There are, in fact, nearly a million Americans serving their country and the cause of freedom in overseas posts, a record no other people can match.  Surely those of us who stay at home should be glad to help indirectly; by supporting our aid programs; .by opening our doors to foreign visitors and diplomats and students; and by proving, day by day, by deed as well as word, that we are a just and generous people.

VI.

Third, what comfort can we take from the increasing strains and tensions within the Communist bloc?  Here hope must be tempered with caution.  For the Soviet-Chinese disagreement is over means, not ends.  A dispute over how best to bury the free world is no grounds for Western rejoicing.

Nevertheless, while a strain is not a fracture, it is clear that the forces of diversity are at work inside the Communist camp, despite all the iron disciplines of regimentation and all the iron dogmatisms of ideology.  Marx is proven wrong once again:  for it is the closed Communist societies, not the free and open societies which carry within themselves the seeds of internal disintegration.

The disarray of the Communist empire has been heightened by two other formidable forces.  One is the historical force of nationalism—­and the yearning of all men to be free.  The other is the gross inefficiency of their economies.  For a closed society is not open to ideas of progress—­and a police state finds that it cannot command the grain to grow.

New nations asked to choose between two competing systems need only compare conditions in East and West Germany, Eastern and Western Europe, North and South Viet-Nam.  They need only compare the disillusionment of Communist Cuba with the promise of the Alliance for Progress.  And all the world knows that no successful system builds a wall to keep its people in and freedom out—­and the wall of shame dividing Berlin is a symbol of Communist failure.

VII.

Finally, what can we do to move from the present pause toward enduring peace?  Again I would counsel caution.  I foresee no spectacular reversal in Communist methods or goals.  But if all these trends and developments can persuade the Soviet Union to walk the path of peace, then let her know that all free nations will journey with her.  But until that choice is made, and until the world can develop a reliable system of international security, the free peoples have no choice but to keep their arms nearby.

This country, therefore, continues to require the best defense in the world—­a defense which is suited to the sixties.  This means, unfortunately, a rising defense budget—­for there is no substitute for adequate defense, and no “bargain basement” way of achieving it.  It means the expenditure of more than $15 billion this year on nuclear weapons systems alone, a sum which is about equal to the combined defense budgets of our European Allies.

But it also means improved air and missile defenses, improved civil defense, a strengthened anti-guerrilla capacity and, of prime importance, more powerful and flexible non-nuclear forces.  For threats of massive retaliation may not deter piecemeal aggression—­and a line of destroyers in a quarantine, or a division of well-equipped men on a border, may be more useful to our real security than the multiplication of awesome weapons beyond all rational need.