Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
But treaties and plans are only the skeleton of our defense structure. The
sinew and muscle of defense are the forces and equipment which must be
provided.
In Europe we must go on helping our friends and allies to build up their
military forces. This means we must send weapons in large volume to our
European allies. I have directed that weapons for Europe be given a very
high priority. Economic aid is necessary, too, to supply the margin of
difference between success and failure in making Europe a strong partner in
our joint defense.
In the long run we want to see Europe freed from any dependence on our aid.
Our European allies want that just as bad as we do. The steps that are now
being taken to build European unity should help bring that about. Six
European countries are pooling their coal and steel production under the
Schuman plan. Work is going forward on the merger of European national
forces on the Continent into a single army. These great projects should
become realities in 1952.
We should do all we can to help and encourage the move toward a strong and
united Europe.
In Asia the new Communist empire is a daily threat to millions of people.
The peoples of Asia want to be free to follow their own way of life. They
want to preserve their culture and their traditions against communism, just
as much as we want to preserve ours. They are laboring under terrific
handicaps--poverty, ill health, feudal systems of land ownership, and the
threat of internal subversion or external attack. We can and we must
increase our help to them.
This means military aid, especially to those places like Indochina which
might be hardest hit by some new Communist attack.
It also means economic aid, both technical know-how and capital
investment.
This last year we made available millions of bushels of wheat to relieve
famine in India. But far more important, in the long run, is the work
Americans are doing in India to help the Indian farmers themselves raise
more grain. With the help of our technicians, Indian farmers, using simple,
inexpensive means, have been able since 1948 to double the crops in one
area in India. One farmer there raised 63 bushels of wheat to the acre,
where 13 bushels had been the average before.
This is point 4--our point 4 program at work. It is working--not only in
India but in Iran, Paraguay, Liberia--in 33 countries around the globe. Our
technical missionaries are out there. We need more of them. We need more
funds to speed their efforts, because there is nothing of greater
importance in all our foreign policy. There is nothing that shows more
clearly what we stand for, and what we want to achieve.
My friends of the Congress, less than one-third of the expenditure for the
cost of World War II would have created the developments necessary to feed
the whole world so we wouldn't have to stomach communism. That is what we
have got to fight, and unless we fight that battle and win it, we can't win
the cold war or a hot one either.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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