My friends, before I begin the expression of those thoughts that I deem appropriate
to this moment, would you permit me the privilege of
uttering a little private prayer of my own. And I ask that you bow your
heads:
Almighty God, as we stand here at this moment my future
associates in the executive branch of government join me in beseeching
that Thou will make full and complete our dedication to the service of
the people in this throng, and their fellow citizens everywhere. Give
us, we pray, the power to discern clearly right from wrong, and allow
all our words and actions to be governed thereby, and by the laws of
this land. Especially we pray that our concern shall be for all the
people regardless of station, race, or calling. May cooperation be
permitted and be the mutual aim of those who, under the concepts of our
Constitution, hold to differing political faiths; so that all may work
for the good of our beloved country and Thy glory. Amen.
My fellow citizens:
The world and we have passed the midway point of a century
of continuing challenge. We sense with all our faculties that
forces of good and evil are massed and armed and opposed as rarely before in
history.
This fact defines the meaning of this day. We are summoned by this honored and
historic ceremony to witness more than the act of one citizen swearing his oath
of service, in the presence of God. We are called as a people to give testimony in the
sight of the world to our faith that the future shall belong to the
free.
Since this century’s beginning, a time of tempest has seemed to come upon the
continents of the earth. Masses of Asia have awakened to strike off shackles of
the past. Great nations of Europe have fought their bloodiest wars. Thrones
have toppled and their vast empires have disappeared. New nations have been
born.
For our own country, it has been a time of
recurring trial. We have grown in power and in responsibility. We have
passed through the anxieties of depression and of war to a summit
unmatched in man’s history. Seeking to secure peace in the world, we
have had to fight through the forests of the Argonne, to the shores of
Iwo Jima, and to the cold mountains of Korea.
In the swift rush of great events, we find ourselves groping to know the full sense
and meaning of these times in which we live. In our quest of understanding,
we beseech God’s guidance. We summon all
our knowledge of the past and we scan all signs of the future. We bring all our
wit and all our will to meet the question:
How far have we come in man’s long pilgrimage from darkness toward light? Are we
nearing the light—a day of freedom and of peace for all mankind? Or are the
shadows of another night closing in upon us?
Great as are the preoccupations absorbing us at home, concerned as we are with
matters that deeply affect our livelihood today and our vision of the future,
each of these domestic problems is dwarfed by, and often even created by, this
question that involves all humankind.
This trial comes at a moment when man’s power to achieve good or to inflict evil
surpasses the brightest hopes and the sharpest fears of all ages. We can turn
rivers in their courses, level mountains to the plains. Oceans and land and sky
are avenues for our colossal commerce. Disease diminishes and life
lengthens.
Yet the promise of this life is imperiled by the very genius that has made it
possible. Nations amass wealth. Labor sweats to create—and turns out devices to
level not only mountains but also cities. Science
seems ready to confer upon us, as its final gift, the power to erase
human life from this planet.
At such a time in history, we who are free must
proclaim anew our faith. This faith is the abiding creed of our
fathers. It is our faith in the deathless dignity of man,
governed by eternal moral and natural laws.
This faith defines our full view of life. It establishes, beyond debate, those gifts of the Creator that are man’s inalienable
rights, and that make all men equal in His sight.
In the light of this equality, we know that the virtues most cherished by free
people—love of truth, pride of work, devotion to
country—all are treasures equally
precious in the lives of the most humble and of the most
exalted. The men who mine coal and fire furnaces and balance ledgers
and turn lathes and pick cotton and heal the sick and plant corn—all serve as
proudly, and as profitably, for America as the statesmen who draft treaties and
the legislators who enact laws.
This faith rules our whole way of life. It decrees that we,
the people, elect leaders not to rule but to serve. It asserts
that we have the right to choice of our own work and to the reward of our own
toil. It inspires the initiative that makes our productivity the wonder of the
world. And it warns that any man who seeks to deny
equality among all his brothers betrays the spirit of the free and
invites the mockery of the tyrant.
It is because we, all of us, hold to these principles that the political changes
accomplished this day do not imply turbulence, upheaval or disorder. Rather
this change expresses a purpose of strengthening our dedication and devotion to
the precepts of our founding documents, a conscious renewal of faith in our
country and in the watchfulness of a Divine
Providence.
The enemies of this faith know no god but force, no
devotion but its use. They tutor men in treason. They
feed upon the hunger of others. Whatever defies them, they torture,
especially the truth.
Here, then, is joined no argument between slightly differing philosophies. This
conflict strikes directly at the faith of our fathers and the lives of our
sons. No principle or treasure that we hold, from the spiritual knowledge of
our free schools and churches to the creative magic of free labor and capital,
nothing lies safely beyond the reach of this struggle.
Freedom is pitted against slavery; lightness against the
dark.
The faith we hold belongs not to us alone but to
the free of all the world. This common bond binds the grower of rice in
Burma and the planter of wheat in Iowa, the shepherd in southern Italy
and the mountaineer in the Andes. It confers a common dignity upon the
French soldier who dies in Indo-China, the British soldier killed in
Malaya, the American life given in Korea.
We know, beyond this, that we are linked to all free peoples not merely by a noble
idea but by a simple need. No free people
can for long cling to any privilege or enjoy any safety in economic
solitude. For all our own material might, even we need markets in the
world for the surpluses of our farms and our factories. Equally, we need
for these same farms and factories vital materials and products of
distant lands. This basic law of interdependence, so manifest in the
commerce of peace, applies with thousand-fold intensity in the event of
war.
So we are persuaded by necessity and by belief that the
strength of all free peoples lies in unity; their danger, in
discord.
To produce this unity, to meet the challenge of our time, destiny has laid upon our country the
responsibility of the free world’s leadership.
So it is proper that we assure our friends once again that, in the discharge of
this responsibility, we Americans know and we observe the difference between
world leadership and imperialism; between firmness and truculence; between a
thoughtfully calculated goal and spasmodic reaction to the stimulus of
emergencies.
We wish our friends the world over to know this above all: we face the threat—not
with dread and confusion—but with confidence and conviction.
We feel this moral strength because we know that we are not helpless prisoners of
history. We are free men. We shall remain free, never to
be proven guilty of the one capital offense against freedom, a lack of
stanch faith.
In pleading our just cause before the bar of history and in pressing our labor for
world peace, we shall be guided by certain fixed principles.
These principles are:
Abhorring war as a chosen way to balk the purposes of
those who threaten us, we hold it to be the first task of statesmanship
to develop the strength that will deter the forces of aggression and
promote the conditions of peace. For, as it must be the supreme purpose
of all free men, so it must be the dedication of their leaders, to save
humanity from preying upon itself. In the light of this principle, we stand
ready to engage with any and all others in joint effort to remove the
causes of mutual fear and distrust among nations, so as to make possible drastic reduction of
armaments. The sole requisites for
undertaking such effort are that—in their purpose—they be aimed
logically and honestly toward secure peace for all; and that—in
their result—they provide methods by which every participating nation will
prove good faith in carrying out its pledge.
Realizing that common sense and common decency alike dictate the futility of
appeasement, we shall never try to placate an aggressor by the false and wicked
bargain of trading honor for security. Americans, indeed all free men, remember
that in the final choice a soldier’s pack is not so heavy a burden as a
prisoner’s chains. Knowing that only a United States that is strong and
immensely productive can help defend freedom in our world, we view our Nation’s
strength and security as a trust upon which rests the hope of free men
everywhere. It is the firm duty of each of our free
citizens and of every free citizen everywhere to place the cause of his
country before the comfort, the convenience of himself. Honoring
the identity and the special heritage of each nation in the world, we shall
never use our strength to try to impress upon another people our own cherished
political and economic institutions. Assessing realistically the needs and
capacities of proven friends of freedom, we shall strive to help them to
achieve their own security and well-being. Likewise, we shall count upon them
to assume, within the limits of their resources, their full and just burdens in
the common defense of freedom. Recognizing economic health as an indispensable
basis of military strength and the free world’s peace, we shall strive to
foster everywhere, and to practice ourselves, policies that encourage
productivity and profitable trade. For the impoverishment of any single people
in the world means danger to the well-being of all other peoples. Appreciating that economic need, military
security and political wisdom combine to suggest regional groupings of
free peoples, we hope, within the framework of the United Nations, to
help strengthen such special bonds the world over. The nature of these
ties must vary with the different problems of different areas. In the
Western Hemisphere, we enthusiastically join with all our neighbors in
the work of perfecting a community of fraternal trust and common
purpose.
In Europe, we ask that enlightened and inspired leaders of the
Western nations strive with renewed vigor to make the unity of their
peoples a reality. Only as free Europe unitedly marshals its
strength can it effectively safeguard, even with our help, its spiritual and
cultural heritage.
Conceiving the defense of freedom, like freedom itself, to be
one and indivisible, we hold all continents and peoples in equal regard
and honor. We reject any insinuation that
one race or another, one people or another, is in any sense inferior or
expendable. Respecting the
United Nations as the living sign of all people’s hope for peace, we
shall strive to make it not merely an eloquent symbol but an effective
force. And in our quest for an honorable peace, we shall
neither compromise, nor tire, nor ever cease. By these rules of conduct, we
hope to be known to all peoples.
By their observance, an earth of peace may become not a
vision but a fact.
This hope—this supreme aspiration—must rule the way we live.
We must be ready to dare all for our country. For
history does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
We must acquire proficiency in defense and
display stamina in purpose.
We must be willing, individually and as a Nation, to accept whatever sacrifices may
be required of us. A people that values its privileges above its principles
soon loses both.
These basic precepts are not lofty abstractions, far removed from matters of daily
living. They are laws of spiritual strength that generate and define our
material strength. Patriotism means equipped forces
and a prepared citizenry. Moral stamina means more energy and
more productivity, on the farm and in the factory. Love
of liberty means the guarding of every resource that makes freedom
possible—from the sanctity of our families and the wealth of our
soil to the genius of our scientists.
And so each citizen plays an indispensable role. The productivity of our heads, our
hands, and our hearts is the source of all the strength we can command, for
both the enrichment of our lives and the winning of the peace.
No person, no home, no community can be beyond the reach of this call. We are
summoned to act in wisdom and in conscience, to work with industry, to teach
with persuasion, to preach with conviction, to weigh our every deed with care
and with compassion. For this truth must be clear before us: whatever America
hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of
America.
The peace we seek, then, is nothing less than the practice
and fulfillment of our whole faith among ourselves and in our dealings
with others. This signifies more than the stilling of guns, easing the
sorrow of war. More than escape from death, it is a way of life. More
than a haven for the weary, it is a hope for the brave.
This is the hope that beckons us onward in this century of trial. This is the work that awaits us all, to be done with
bravery, with charity, and with prayer to Almighty God.
