We shall continue to hope for a reconciliation between the people of Mainland China and the world community—­including working together in all the tasks of arms control, security, and progress on which the fate of the Chinese people, like their fellow men elsewhere, depends.

We would be the first to welcome a China which decided to respect her neighbors’ rights.  We would be the first to applaud her were she to apply her great energies and intelligence to improving the welfare of her people.  And we have no intention of trying to deny her legitimate needs for security and friendly relations with her neighboring countries.

Our hope that all of this will someday happen rests on the conviction that we, the American people and our allies, will and are going to see Vietnam through to an honorable peace.

We will support all appropriate initiatives by the United Nations, and others, which can bring the several parties together for unconditional discussions of peace—­anywhere, any time.  And we will continue to take every possible initiative ourselves to constantly probe for peace.

Until such efforts succeed, or until the infiltration ceases, or until the conflict subsides, I think the course of wisdom for this country is that we just must firmly pursue our present course.  We will stand firm in Vietnam.

I think you know that our fighting men there tonight bear the heaviest burden of all.  With their lives they serve their Nation.  We must give them nothing less than our full support—­and we have given them that—­nothing less than the determination that Americans have always given their fighting men.  Whatever our sacrifice here, even if it is more than $5 a month, it is small compared to their own.

How long it will take I cannot prophesy.  I only know that the will of the American people, I think, is tonight being tested.

Whether we can fight a war of limited objectives over a period of time, and keep alive the hope of independence and stability for people other than ourselves; whether we can continue to act with restraint when the temptation to “get it over with” is inviting but dangerous; whether we can accept the necessity of choosing “a great evil in order to ward off a greater”; whether we can do these without arousing the hatreds and the passions that are ordinarily loosed in time of war—­on all these questions so much turns.

The answers will determine not only where we are, but “whither we are tending.”

A time of testing—­yes.  And a time of transition.  The transition is sometimes slow; sometimes unpopular; almost always very painful; and often quite dangerous.

But we have lived with danger for a long time before, and we shall live with it for a long time yet to come.  We know that “man is born unto trouble.”  We also know that this Nation was not forged and did not survive and grow and prosper without a great deal of sacrifice from a great many men.