The Soviet rulers have made it clear that we must have strength as well as right on our side.  If we build our strength—­and we are building it—­the Soviet rulers may face the facts and lay aside their plans to take over the world.

That is what we hope will happen, and that is what we are trying to bring about.  That is the only realistic road to peace.

These are the main elements of the course our Nation must follow as a member of the community of free nations.  These are the things we must do to preserve our security and help create a peaceful world.  But they will be successful only if we increase the strength of our own country.

Here at home we have some very big jobs to do.  We are building much stronger military forces—­and we are building them fast.  We are preparing for full wartime mobilization, if that should be necessary.  And we are continuing to build a strong and growing economy, able to maintain whatever effort may be required for as long as necessary.

We are building our own Army, Navy, and Air Force to an active strength of nearly 3 1/2 million men and women.  We are stepping up the training of the reserve forces, and establishing more training facilities, so that we can rapidly increase our active forces far more on short notice.

We are going to produce all the weapons and equipment that such an armed force will need.  Furthermore, we will make weapons for our allies, and weapons for our own reserve supplies.  On top of this, we will build the capacity to turn out on short notice arms and supplies that may be needed for a full-scale war.

Fortunately, we have a good start on this because of our enormous plant capacity and because of the equipment on hand from the last war.  For example, many combat ships are being returned to active duty from the “mothball fleet” and many others can be put into service on very short notice.  We have large reserves of arms and ammunition and thousands of workers skilled in arms production.

In many cases, however, our stocks of weapons are low.  In other cases, those on hand are not the most modern.  We have made remarkable technical advances.  We have developed new types of jet planes and powerful new tanks.  We are concentrating on producing the newest types of weapons and producing them as fast as we can.

This production drive is more selective than the one we had during World War II, but it is just as urgent and intense.  It is a big program and it is a costly one.

Let me give you two concrete examples.  Our present program calls for expanding the aircraft industry so that it will have the capacity to produce 50,000 modern military planes a year.  We are preparing the capacity to produce 35,000 tanks a year.  We are not now ordering that many planes or that many tanks, and we hope that we never have to, but we mean to be able to turn them out if we need them.

The planes we are producing now are much bigger, much better, and much more expensive than the planes we had during the last war.