TEXT OF PRESIDENT EISENHOWER'S SPEECH TO US EDITORS 16 April 1953

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01443R000100140002-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: R
• Document Page Count: 11
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 24, 1998
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: April 16, 1953
• Content Type: SPEECH

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TEXT OF PRESIDENT EISENHOWER'S SPEECH
TO US EDITORS
16 April 1953
(Portions of President Eisenhower's Speech quoted by Soviet
propaganda media are underlined)
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TEXT OF PRESIDENT E I SENHOWER ? S SPEECH
TO U.S. EDITORS
16 April 1953
In this spring of 1953, the free world weighs one ques-
tion above all others: the chances for a just peace for all
peoples,
To weigh this chance is to summon instantly to mind an-
other recent moment of great decision. It came with that yet
more hopeful spring of 1945, bright with the promise of vic-
tory and of freedom. The hope of all just men in that moment,
too, was a just and lasting peace.
The eight years that have passed have seen that hope
waver, grow dim, and almost die. And the shadow of fear
again has darkly lengthened across the world.
Today the hope of free men remains stubborn and brave,
but it is sternly disciplined by experience.
It shuns not only all crude counsel of despair, but also
the self-deceit of easy illusion.
It weighs the chances of peace with sure, clear know-
ledge of what happened to the vain hopes of 1945.
In the spring of victory, the soldiers of the Western Al-
lies met the soldiers of Russia in the center of Europe. They
were triumphant comrades in arms. Their peoples shared the
joyous prospect of building, in honor of their dead, the only
fitting momument - an age of just peace.
All these war-weary peoples shared, too, this concrete
decent purpose: to guard vigilantly against the domination
ever again of any part of the world by a single, unbridled ag-
gressive power.
This common purpose lasted an instant - and perished. The
nations of the world divided to follow two distinct roads.
The United States and our valued friends, the other free
nations, chose one road.
The leaders of the Soviet Union chose another.
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`The way chosen by the United States was plainly marked
by a few clear precepts which govern its conduct in world af-
fairs
First: No people on earth can be held - as a people -
to be an enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for
peace and fellowship and justice,
Second: No nation's security and well-being can be
lastingly achieved in isolation, but only in effective coopera-
tion with fellow-nations.
Third: Any nation's right to a form of government and
an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable.
Fourth: Every nation's attempt to dictate to other
nations their form of government is indefensible.
And fifth: A nation's hope of lasting peace cannot be
firmly based upon any race in armaments, but rather upon just
relations and honest understanding with all other nations.
In the light of these principles, the citizens of the
United States defined the way they proposed to follow, through
the aftermath of war, toward true peace.
This way was faithful to the spirit that inspires the
United Nations: to prohibit strife, to relieve tensions, to
banish fears. This way was to control and to reduce armaments.
This way was to allow all nations to devote their energies and
resources to the great and good tasks of healing the war's
wounds, of clothing and feeding and housing the needy, of per-
fecting a just political life, of enjoying the fruits of their
own toil.
The Soviet Government held a vastly different vision of
the future..
In the world of its design, security was to be found -
not in mutual trust and mutual aid - but in force: huge armies
subversion, rule of neighbor nations. The goal was power su-
periority - at all cost. Security was to be sought by deny-
ing it to all others.
The result has been tragic for the world and, for the
Soviet Union, it has also been ironic.
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The amassing of Soviet power alerted free nations to a
new danger of aggression. It compelled them in self-defense
to spend unprecedented money and energy for armaments. It
forced them to develop weapons of war now capable of inflict-
ing instant and terrible punishment upon any aggressor.
It instilled in the free nations - and let none doubt
this - the unshakable conviction that, as long as there per-
sists a threat to freedom, they must, at any cost, remain
armed, strong and ready for the risk of war.
It inspired them - and let none doubt this to attain
a unity of purpose and will beyond the power of propaganda
or pressure to break, now or ever.
There remained, however, one thing essentially unchanged
and unaffected by Soviet conduct- this unchanged thing was
the readiness of the free world to welcome sincerely any
genuine evidence of peaceful purpose enabling all peoples
again to resume their common quest of just peace. And the
free world still holds to that purpose.
The free nations, most solemnly and repeatedly, have
assured the Soviet Union that their firm association has never
had any aggressive purpose whatsoever.
Soviet leaders, however, have seemed to persuade them-
selves - or tried to persuade their people - otherwise.
And so it has come to pass that the Soviet Union itself
has shared and suffered the very fears it has fostered in the
rest of the world.
This has been the way of life forged by eight years of
fear and force.
What can the world - or any nation in it - hope for if
no turning is found on this dread road?
The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can
be simply stated.
The best would be this- A life of perpetual fear and
tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor
of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American
system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true
abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.
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Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every
rocket fired signifies - in the final sense - a theft from
those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are
not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of
its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: A modern
brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is: Two electric power plants, each serving a town
of 60,000 population.
It is, Two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some 50 miles of concrete pavement,
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million
bushels of wheat. '
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could
have housed more than 89000 people.
This - I repeat - is the best way of life to be found on
the road the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense.
Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging
from a cross of iron.
These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point
the hope that come with this spring of 1953.
This is one of those times in the affairs of nations when
the gravest choices must be made - if there is to be a turning
toward a just and lasting peace.
It is a. moment that calls upon the governments of the
world to spear
eir intentions with simplicity and wi
It calls upon them to answer the questions that stirs
the hearts of all sane men: Is there no other way the world
may live?
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The world knows that an era ended with the death of Josef
Stalin. The extraordinary 30-year span of his rule saw the
Soviet empire expand to reach from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of
Japan finally to dominate 800 million souls.
The Soviet system shaped by Stalin and his predecessors
was born of one world war. It survived with stubborn and often
amazing courage a second world war. It has lived to threaten a
third.
Now a new leadership has assumed power in the Soviet Union.
Its links to the past, however strong, cannot bind it com-
pletely. Its future is, in great part, its own to make.
This new leadership confronts a free world aroused, as
rarely in its history, by the will to stay free,
The free world knows -? out of the bitter wisdom of ex-
perience - that vigilance and sacrifice are the price of liberty.
It knows that the peace and defense of western Europe
imperatively demands the unity of purpose and action made pos-
sible by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, embracing
a European Defense Community.
It knows that Western Germany deserves to be a free and
equal partner in this community; and that this, for Germany,
is the only safe way to full, final. unity.
It knows that aggression in Korea. and in southeast Asia.
are threats to the whole free community to be met only through
united action.
This is the kind of free world which the new Soviet leader-
ship confronts. It is a world that demands and expects the
fullest respect of its rights and interests. It is a world
that will always accord the same respect to all others.
So the new Soviet leadership now has a precious opportu-
nity to awaken, with the rest of the world, to a point of
peril reached, and to help turn the tide of history.
Will it do this?
We do not yet know. Recent statements and gestures of
Soviet leaders give some evidence that they may recognize this
critical momenta
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We welcome every honest act of peace.
We care nothing for mere rhetoric.
We care only for sincerity of peaceful purpose - attested
by deeds. The opportunities for such deeds are many. The
performance of a great number of them waits upon no complex
protocol, but only upon the simple will to do them. Even a
few such clear and specific acts - such as the Soviet Union's
signature upon an Austrian treaty, or its release of thousands
of prisoners still held from World War II - would be impres-
sive signs of sincere intent. They would carry a power of per-
suasion not to be matched by any amount of oratory.
This we do know: a world that begins to witness the re-
birth of trust among nations can find its way to a peace that
is neither partial nor punitive.
With all who will work in good faith toward such a peace,
we are ready - with renewed resolve - to strive to redeem the
near-lost hopes of our day.
The first great step along this way must be the conclu-
sion of an honorable armistice in Korea.
This means the immediate cessation of hostilities and
the prompt initiation of political discussions leading to
the holding of free elections in a united Korea.
It should mean - no less importantly - an end to the
direct and indirect attacks upon the security of Indo-China
and Malaya. For any armistice in Korea that merely released
aggressive armies to attack elsewhere would be a fraud.
We seek, throughout Asia as throughout the world, a
peace that is true and total.
Out of this can grow a still wider task - the achieving
of just political settlements for the other serious and
specific issues between the free world and the Soviet Union.
None of these issues, great or small, is insoluble -
s,
given only the will to respect the rig is of all nation
Again we say: The United States is ready to assume its
just part.
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We have already done all within our power to speed con-
clusion of a treaty with Austria which will free that coun-
try from economic exploitation and from occupation by foreign
troops.
We are ready not only to press forward with the present
plans for closer unity of the nations of Western Europe but
also, upon that foundation, to strive to foster a broader
European community, conducive to the free movement of persons,
of trade, and of ideas.
This community would include a free and united Germany,
with a government based upon free and secret ballot.
This free community and the full independence of the
East European nations could mean the end of the present un-
natural division of Europe.
As progress in all these areas strengthens world trust,
we could proceed concurrently with the next great work- the
re uc ~,on of the burden of armaments now we gh xng upon the
world 7o t i.s end we would welcome and enter into the
most solemn agreements. These could properly include
1. The limitation, by absolute numbers or by an agreed
international ratio, of the sizes of the military and secu -
A commitment by all nations to set an agreed limit
2
.
upon that propor ion o total produu ction of certain strategic
s
es;
materia s to be devote to military purpo
3. International control of atomic energy to promote
its use for peace ul purposes only, and oinsure the prohi-
il lon o atomic weapons;
4. A limitation or prohibition
weapons of great estfuctavenessy
categories of
5. The enfbrcement of all these agreed limitations and
prohibitions by adeate sa eguards, including a practice
system o inspection Uaxader -the United Rations.
The details of such disarmament programs are manifestly
critics an comp oar. NeitNe t e UFITZIcT-S-tates nnor any
o er nation can properly claim to possess a perfect, immu-
table formula. But the formula matters less than the faith--
the good faith without which no formula can work justly and
effectively.
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The fruit of success in all these tasks would present
the world with the greatest task-rand the greatest opportunity
--of all. It is this-, The dedication of the energies, the
resources, and the imaginations of all peaceful nations to a
kind of war. This would be a declared, total war, not upon
any human enemy, but upon the brute forces of poverty and need.
The peace we seek, founded upon a decent trust and co-
operative effort among nations, can be fortified--not by weap-
ons of war but by wheat and by cotton; by milk and by wool;
by meat and timber and rice.
These are words that translate into every language on
earth.
These, are needs that challenge this world in arms.
This idea of a just and peaceful world is not new or
strange to us. It inspired the people of the United States
to initiate the European Recovery Program in 1947. That pro-
gram was prepared to treat, with equal concern, the needs of
eastern and western Europe.
We are prepared to reaffirm, with the most concrete
evidence, our readiness to help build a world in which all
peoples can be productive and prosperous.
This Government is ready to ask its people to join with
all nations in devoting a substantial percentage of any sav-
ings achieved by disarmament to a fund for world aid and
reconstruction. The purposes of this great work would be to
help other peoples to develop the undeveloped areas of the
world, to stimulate profitable: and fair world trade, to as-
sist all peoples to know the blessings of productive freedom.
The monuments to this new war would be these,. Roads and
schools, hospitals and homes, food and health.
We are ready, in short, to dedicate our strength to serv-
ing the needs, rather than the fears, of the world.
I know of nothing I can add to make plainer the sincere
purpose of the United States.
I know of no course, other than that marked by these and
similar actions, that can be called a highway of peace.
8
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I know of only one question upon which progress waits.
It is this
What is the Soviet Union ready to do?
Whatever the answer is, let it be plainly spoken.
Again we say? The hunger for peace is too great, the
hour in history too late, for any government to mock men?s
hopes with mere words and promises and gestures.
Is the new leadership of the Soviet Union prepared to
use its decisive influence in the Communist world--including
control of the flow of arms--to bring not na.erely an expedient
truce in Korea but genuine peace in Asia?
Is it prepared to allow other nations, including those
in Eastern Europe, the free choice of their own form of govern-
ment?
is it prepared to act in concert with others upon serious
disarmament proposals?
if net--where -then is the concrete evidence of the Soviet
Union's concern for peace?
There is, before all peoples, a precious chance to turn
the black tide of events.
If we failed to strive to seize this chance, the judgment
of future ages will, be harsh and just.
If we strive, but fail, and the world remains armed
against itself, it at least would need be divided no longer
in its clear knowledge of who has condemned humankind to this
fate.
The purpose of the United States, in stating these pro-
posals, is simple.
These proposals spr.ngm-without ulterior motive or po-
litical passion--from our calm convinction that the hunger
for just peace is in the hearts of all peoples-those of
Russia and of China no less than of our own country.
They conform to our firm faith that God created men to
enjoy, not destroy, the fruits of the earth and of their own
toil.
NNOWN1
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They aspire to thiso The lifting, from the backs and
from the hearts of men, of their burden of arms and of fears,
so that they may find before them a golden age of freedom and
of peace.
Thank you.
"- OWN
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