To achieve success will require both boldness in setting our sights and caution in steering our way on an uncharted course.  But we have no luxury of choice.  We must move ahead.  No return to the past is possible.

Our Nation has always been a land of great opportunities for those people of the world who sought to become part of us.  Now we have become a land of great responsibilities to all the people of all the world.  We must squarely recognize and face the fact of those responsibilities.  Advances in science, in communication, in transportation, have compressed the world into a community.  The economic and political health of each member of the world community bears directly on the economic and political health of each other member.

The evolution of centuries has brought us to a new era in world history in which manifold relationships between nations must be formalized and developed in new and intricate ways.

The United Nations Organization now being established represents a minimum essential beginning.  It must be developed rapidly and steadily.  Its work must be amplified to fill in the whole pattern that has been outlined.  Economic collaboration, for example, already charted, now must be carried on as carefully and as comprehensively as the political and security measures.

It is important that the nations come together as States in the Assembly and in the Security Council and in the other specialized assemblies and councils that have been and will be arranged.  But this is not enough.  Our ultimate security requires more than a process of consultation and compromise.

It requires that we begin now to develop the United Nations Organization as the representative of the world as one society.  The United Nations Organization, if we have the will adequately to staff it and to make it work as it should, will provide a great voice to speak constantly and responsibly in terms of world collaboration and world well-being.

There are many new responsibilities for us as we enter into this new international era.  The whole power and will and wisdom of our Government and of our people should be focused to contribute to and to influence international action.  It is intricate, continuing business.  Many concessions and adjustments will be required.

The spectacular progress of science in recent years makes these necessities more vivid and urgent.  That progress has speeded internal development and has changed world relationships so fast that we must realize the fact of a new era.  It is an era in which affairs have become complex and rich in promise.  Delicate and intricate relationships, involving us all in countless ways, must be carefully considered.

On the domestic scene, as well as on the international scene, we must lay a new and better foundation for cooperation.  We face a great peacetime venture; the challenging venture of a free enterprise economy making full and effective use of its rich resources and technical advances.  This is a venture in which business, agriculture, and labor have vastly greater opportunities than heretofore.  But they all also have vastly greater responsibilities.  We will not measure up to those responsibilities by the simple return to “normalcy” that was tried after the last war.