President Eisenhower's "Chance for Peace" Speech

HOLD FOR RELEASE HOLD FOR RELEASE HOLD FOR RELEASE April 16, 1953 CONFIDENTIAL: The following address by the President, to be delivered at the luncheon of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in the Hotel Statler, April 16, 1953, is to be held in strict confidence and no portion, synopsis or intimation is to be given out or published until actual delivery of the address. Delivery is scheduled for 1:00 p.m. EST. Extreme care must be exercised to avoid premature publication. JAMES C. HAGERTY, PRESS SECRETARY TO THE PRESIDENT I justpeace In this spring of 1953, the free world weighs one question above all others: the chancesfor a just peace for all peoples. To weigh this chance is to summon instantly to mind another recent moment of great decision. It came with that (yet) more hopeful spring of 1945, bright with the promise of victory and of freedom. The hopes/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(6) and 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. work * It shuns not only all crude counsel of despair, but also the self-deceit of easy illusion. It weighs the chance for peace with sure, clear knowledge of what happened to the vain hopes/o: 1945. In that spring of victory, the soldiers of the Western Allies 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 monument -- 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 aggressive 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. The way chosen by the United States was plainly marked by a few clear precepts which govern its conduct in world affairs. 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 cooperation with fellow-nations. Every Third: (Any/nation's right to a form of government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable. Fourth: Any nation's attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible. more