Working out new relationships among the peoples of the free world would not be easy in the best of times.  Even if there were no Communist drive for expansion, there would be hard and complex problems of transition from old social forms, old political arrangements, old economic institutions to the new ones our century demands—­problems of guiding change into constructive channels, of helping new nations grow strong and stable.  But now, with the Soviet rulers striving to exploit this ferment for their own purposes, the task has become harder and more urgent—­terribly urgent.

In this situation, we see the meaning and the importance of the Point IV program, through which we can share our store of know-how and of capital to help these people develop their economies and reshape their societies.  As we help Iranians to raise more grain, Indians to reduce the incidence of malaria, Liberians to educate their children better, we are at once helping to answer the desires of the people for advancement, and demonstrating the superiority of freedom over communism.  There will be no quick solution for any of the difficulties of the new nations of Asia and Africa—­but there may be no solution at all if we do not press forward with full energy to help these countries grow and flourish in freedom and in cooperation with the rest of the free world.

Our measures of economic policy have already had a tremendous effect on the course of events.  Eight years ago, the Kremlin thought post-war collapse in Western Europe and Japan—­with economic dislocation in America—­might give them the signal to advance.  We demonstrated they were wrong.  Now they wait with hope that the economic recovery of the free world has set the stage for violent and disastrous rivalry among the economically developed nations, struggling for each other’s markets and a greater share of trade.  Here is another test that we shall have to meet and master in the years immediately ahead.  And it will take great ingenuity and effort—­and much time—­before we prove the Kremlin wrong again.  But we can do it.  It is true that economic recovery presents its problems, as does economic decline, but they are problems of another order.  They are the problems of distributing abundance fairly, and they can be solved by the process of international cooperation that has already brought us so far.

These are the measures we must continue.  This is the path we must follow.  We must go on, working with our free associates, building an international structure for military defense, and for economic, social, and political progress.  We must be prepared for war, because war may be thrust upon us.  But the stakes in our search for peace are immensely higher than they have ever been before.

For now we have entered the atomic age, and war has undergone a technological change which makes it a very different thing from what it used to be.  War today between the Soviet empire and the free nations might dig the grave not only of our Stalinist opponents, but of our own society, our world as well as theirs.