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Eisenhower's Farewell Address
1961
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Farewell
Address, January 17, 1961
Good
evening, my fellow Americans: First, I should like
to express my gratitude to the radio and television
networks for the opportunity they have given me over
the years to bring reports and messages to our
nation. My special thanks go to them for the
opportunity of addressing you this evening.
Three days from now,
after a half century of 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 questions of great
moment, the wise resolution of which will better
shape the future of the nation.
My
own relations with 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 nation well rather
than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the
business of the nation should go forward. So my
official relationship with Congress ends in a
feeling on my part, of gratitude that we have been
able to do so much together.
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. Throughout
America's adventure in free government, such basic
purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster
progress in human achievement, and to enhance
liberty, dignity and integrity among peoples 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 a 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 it 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 the newer elements of our defenses;
development of unrealistic programs to cure very 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.
each
proposal must be weighed in 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 the cost and
hoped for advantages-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 the 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 threat and stress.
But
threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise.
Of
these, I mention two only.
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 anyof 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 military-industrial
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
scientific-technological 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.
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, for our own
ease and convenience, the precious resources of
tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of
our grandchildren without asking 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.
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.
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
Nations' 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.
Now,
on Friday noon, I am to become a private citizen. I
am proud to do so. I look forward to it.
Thank
you, and, good night.
"During
the years of my Presidency, and especially the
latter years, I began to feel more and more
uneasiness about the effect on the nation of
tremendous peacetime military expenditures. [...]
The idea, then, of making a final address as President to the nation seemed to call on me to warn the nation, again, of the danger in these developments. I could think of no better way to emphasize this than to include a sobering message in what might otherwise have been a farewell of pleasantries." Dwight
Eisenhower,
memoirs
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