It Cannot Be Again the Same F Guy

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President John F. Kennedy
Washington, D.C.
June 10, 1963

President Anderson, members of the faculty, board of trustees, distinguished guests, my old colleague, Senator Bob Byrd, who has earned his degree through many years of attending night law schoolhouse, while I am earning mine in the next 30 minutes, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

It is with great pride that I participate in this ceremony of the American Academy, sponsored past the Methodist Church building, founded past Bishop John Fletcher Hurst, and first opened by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. This is a young and growing academy, but information technology has already fulfilled Bishop Hurst's aware promise for the written report of history and public affairs in a urban center devoted to the making of history and the conduct of the public'southward business. By sponsoring this establishment of higher learning for all who wish to larn, whatever their colour or their creed, the Methodists of this expanse and the Nation deserve the Nation's thanks, and I commend all those who are today graduating.

Professor Woodrow Wilson once said that every man sent out from a university should be a man of his nation besides as a man of his time, and I am confident that the men and women who bear the honor of graduating from this institution will continue to give from their lives, from their talents, a high measure of public service and public support.

"In that location are few earthly things more than beautiful than a university," wrote John Masefield in his tribute to English universities--and his words are equally true today. He did not refer to spires and towers, to campus greens and ivied walls. He admired the splendid beauty of the academy, he said, considering it was "a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see."

I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to talk over a topic on which ignorance too frequently abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived--still information technology is the most important topic on earth: world peace.

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace exercise we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of state of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to promise and to build a better life for their children--not but peace for Americans but peace for all men and women--not but peace in our time merely peace for all fourth dimension.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total state of war makes no sense in an age when slap-up powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and turn down to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second Globe War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced past a nuclear substitution would be carried by wind and h2o and soil and seed to the far corners of the world and to generations still unborn.

Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons caused for the purpose of making sure we never need to employ them is essential to keeping the peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles--which tin only destroy and never create--is not the only, much less the well-nigh efficient, means of assuring peace.

I speak of peace, therefore, every bit the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war--and frequently the words of the pursuer autumn on deaf ears. But nosotros take no more urgent chore.

Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or globe law or world disarmament--and that information technology will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can assistance them do it. Merely I also believe that we must reexamine our ain attitude--as individuals and as a Nation--for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this schoolhouse, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of state of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking in--by examining his own mental attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Matrimony, toward the course of the cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home.

Kickoff: Permit the states examine our attitude toward peace itself. As well many of united states of america think it is impossible. Besides many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. Information technology leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable--that mankind is doomed--that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.

Nosotros need non accept that view. Our issues are manmade--therefore, they tin can be solved by man. And human being tin can exist as big equally he wants. No problem of man destiny is beyond human beings. Homo'southward reason and spirit accept oftentimes solved the seemingly unsolvable--and we believe they can do it again.

I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I practice not deny the value of hopes and dreams only nosotros merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace-- based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in homo institutions--on a serial of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. At that place is no single, simple key to this peace--no grand or magic formula to exist adopted by 1 or ii powers. Genuine peace must be the production of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to run across the claiming of each new generation. For peace is a process--a way of solving problems.

With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. Globe peace, similar community peace, does not crave that each man honey his neighbor--it requires just that they alive together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a merely and peaceful settlement. And history teaches u.s.a. that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not terminal forever. All the same fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations betwixt nations and neighbors.

Then permit the states persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can assist all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.

2nd: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the Soviet Spousal relationship. Information technology is discouraging to retrieve that their leaders may actually believe what their propagandists write. It is discouraging to read a recent authoritative Soviet text on Military machine Strategy and find, on page later on page, wholly baseless and incredible claims--such every bit the allegation that "American imperialist circles are preparing to unleash different types of wars . . . that there is a very real threat of a preventive state of war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union . . . [and that] the political aims of the American imperialists are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries . . . [and] to achieve world domination . . . by means of aggressive wars."

Truly, every bit information technology was written long ago: "The wicked flee when no man pursueth." Yet it is sad to read these Soviet statements--to realize the extent of the gulf between united states. Merely it is also a warning--a warning to the American people non to fall into the same trap as the Soviets, not to encounter just a distorted and drastic view of the other side, not to come across disharmonize as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and advice as nothing more than an exchange of threats.

No government or social arrangement is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. Equally Americans, we find communism greatly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. Just we can withal hail the Russian people for their many achievements--in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of backbone.

Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at state of war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle always suffered more than than the Soviet Matrimony suffered in the course of the Second Globe War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation'south territory, including nearly two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland--a loss equivalent to the destruction of this country east of Chicago.

Today, should full war e'er break out again--no matter how--our two countries would become the master targets. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the almost danger of devastation. All we have congenital, all we take worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours. And fifty-fifty in the cold war, which brings burdens and dangers to then many nations, including this Nation's closest allies--our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For nosotros are both devoting massive sums of coin to weapons that could exist better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty, and disease. Nosotros are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons afford counterweapons.

In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union besides as ours--and even the nearly hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own involvement.

So, permit us not be blind to our differences--but allow united states also direct attention to our mutual interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end at present our differences, at least we tin can help make the world condom for multifariousness. For, in the last analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. Nosotros all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

Third: Permit us reexamine our mental attitude toward the cold war, remembering that we are not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile upwards debating points. Nosotros are non here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been unlike.

We must, therefore, persevere in the search for peace in the hope that effective changes within the Communist bloc might bring within accomplish solutions which at present seem beyond us. We must carry our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the Communists' involvement to agree on a genuine peace. To a higher place all, while defending our ain vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a option of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To prefer that kind of course in the nuclear age would be show just of the defalcation of our policy--or of a commonage death-wish for the world.

To secure these ends, America's weapons are nonprovocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use. Our armed services forces are committed to peace and disciplined in self- restraint. Our diplomats are instructed to avert unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical hostility.

For we can seek a relaxation of tension without relaxing our baby-sit. And, for our role, we do not need to utilize threats to evidence that we are resolute. We exercise not demand to jam strange broadcasts out of fright our religion will be eroded. Nosotros are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people--but we are willing and able to engage in peaceful competition with any people on earth.

Meanwhile, nosotros seek to strengthen the United Nations, to help solve its financial bug, to make it a more effective instrument for peace, to develop it into a 18-carat world security organisation--a system capable of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of insuring the security of the big and the small, and of creating conditions nether which artillery tin finally be abolished.

At the same time we seek to go on peace inside the non-Communist world, where many nations, all of them our friends, are divided over issues which weaken Western unity, which invite Communist intervention or which threaten to erupt into state of war. Our efforts in West New Republic of guinea, in the Congo, in the Middle East, and in the Indian subcontinent, have been persistent and patient despite criticism from both sides. We have likewise tried to set an example for others--past seeking to adjust small but significant differences with our own closest neighbors in Mexico and in Canada.

Speaking of other nations, I wish to make one signal clear. We are bound to many nations by alliances. Those alliances exist considering our concern and theirs substantially overlap. Our commitment to defend Western Europe and West Berlin, for example, stands undiminished considering of the identity of our vital interests. The Usa will make no deal with the Soviet Union at the expense of other nations and other peoples, not only because they are our partners, but also because their interests and ours converge.

Our interests converge, however, non only in defending the frontiers of freedom, but in pursuing the paths of peace. It is our hope-- and the purpose of allied policies--to convince the Soviet Union that she, as well, should allow each nation choose its own future, so long as that choice does not interfere with the choices of others. The Communist drive to impose their political and economy on others is the main cause of earth tension today. For there tin exist no incertitude that, if all nations could refrain from interfering in the self-conclusion of others, the peace would be much more than bodacious.

This will require a new endeavor to reach earth law--a new context for earth discussions. It will require increased understanding between the Soviets and ourselves. And increased understanding will require increased contact and communication. One pace in this direction is the proposed arrangement for a straight line betwixt Moscow and Washington, to avert on each side the dangerous delays, misunderstandings, and misreadings of the other's actions which might occur at a fourth dimension of crisis.

Nosotros have also been talking in Geneva most the other kickoff-pace measures of artillery control designed to limit the intensity of the arms race and to reduce the risks of adventitious state of war. Our primary long range interest in Geneva, still, is general and consummate disarmament-- designed to take place past stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the identify of arms. The pursuit of disarmament has been an endeavor of this Government since the 1920'southward. It has been urgently sought by the past iii administrations. And however dim the prospects may be today, we intend to continue this effort--to continue it in order that all countries, including our ain, can amend grasp what the bug and possibilities of disarmament are.

The one major surface area of these negotiations where the cease is in sight, withal where a fresh start is badly needed, is in a treaty to outlaw nuclear tests. The conclusion of such a treaty, so virtually and yet so far, would bank check the spiraling artillery race in ane of its nearly dangerous areas. It would place the nuclear powers in a position to deal more finer with 1 of the greatest hazards which man faces in 1963, the further spread of nuclear arms. It would increase our security--it would decrease the prospects of war. Surely this goal is sufficiently important to require our steady pursuit, yielding neither to the temptation to give up the whole effort nor the temptation to give up our insistence on vital and responsible safeguards.

I am taking this opportunity, therefore, to announce two important decisions in this regard.

First: Chairman khrushchev, Prime Minister Macmillan, and I accept agreed that high-level discussions volition presently begin in Moscow looking toward early on agreement on a comprehensive test ban treaty. Our hopes must exist tempered with the circumspection of history--but with our hopes become the hopes of all flesh.

Second: To make articulate our practiced faith and solemn convictions on the thing, I now declare that the United States does not propose to conduct nuclear tests in the temper so long as other states practise not do so. We will not be the offset to resume. Such a declaration is no substitute for a formal bounden treaty, merely I hope it will assistance us achieve 1. Nor would such a treaty exist a substitute for disarmament, but I hope it volition assistance us achieve information technology.

Finally, my beau Americans, allow us examine our mental attitude toward peace and freedom here at abode. The quality and spirit of our own society must justify and support our efforts abroad. We must show it in the dedication of our own lives--as many of you who are graduating today will have a unique opportunity to do, by serving without pay in the Peace Corps abroad or in the proposed National Service Corps hither at habitation.

Merely wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-quondam faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our cities today, the peace is non secure because the liberty is incomplete.

It is the responsibleness of the executive branch at all levels of government--local, State, and National--to provide and protect that liberty for all of our citizens past all means within their authority. It is the responsibility of the legislative co-operative at all levels, wherever that dominance is not now acceptable, to brand it adequate. And information technology is the responsibility of all citizens in all sections of this country to respect the rights of all others and to respect the law of the land.

All this is not unrelated to earth peace. "When a man'south ways please the Lord," the Scriptures tell us, "he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him." And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of homo rights--the right to alive out our lives without fearfulness of devastation--the right to breathe air as nature provided information technology--the right of future generations to a salubrious existence?

While we proceed to safeguard our national interests, let us also safeguard human interests. And the emptying of war and arms is clearly in the involvement of both. No treaty, however much information technology may be to the advantage of all, however tightly it may be worded, tin provide absolute security against the risks of deception and evasion. Just it can--if information technology is sufficiently effective in its enforcement and if it is sufficiently in the interests of its signers--offer far more security and far fewer risks than an unabated, uncontrolled, unpredictable artillery race.

The U.s., equally the earth knows, will never beginning a war. We do non want a war. We do not at present await a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough--more than plenty--of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alarm to try to stop it. Only nosotros shall also exercise our function to build a globe of peace where the weak are rubber and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on--not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.

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Source: https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/american-university-19630610

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