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This document is considered to be public property of the Citzens of the United States of America, & is therefore not protected by any copyright laws which would prohibit its' reproduction.
My fellow Americans:
Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I
shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn
ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.
This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and
to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor
with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace
and prosperity for all.
Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement
on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the
future of the Nation.
My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis
when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since
ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally,
to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years. In this final
relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues,
cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and
so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official
relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that
we have been able to do so much together.
II.
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four
major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite
these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most
productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we
yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our
unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use
our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.
III.
Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have
been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance
liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for
less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable
to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict
upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.
Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict
now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings.
We face a hostile ideology -- global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless
in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises
to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for,
not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those
which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the
burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with liberty the stake. Only
thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward
permanent peace and human betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic,
great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular
and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.
A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic
programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and
applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising
in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.
But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration:
the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between
the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage
-- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance
between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the
nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national
welfare of the future.
Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance
and frustration.
The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government
have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well,
in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly
arise. I mention two only.
IV.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms
must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may
be tempted to risk his own destruction. Our military organization today bears
little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed
by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments
industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make
swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national
defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of
vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are
directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military
security more than the net income of all United States corporations. This conjunction
of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the
American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual
-- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government.
We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail
to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are
all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted
influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The
potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or
democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and
knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial
and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that
security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military
posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this
revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex,
and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction
of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed
by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same
fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and
scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research.
Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually
a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are
now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment,
project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to
be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should,
we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could
itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite. It is the task
of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces,
new and old, within the principles of our ]democratic system] -- ever aiming toward
the supreme goals of our free society.
V.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we
peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid
the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience,
the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of
our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual
]heritage]. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become
the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
VI.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this
world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful
fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference
table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic,
and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations,
cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield. Disarmament, with
mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn
how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.
Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official
responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one
who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who
knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been
so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say
tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate
goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I
shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that
road.
VII.
So -- in this my last good night to you as your President -- I thank you for
the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace.
I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of
it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future. You and
I -- my fellow citizens -- need to be strong in our faith that all nations,
under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving
in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit
of the Nation's great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's
prayerful and continuing aspiration:
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their
great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to
enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual
blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities;
that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that
the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from
the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live
together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.