It is a rare honor and privilege to be with you tonight to join in honoring the National Conference of Christians and Jews. I was particularly delighted to accept the invitation of your distinguished dinner chairman, John Knight - for he has befriended not only me but also, in his life end, career, the ideals of truth and justice and opportunity to which we all rededicate ourselves at this Dinner. The National Conference of Christians and Jews and its annual Brotherhood observances have long ago proven to be a permanent, valuable part of American life - enriching our heritage, stimulating our conscience, and overseeing the progress of human relations in our land. We honor here at this dinner tonight a principle - a principle we call brotherhood - in the hope that all Americans will honor this principle in their hearts all year round.
We meet tonight at a time of peril. Americans do not like to talk about peril. We do not want to admit that we could be in danger, that we have fallen behind, that we may be second best in some areas. There has always been something un-American or defeatist about suggesting that we could lose a war or lose our way of life. We have traditionally believed America to be invincible because America was right, because we have never lost a war, because we have always been successful in whatever we set out to do as a nation. Those who talk of peril here been alarmists, lacking faith in the superiority of our system - demagogues, handicapping our efforts by arousing fear or panic - malcontents, calling into question the wisdom of our methods and our leadership.
But tonight we meet at a time of peril - and it would be foolish to deny, or conceal the stark facts of our situation. There may still be some benefits in terms of avoiding panic and retaining confidence through continued reassurances and optimistic prophecies - but these benefits are outweighed, it seems to me, by the larger responsibility of democratic government to keep the people fully and frankly informed. Neither the "boy who cried wolf," nor the "gentlemen (who) cry peace, peace - (when) there is no peace" can long serve in a government dependent upon the trust and faith of the general public, once the facts are out. The hard truths of our position, of our failures as well as our successes, our perils as well as our hopes, are inevitably going to come out - and I for one have full confidence in the ability of a free and fully informed people to face those facts with calm and courage.
We are in peril today - and by that I do not mean simply the danger to our lives and our fortunes, to our unscarred shores and our unsurrendered flag. For we could lose more than a war, more than our lives - we are in peril of losing our whole way of life, not only our nation's peace and freedom but our own peace of mind and freedom to think, our cherished concepts of democratic government and individual liberty. And we could lose it all, all we hold dear, without a single shot being fired.
For the military peril that confronts the United States lies less, in my opinion, in the likelihood of our destruction during the next few years than in the Soviets' ability to launch that destruction. Our bargaining power at the international conference table, our ability to deter Communist advances elsewhere through the threat of massive retaliation, our ability to shield the Free World through brink-of-war diplomacy, our prestige in the struggle for uncommitted nations - all of these and similar instruments essential to successful American foreign policy are weakened by any extensive Soviet lead in the military field.
Although the exact facts have yet to be stated directly and clearly to the public, it is increasingly apparent that the Soviets do hold extensive leads in a number of vital military areas. Whether they hold an overall edge of military superiority is necessarily a matter of judgment that only a decisive war could prove with finality. But it is no matter of conjecture that we are behind - possibly as much as several years behind - in the race for control of outer space; in the development, perfection and stockpiling of both intermediate-range and long-range ballistic missiles; in rocket motors, jet engines and new fuels. There is every indication that the Soviets will next beat us with nuclear powered planes and more highly developed space vehicles. Our much-vaunted DEW line network of guidance and detection installations for continual air defense, only recently completed at great expense and stretching up into the Arctic, may now be completely outmoded. Designed for aircraft and not missiles, it cannot even see the present Russian satellites. Not only are the European bases of our Strategic Air Command vulnerable to Soviet Intermediate Range Missiles, but so also are the cities and bases of our own shores, now within range of missiles launched, by a Soviet submarine 500 miles out to sea. Britain's strategic bomber bases, and our European fighter aircraft and bomber refueling bases, can no longer be relied upon in case of all-out attack. And once the Russians have a quantity of long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles, capable of traveling from Moscow to Chicago in roughly 30 minutes, each and every one of us will be living on the "bull's-eye".
This is all rather difficult to comprehend here in America. We have never lived on the "front lines" of international war. We cannot imagine destruction being rained upon our cities, without time to seek evacuation or shelter. And we have justifiable confidence now in our ability to strike back at the Soviet Union, from planes already in the air or bases too widely dispersed to be knocked out in the first round. Certainly the Russians are no more secure than we. But our retaliation would neither heal our own wounds nor make the world more inhabitable and free from the radioactive fall-out that recognizes no boundaries, friends or victors. War, in short, has a very different meaning for our country, more awful to contemplate than ever before - and the danger of the Russians risking an attack upon us, significant as I have said even though it is never more than a possibility, will be particularly great during the next two or three years while these various Soviet military advantages remain.
But the peril we face today is not only military but economic and political as well. In our current emphasis over our military danger, we tend to lose sight of the even greater Soviet threat of non-military conquest. For the economic decline, political chaos and ideological disillusionment upon which Communism breeds and spreads are all on the increase - threatening to divide and reduce the strength of the Free world, curtail the geographic advantage so necessary to the dispersal of our bases and the defense of our own shores, and turn world opinion gradually against us.
The standard of living for much of the world's rapidly growing population is declining. Our balance of trade with the rest of the world is once again moving sharply out of balance. Raging inflation consumes available capital and clogs channels of trade. The new independent nations of the world are encountering increasing difficulty in eliminating the poverty they have previously blamed on their oppressors, in securing an industrial base to raise per capita income and in providing the health, education and community services necessary for a stable society that can remain outside the zone of Communist influence. The growth of the world's population, centered largely on those nations of the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America least able to support it, seems certain to outstrip all of our efforts to increase living standards and consumer goods by any similar proportions. To feed each day's increase in population requires that we find 150 square miles of new arable land every day. To feed one year's gain alone would require a new farm as large as the state of Illinois.
Into the disorder and distress caused by these trends march Messrs. Khrushchev and company, who can conclude arrangements for foreign aid and trade without respecting the wishes of Congressional Committees, consumers and taxpayers. The leaders of the Soviet Union can - and have - purchased commodities they did not need from wavering nations, sold expensive equipment at a loss to an uncommitted state, purchased raw materials at a level far above the world price from an under-developed nation, and provided loans to potential allies at a rate of interest far below the world bank and other normal levels.
On this economic front, we are even in danger of losing out to the Russians in the race for industrial productive superiority - the race which may well decide the future of all the other issues. We in this country can produce twice as much steel as the Soviet Union - but roughly one-fourth of this goes to automobiles, and a large proportion of the rest is in sheet and strip, for refrigerators, washing machines and other consumer goods. Practically all of the Russian steel capacity, on the other hand, is devoted to structural, heavy steel shapes and steel plate production - for armaments and capital goods, for developing their own capacity and for exporting to the underdeveloped nations the capital goods they cannot obtain in sufficient quantity from us. The Soviet Union may still lag behind this nation in terms of total national production - but it has passed us, believe it or not, in the production of capital goods, in industrial output generally, in its rate of industrialization and productive growth, and in the production of military end items.
Our reverses on the diplomatic and political front have accompanied these economic trends. Russian penetration in the Middle East, after more than a century of efforts in that direction, has never been so successful or so ominous. The prestige of the American in the Middle East, Africa and Asia has never been so dim. The solidarity of the Western Alliance appears incapable of ever regaining the strength which characterized its pre-Suez period. NATO itself has declined as a military factor, and never realized its promise as a political and economic force. Even the solidarity of the Western Hemisphere has been weakened by our continued emphasis on other areas; and Communist and other anti-American influences have made the most of it. War in Algeria, political confusion in Indonesia, the prospects of bankruptcy in India, the fanning of American rivalry in the Middle East - in every part of the globe, the peril to Western security continues to grow.
Finally, we face a peril of Russian domination in the fields of science and scientific discovery. Dr. Teller, in his impressive testimony before the Senate Preparedness Subcommittee, has given us some terrifying previews of what it would mean to lose this race as well - the exploitation of the weather to play havoc with a nation's mobility and food harvests; the colonization of other planets of the world; the conversion of salt sea water and the exploitation of the ocean bed. It is no longer possible to believe that every Russian gain is a crude imitation, the luck of a "backward" nation, or the result of espionage, stolen secrets, and kidnapped scientists.
It is now clear that there are scientifically and militarily significant areas of knowledge in which the Soviet Union is not only closing the gap, but also breaking fresh ground. There is much we can - and should - decry in the Soviet educational system, but there is also much we cannot any longer deny: its laboratories are not just prisons of thought, its schools not just the manufacturers of assembly-line stereotypes, its scientific breakthroughs not just prestige projects or theatrical gestures or science fiction.
The truth of the matter is that the Soviet Union already has available for this kind of work more engineers and scientist than we presently have in any capacity in this country, and very nearly as many as this country and Western Europe combined. In recent years, the output of new engineers and scientists in the U.S.S.R, has surpassed that of the total United States and Western Europe classes graduating in these fields - and their current enrollment of engineering and science students in institutions of higher education exceeds our own. This lead is not merely one of numbers, but of quality as well. A special study concluded by the Joint Atomic Energy Committee of the Congress concluded that "the training given Soviet Engineers and scientists is of a high order, and compares favorably with the best in the United States and Europe."
It is rather difficult to reverse these trends when the teaching of the physical sciences and mathematics in our own secondary schools has declined; when about half of those with talent in these fields who graduate from high school are either unable or uninterested in going to college; and when, of the half who enter college, scarcely 40% graduate. It is rather difficult to reverse these trends when nearly a million boys and girls are deprived by the classroom shortage of fulltime schooling, when millions more are held back in unwieldy classes of forty or more, and when we pay the average railway conductor nearly twice as much as we pay the teacher who conducts our elementary classes.
This is a wonderful, wealthy country in which we live - we can buy stock on margin, television on credit and a new freezer on the installment plan. We can demand from our Government higher subsidies and lower taxes, and vote out of office those who do not comply with our wishes. We can make more political speeches, hold more press conferences, stage more conventions and plan more formal dinners than any three Communist countries in the world combined. We can take comfort in the fact that, although Russian diplomats may have scored in Syria, one of our teams won the World Series. They may have launched the first space satellite - but we were the first to come out with the Edsel.
But can we compete with the Russians? Can we survive our present peril? I do not ask these questions, or raise these doubts, in order to replace complacency with panic. This is not a time for panic, for fatalism or for political maneuvering. I would not want our future course in the cold war determined by either those who, with their eye on our nuclear stockpile, glibly assert that we have nothing to fear - or those who, with their eye on the Russian moon, cry frantically that all is lost.
But how are we to compete successfully with the Russians? How are we to regain the initiative in world affairs, restore our nation's prestige and security, and weather the present peril as we have weathered as a nation many earlier crises? We are not going to do it by giving up our liberties to match the Soviet ability to make hard and swift decisions. We are not going to conscript scientists and engineers or turn our nation into an armed camp. We are not going to bid against the Russians for the privilege of seeing who can send the most aid to a wavering nation. We are not going to duplicate their trade agreements that call for repayment in surplus agricultural commodities, as long as we cannot get rid of our own. Our propaganda and ideological warfare will probably never be as successful in telling falsehoods, arousing hatreds and sowing doubt and disunity. And even if we could make bigger, better and more terrible weapons, if we could achieve the capacity to destroy their nation (if not the world) with five bombs instead of fifty, such an advantage is obviously meaningless.
Upon what can we rely? Where can we compete? In what can we find hope for the future?
The answer, I believe, lies ultimately in the very principles which we honor tonight - the principles of our Judaic-Christian heritage. It is a heritage which teaches us self-discipline - which will enable us to sacrifice economic convenience and physical comfort to a degree sufficient to offset the sacrifice of human values and liberties which has been extracted from the Russian people. It is a heritage of rich spiritual resources, renewing our energies end determination even when the day is darkest and the odds most overwhelming. It is a heritage that enables us to build with Christian and non-Christian nations alike a spirit of unity and brotherhood far stronger than the unanimity that the Russian tanks brought to Budapest. Our heritage has taught us to respond to the needs of other humans when they are in difficulty and to the principles of human justice when they are under fire. No Communist dictatorship, no Godless totalitarian society, no people living in fear of the future and without faith in themselves, can ever match the wealth of that inheritance.
I ask tonight, therefore, that we concern ourselves as a nation not only with our armaments and armies, not only with our scientists and engineers, our diplomatic alliances and economic assistance - but that we concern ourselves as well with the spiritual resources which have made this nation great. For there are disturbing signs that the fabric of our national life has also been hurt in the long test of endurance which we are still making. Some of you may have read a recent account of the Army report on the conduct of American prisoners during their captivity in North Korea. Not only was there a frighteningly high rate of collaboration with the enemy; there was also only a very spotty will to resist and survive. A third or more of the prisoners were guilty of at least minor acts of collaboration; an unprecedented high rate helped actively in Chinese propaganda and in spying on their fellows. Leaving aside instances of brutal torture - of which there was less by the Chinese than commonly imagined - there was an astonishing rate of easy yielding not only to enemy commands but also to fear and breakdown of self-discipline. Comrades were abandoned on roadsides, dysentery victims rolled out into the snow to die, and there was little useful activity among the captives. Many soldiers even refused nourishing if unfamiliar foods like soya beans, preferring death or malnutrition. Over 38% of the captured died - the highest of any war in our history - and there was not a single successful escape from a prison camp. And most of these men were not victims of sustained "brain-washing" or torture. The Army reports show, on the other hand, that of the 229 Turkish prisoners, all survived though half were injured when taken captive, not one collaborated in any significant way, and they retained a remarkable sense of discipline.
The Korean War, to be sure, had special features, and its goals were not entirely clear to many participants. But we are now in a period where decisions are always likely to be hard, when challenges are subtle, when the resourcefulness and stamina of the enemy will be high. The spiritual difficulties of our age are hard and lasting ones, and we would at least do well to ponder the meaning of this Army Report - to see whether it gives evidence of sufficient mental clarity and self-discipline for the times we are in. We may at the very least derive a measure of strength from the fact that in the United States the Government was willing and able to make this revelation of shortcomings. It is certain that the Soviet Defense Ministry would not publish such a document.
Americans have traditionally responded to the large challenge, to the new frontiers. Clearly we are in midpassage - between a world dying and a world not yet born. At the risk of betraying my provincial origins here in civilization's heartland - Chicago - I should like to recall the words of Governor John Winthrop delivered aboard the Arabella in passage to the American shore in 1620:
"A community of perils calls for extraordinary liberality..for this end we must be knit together in this work as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection; we must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities for the supply of the others' necessities; ...We must delight in each other, make others' conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together: always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body."
In this spirit we must go forward. In this spirit exists the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
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