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 is 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 militaryindustrial
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
scientifictechnological 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.
