Expenditures for our share of the administrative budgets of the United Nations and other permanent international bodies will increase sharply in the fiscal year 1947, yet will remain a small part of our total Budget.  The budget for the United Nations has not yet been determined; an estimate for our contribution will be submitted later.  Our contributions to the food and Agriculture Organization, the International Labor Office, the Pan American Union, and other similar international agencies will aggregate about 3 million dollars for the fiscal year 1947.  The administrative expenses of the International Monetary fund and the International Bank will be met from their general funds.

We have won a great war—­we, the nations of plain people who hate war.  In the test of that war we found a strength of unity that brought us through—­a strength that crushed the power of those who sought by force to deny our faith in the dignity of man.

During this trial the voices of disunity among us were silent or were subdued to an occasional whine that warned us that they were still among us.  Those voices are beginning to cry aloud again.  We must learn constantly to turn deaf ears to them.  They are voices which foster fear and suspicion and intolerance and hate.  They seek to destroy our harmony, our understanding of each other, our American tradition of “live and let live.”  They have become busy again, trying to set race against race, creed against creed, farmer against city dweller, worker against employer, people against their own governments.  They seek only to do us mischief.  They must not prevail.

It should be impossible for any man to contemplate without a sense of personal humility the tremendous events of the 12 months since the last annual Message, the great tasks that confront us, the new and huge problems of the coming months and years.  Yet these very things justify the deepest confidence in the future of this Nation of free men and women.

The plain people of this country found the courage and the strength, the self-discipline, and the mutual respect to fight and to win, with the help of our allies, under God.  I doubt if the tasks of the future are more difficult.  But if they are, then I say that our strength and our knowledge and our understanding will be equal to those tasks.

As printed above, references to tables appearing in the budget document have been omitted.

***

State of the Union Address
Harry S. Truman
January 6, 1947

Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Congress of the United States: 

It looks like a good many of you have moved over to the left since I was here last!

I come before you today to report on the State of the Union and, in the words of the Constitution, to recommend such measures as I judge necessary and expedient.

I come also to welcome you as you take up your duties and to discuss with you the manner in which you and I should fulfill our obligations to the American people during the next 2 years.