|
Farewell Radio and
Television Address to the American People by President Dwight D.
Eisenhower, January 17, 1961.
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 at 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 action 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 peace time, 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 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 over shadowed 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 difference, 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 something's 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.
Speech Source: |
