I hope the Senate will take early and favorable action on the Japanese peace treaty, on our security pacts with the Pacific countries, and on the agreement to bring Greece and Turkey into the North Atlantic Treaty.

We are also negotiating an agreement with the German Federal Republic under which it can play an honorable and equal part among nations and take its place in the defense of Western Europe.

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.