welcome this most distinguished assembly of most distinguished Americans.

I regret that one of the most distinguished of all cannot be with us this morning-Ambassador Adlai Stevenson. He is otherwise engaged in Cleveland and Chicago in a pursuit that I regard as no vice.

You have come here and we are brought together by a very old and a very honored American interest--the interest of fostering international cooperation instead of international conflict. We are here today to proclaim 1965 as International Cooperation Year in the United States of America.

This observance will be commemorated around the world by the members of the United Nations.

For the United States, cooperation with other nations and other peoples is always uppermost in our minds and is the first aim of our policies, the central instrument of our foreign policy, and it is the central goal of administrations of both parties--the great leaders of which many are in the room today.

I know that the American people would not have it otherwise.

The value of international cooperation and understanding is recognized by all of us. The extent of cooperation that is in existence is realized by too few. Today the United States participates in some 80 international organizations. We take part in nearly 600 international conferences, and we faithfully honor 4,300 treaties and agreements that we have made with other nations in the world.

Two points are clear:

First, international cooperation is simply not an idea or an ideal. We think it is a clear necessity to our survival. The greater the nation the greater is its need to work cooperatively with other people, with other countries, other nations.

Second, international cooperation is no longer an academic subject; it is a fact of life, as I have just illustrated. Our challenge is not to debate the theory or the concept, but our challenge is to improve and to perfect and to strengthen the organizations that already exist.

In 1965 it is the hope of your Government that International Cooperation Year may be used for a useful review and purposeful planning. For this end I am appointing a special Cabinet Committee to direct this work and to develop all possible proposals for the future.

It is my thought that we can find many areas to encourage much more progressive and purposeful labor among the nations of the world. This is what we shall be doing. I have asked you here this morning to make a special appeal to you and to request your labors, too.

I hope that each of you will help me and the Secretary of State and others of your Government to carry the story of international cooperation and organization to the American people.

Public understanding, public support, is vital and basic to our success in striving for world understanding and cooperation. You can't be a statesman unless you get elected, and it is pretty difficult for us to be successful in a movement of this kind if we do not have the broad, solid support of the people, because under our system they are the masters.

More than that, I hope that your talents may be turned to systematic study of the next steps that private organizations may take to further this cooperation.

There is more extensive interest in this on the private level than I think there has ever been before. Business organizations, farm organizations, labor unions, universities, church bodies, women's groups, professional societies, are all expanding their interests and their operations abroad and are all concerned with what is happening in the other 120-odd nations in the world to an extent that has never been equaled before, I say pridefully and proudly.

There is much going on in this field in this country and throughout the world. There is much energy and enthusiasm and interest to do even more if we have the right kind of leadership.

So your task is to help bring these together, how to harness these resources and channel them in the proper direction. Those with the experience and background that you have must make known what is going on, what the next steps are, and how those with time and resources can most usefully join these labors.

Because in this day and age man has too many common interests to waste his energies, his talents, and his substance in primitive arrogance or in destructive conflict. In short, you are going to have to be the captains of a movement to lead people to love instead of hate. You are going to have to be the leaders in a movement to guide people in preserving humanity instead of destroying it.

You are going to be the leaders in a crusade to help get rid of the ancient enemies of mankind--ignorance, illiteracy, poverty, and disease--because we know that these things must go, and we also know from our past that if we do not adjust to this change peacefully, we will adjust to it otherwise.

As a great leader said in this room not many years ago, if a peaceful revolution is impossible, a violent revolution is inevitable. So I believe that the true realists in the second half of this 20th century are those who bear the dream of new ways for new cooperation.

You will be frowned upon. Some will call you an idealist. Some will call you a crackpot, and some may even call you worse than that. They may say you are soft or hard or don't understand what it is all about in some of these fields, but what greater ambition could you have and what greater satisfaction could come to you than the knowledge that you had entered a partnership with your Government that had provided the leadership in the world that had preserved humanity instead of destroyed it?

So this year and next year and in the years to come, international cooperation must be an enduring way of life in the community Of man.

If I am here--I am speaking now politically and not physically--I don't anticipate any violence, but if I am here, I intend next year to call a White House conference and I want all of you to start thinking about it now. I want you to talk to your friends about it.

I want to call a White House conference To search and explore and canvass and thoroughly discuss every conceivable approach and avenue of cooperation that could lead to peace. That five-letter word is the goal of all of us. It is by far the most important problem we face. It is the assignment of the century for each of you and if we fail in that assignment, everything will come to naught.

If we succeed, think how wonderful the year 2000 will be. And it is already so exciting to me that I am just hoping that my heart and stroke and cancer committee can come up with some good results that will insure that all of us can live beyond 100 so we can participate in that glorious day when all the fruits of our labors and our imaginations today are a reality.

It now gives me a great deal of pleasure to sign the proclamation designating 1965 to be International Cooperation Year in the United States of America. I am very proud this morning that I am a citizen of a country and the leader of a nation that can have voluntarily assembled in the first house of this land the quality and quantity of talent that faces me now. To each of you, for the time you have taken and have waited, for the money you spent in coming here, for the thought that you have given, but more important, for what you are going to do, on behalf of the Nation, I say we are grateful.

Thank you very much.

[At this point the President signed the proclamation, then resumed speaking.]

I suppose that the most indispensable part of every man's life is his family, that they give him comfort, strength, and inspiration when he needs it most. But next to my family, I know of no person that is more beloved or for whom I have greater respect and admiration and genuine confidence than the great and distinguished Secretary of State, Dean Rusk.