Our basic objective—­toward which all others lead—­is to improve the welfare of the American people.  In addition to economic prosperity, this means that we use social security in the fullest sense of the word.  And people must be protected from excessive want during old age, sickness, and unemployment.  Opportunities for a good economy and adequate medical care must be readily available.  Every family should build a decent home.  The new economic rights to which I have referred on previous occasions is a charter of economic freedom which seeks to assure that all who will may work toward their own security and the general advancement; that we become a well-housed people, a well-nourished people, an educated people, a people socially and economically secure, an alert and responsible people.

These and other problems which may face us can be met by the cooperation of all of us in furthering a positive and well-balanced Government program—­a program which will further national and international well-being.

II.  THE FEDERAL PROGRAM

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

I. FOREIGN POLICY

The year 1945 brought with it the final defeat of our enemies.  There lies before us now the work of building a just and enduring peace.

Our most immediate task toward that end is to deprive our enemies completely and forever of their power to start another war.  Of even greater importance to the preservation of international peace is the need to preserve the wartime agreement of the United Nations and to direct it into the ways of peace.

Long before our enemies surrendered, the foundations had been laid on which to continue this unity in the peace to come.  The Atlantic meeting in 1941 and the conferences at Casablanca, Quebec, Moscow, Cairo, Tehran, and Dumbarton Oaks each added a stone to the structure.

Early in 1945, at Yalta, the three major powers broadened and solidified this base of understanding.  There fundamental decisions were reached concerning the occupation and control of Germany.  There also a formula was arrived at for the interim government of the areas in Europe which were rapidly being wrested from Nazi control.  This formula was based on the policy of the United States that people be permitted to choose their own form of government by their own freely expressed choice without interference from any foreign source.

At Potsdam, in July 1945, Marshal Stalin, Prime Ministers Churchill and Attlee, and I met to exchange views primarily with respect to Germany.  As a result, agreements were reached which outlined broadly the policy to be executed by the Allied Control Council.  At Potsdam there was also established a Council of Foreign Ministers which convened for the first time in London in September.  The Council is about to resume its primary assignment of drawing up treaties of peace with Italy, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Finland.