I am honored and happy to be at this national encampment of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. This is the sort of opportunity a soldier likes best, to meet men with whom he has a common background of experience and basis of understanding. Gentlemen, that is what I have written down. Permit me a second to try to express a little more fully what is in my heart. I am intensely proud of every one of you - from GI to brass hat - from kitchen police to tail gunner - from captain of a ship to deck hand. I would like to meet each one of you and render to you a most sincere and respectful salute. You men bear the proudest of all titles. You are defenders of democracy, and I am humbled in your presence. I have a definite sense of fellowship with you and know that many of you, like myself, are thinking at this time of the triumphant hour a year ago when truce returned again to a tired, chaotic world. I know, too, that you are mindful of the comrades who fought valiantly and died that we might be able to gather together in freedom and strive to do our part in building a lasting peace.

You, who have carried the fight to the enemies of right and peace, hate war with an intensity known only to the veteran. You have witnessed war’s terror and agony; the maiming and the pitiful waste and destruction of battle. You want peace, a just, reasonable peace and not a jerry-built structure that will topple and crash from a twisted, insecure foundation.

That longing is shared, throughout the earth, by the people - the masses upon whom descend the sacrifices, the losses, the sufferings of war. Our country’s political leaders are working tirelessly toward this goal, in a world where they need the spiritual and material support of a strong, united nation.

We have proved our possession of the potential strength, the vitality, the productive power, and the technical proficiency to wage successful wars. But we have also a past record - and I say this without intent of criticism because the emotions which cause it are so humanly normal - of leaving the field of world conflict as soon as the shooting changes to mere drudgery. Conflict does not necessarily end when the shells and bombs stop falling. There is still the clashing of nationalistic aims and hopes and, more particularly, fears; there are new economic, political and physical pressures, new hatreds, prejudices, understandable ambitions for revenge - all the inevitable aftermath of World War. They cover the earth as the enemy of international harmony.

A year after the curtain has dropped on active campaigning we find ourselves with certain concrete commitments abroad. They were set by the highest policy-making authority in the nation and their necessity has been publicly recognized. In spite of the over-hysterical public demand for complete demobilization, following instantly upon the Japanese surrender, the inherent good sense of our people and its Congress came to the rescue to provide the means to carry on in the face of conditions as we find them today. But I remind you, we appraised those conditions with an almost dangerous optimism. We allowed for no margin and now, simultaneously with the defeat of some of our hopes for a shrinking task, we are making still further cuts in our defense activity. Every detail of this situation is important to you and to future peace.

Again emphasizing the need for unity and strength, the United States has a far more important world role in this chaotic interim than the occupation of conquered territories, the manning of bases and the care of vast amounts of public property. We are either going to take, or fail to take, our natural position in the world as a rallying point for those who yearn for the way of life you and the nation fought for in our past wars. Myriads of hopeful but fear-ridden eyes are watching us to mark our posture. More is expected of us than moral probity, even thought he first requisite is that our moral position should be unimpeachable. Supporting our ethical standards there must be a calm resolution and a healthy security. Only thus can we inspire, rather than hopelessly disappoint, the uncounted millions who seek assurance that we, the world’s most powerful stronghold of democracy based upon the rights of man, will stand firm and strong for the justice and freedom that form the only secure foundation for peace.

These things I believe you approve, but this approval cannot be given and forgotten. It implies a determination to face the sacrifices involved, including those comprehended in maintaining a sound national security. Modern armies, navies, and air forces are forbiddingly expensive and this interim period of heavy draft on our resources, if it should be protracted, will result in a requirement for real financial sacrifice. But I would not be standing here today urging the vital importance of national strength, as the world understands such strength, unless I were completely convinced that the alternative is too devastating to contemplate.

The Army is thoroughly aware of the vital need for avoiding unnecessary expenditures in contriving and administering its part of this national security. We are resolved that insofar as our intelligence can devise the country shall receive maximum security with maximum economy. We shall work unceasingly to maintain a military establishment in step with the pace of scientific advance, and with efficiency constantly striving to cut the cost. The adjustment of our security forces so that they shall be in balanced effectiveness to meet the nation’s needs is a task at once complicated and urgent. The nature of war has changed more in the past few years - and particularly on the morning of Hiroshima on August 6 of last years - than in all previously recorded history. Scientific developments have tremendously upset our concepts of security. The weapons we have formerly known, however destructive and terrible, have never been decisive in themselves.

But the values of the factors in old-time military equations are no longer stable. Today, a whole continent can be a potential target. One atomic missile could paralyze a city and blot it out of the national economy for all effective purposes. By bacterial warfare a ruthless enemy might seek to destroy our nation, using our own citizens as human weapon-carriers to bring the germs of death into every home in the country. More than ever before it is certain that there is no separate air, sea, or ground warfare - just as a whole nation is the potential objective, so is the whole nation and everything and person in it the only organism by which successful war can be waged.

Our defense force, integrated among themselves and with our brilliant scientists and our amazing industry, must keep fully abreast of all these possibilities as long as their remains the chance of their use against us. Cruel cost will be inescapable. The resources of the nation simply cannot bear the sinful waste of pouring treasure into identical fields of endeavor, duplicating results but not doubling security. In the light of our present needs, the whole area of security must be examined and reassessed so that all sectors can be covered without duplication, and, even more important, without neglect. This is a problem to which I invite the continuing concern of every veteran.

The uniformed services belong to the American people - not to the officials temporarily commanding them. Their size, their nature, their organization - all these deserve your fullest attention, first to assure yourselves that the nation is not recklessly exposed nor flaunted and ridiculed as it labors to promote world order; nest to see that you do not go bankrupt to support to support duplication or obsolete formations.

Even with the greatest of economy, the necessity of continuing to pour treasure and effort into unproductive military strength is a painful one. But the vital obligation is upon us, during this unpredictable aftermath of world struggle, of standing in unassailable integrity for those things which struggling people know in their souls are the only sure paths to elimination of war.

To say, however, that this condition is necessarily clothed in permanency is pure defeatism in our search for peace. We have set up and are operating in the United Nations the mechanism to carry out the will of the great proportion of nations. Admittedly it is only a mechanism, and its future depends on world-wide practice of those virtues of understanding and of tolerance that are the essential characteristics of cooperative enterprise. No man who appreciates the meaning of war - particularly any future global war - can refrain from participating in promoting this practice.

The task is not easy. It becomes especially difficult when we feel forced to wonder whether every friendly gesture of our own, every well-intentioned proposal, is being twisted by another into a sinister design. When we believe that courtesy is met with rudeness, generosity with arrogance, then patience grows thin. Yet our determination in this particular effort must be inexhaustible, because on its successful outcome depends the whole future of civilization, ours included. Moreover, it is only through patient study and exploration that we can discover the basic reasons why any other should seemingly obstruct progress toward a goal that holds out such promise to all mankind. Smoldering hatreds, national prejudices and a fearful reluctance to rely upon anything but force will not disappear easily. Every leader recognizes that in welding together a group for a common purpose, some of his followers fall into line easily, others are difficult. In pursuing his purpose he must exert his full ability and strength to bring all into cooperative action. Particularly he strives to discover and eliminate the reasons that inspire the recalcitrant members of the team. In the same way, if our nation is to be a successful leader of the world toward peace, it must exercise, in full measure, all the qualities of leadership. We must show firmness in the right, uncompromising support of justice and freedom, respect for all, and patience and determination in winning over any that through fear, hope for revenge, or any selfish purpose, are blinded to their own national, as well as the world’s best interests.

I leave these thoughts with you because I know you veterans have a particularly alert concern for all matters affecting the welfare and security of this country. I am thankful this is so. You are marked men - you cannot escape positions of influence, particularly in molding thought in that field in which you have had personal experience - the defense of the nation. That experience, both in foreign fields and here at home, has increased your capacity for special and general leadership. You will recall the critics of Selective Service in the tense months of 1940 - imitated more recently by the critics of the project for Universal Military Training - crying that military service would stifle initiative, curb imagination, and produce unthinking robots. Actual experience in our country is to the exact contrary. Military service had broadened minds, opened up new horizons, and increased both a realization of our nation’s meaning and a sense of international responsibility. Student veterans of every university in the land today provide proof of this assertion in the excellence of their scholastic records and the maturity of their outlook.

The primary purpose of military training is, of course, defense of the nation, whose very existence has so recently depended on the patriotism and self-sacrifice of her sons. But these by-products, accruing to the individual, are weighty factors, also, and one of them is the service born comradeship and mutual understanding exemplified in this great veterans’ organization, comprising Americans of diverse creeds, races and origins.

Such understanding extended to all peoples is our only hope for the eventual solution of the difficulties which now beset the world. There are many factors on the debit side of the ledger, many discouraging and seemingly insurmountable obstacles to be overcome. But on the credit side are hundreds of others. Among these I count as one of the most important you men and your veteran comrades throughout the nation. Your loyalty, your valor, your experience, your leadership, will keep this nation strong, considerate, and united, and determined in the search for peace. Your past services to our country fill all your fellow-citizens with a pride that cannot possibly find expression. Your future opportunities for service to her stand even more glowingly before you.