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.

We have recently lost a great public servant who was leading this effort to bring opportunity and hope to the people of half the world.  Dr. Henry Bennett and his associates died in line of duty on a point 4 mission.  It is up to us to carry on the great work for which they gave their lives.

During the coming year we must not forget the suffering of the people who live behind the Iron Curtain.  In those areas minorities are being oppressed, human rights violated, religions persecuted.  We should continue to expose those wrongs.  We should continue and expand the activities of the Voice of America, which brings our message of hope and truth to those peoples and other peoples throughout the world.

I have just had an opportunity to discuss many of these world problems with Prime Minister Churchill.  We have had a most satisfactory series of meetings.  We thoroughly reviewed the situation in Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East.  We both look forward to steady progress toward peace through the cooperative action and teamwork of the free nations.

Turning from our foreign policies, let us consider the jobs we have here at home as a part of our program for peace.

The first of these jobs is to move ahead full steam on the defense program.

Our objective is to have a well-equipped active defense force large enough—­in concert with the forces of our allies—­to deter aggression and to inflict punishing losses on the enemy immediately if we should be attacked.  This active force must be backed by adequate reserves, and by the plants and tools to turn out the tremendous quantities of new weapons that would be needed if war came.  We are not building an active force adequate to carry on full scale war, but we are putting ourselves in a position to mobilize very rapidly if we have to.

This year I shall recommend some increases in the size of the active force we are building, with particular emphasis on air power.  This means we shall have to continue large-scale production of planes and other equipment for a longer period of time than we had originally planned.

Planes and tanks and other weapons-what the military call “hard goods”—­are now beginning to come off the production lines in volume.  Deliveries of hard goods now amount to about a billion and a half dollars worth a month.  A year from now, we expect that rate to be doubled.

We shall have to hold to a high rate of military output for about a year after that.  In 1954 we hope to have enough equipment so that we can reduce the production of most military items substantially.  The next 2 years should therefore be the peak period of defense production.