Next, this Government is in the storage and stockpile business to the melancholy tune of more than $16 billion.  We must continue to support farm income, but we should not pile more farm surpluses on top of the $7.5 billion we already own.  We must maintain a stockpile of strategic materials, but the $8.5 billion we have acquired—­for reasons both good and bad—­is much more than we need; and we should be empowered to dispose of the excess in ways which will not cause market disruption.

Finally, our already overcrowded national parks and recreation areas will have twice as many visitors 10 years from now as they do today.  If we do not plan today for the future growth of these and other great natural assets—­not only parks and forests but wildlife and wilderness preserves, and water projects of all kinds—­our children and their children will be poorer in every sense of the word.

These are not domestic concerns alone.  For upon our achievement of greater vitality and strength here at home hang our fate and future in the world:  our ability to sustain and supply the security of free men and nations, our ability to command their respect for our leadership, our ability to expand our trade without threat to our balance of payments, and our ability to adjust to the changing demands of cold war competition and challenge.

We shall be judged more by what we do at home than by what we preach abroad.  Nothing we could do to help the developing countries would help them half as much as a booming U.S. economy.  And nothing our opponents could do to encourage their own ambitions would encourage them half as much as a chronic, lagging U.S. economy.  These domestic tasks do not divert energy from our security—­they provide the very foundation for freedom’s survival and success.

III.

Turning to the world outside, it was only a few years ago—­in Southeast Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, even outer space—­that communism sought to convey the image of a unified, confident, and expanding empire, closing in on a sluggish America and a free world in disarray.  But few people would hold to that picture today.

In these past months we have reaffirmed the scientific and military superiority of freedom.  We have doubled our efforts in space, to assure us of being first in the future.  We have undertaken the most far-reaching defense improvements in the peacetime history of this country.  And we have maintained the frontiers of freedom from Viet-Nam to West Berlin.

But complacency or self-congratulation can imperil our security as much as the weapons of tyranny.  A moment of pause is not a promise of peace.  Dangerous problems remain from Cuba to the South China Sea.  The world’s prognosis prescribes, in short, not a year’s vacation for us, but a year of obligation and opportunity.

Four special avenues of opportunity stand out:  the Atlantic Alliance, the developing nations, the new Sino-Soviet difficulties, and the search for worldwide peace.