But when the Soviets produced an atomic explosion—­as they were bound to do in time—­we had to broaden the whole basis of our strength.  We had to endeavor to keep our lead in atomic weapons.  We had to strengthen our armed forces generally and to enlarge our productive capacity-our mobilization base.  Historically, it was the Soviet atomic explosion in the fall of 1949, nine months before the aggression in Korea, which stimulated the planning for our program of defense mobilization.

What we needed was not just a central force that could strike back against aggression.  We also needed strength along the outer edges of the free world, defenses for our allies as well as for ourselves, strength to hold the line against attack as well as to retaliate.

We have made great progress on this task of building strong defenses.  In the last two and one half years, we have more than doubled our own defenses, and we have helped to increase the protection of nearly all the other free nations.

All the measures of collective security, resistance to aggression, and the building of defenses, constitute the first requirement for the survival and progress of the free world.  But, as I have pointed out, they are interwoven with the necessity of taking steps to create and maintain economic and social progress in the free nations.  There can be no military strength except where there is economic capacity to back it.  There can be no freedom where there is economic chaos or social collapse.  For these reasons, our national policy has included a wide range of economic measures.

In Europe, the grand design of the Marshall Plan permitted the people of Britain and France and Italy and a half dozen other countries, with help from the United States, to lift themselves from stagnation and find again the path of rising production, rising incomes, rising standards of living.  The situation was changed almost overnight by the Marshall Plan; the people of Europe have a renewed hope and vitality, and they are able to carry a share of the military defense of the free world that would have been impossible a few years ago.

Now the countries of Europe are moving rapidly towards political and economic unity, changing the map of Europe in more hopeful ways than it has been changed for 500 years.  Customs unions, European economic institutions like the Schuman Plan, the movement toward European political integration, the European Defense Community-all are signs of practical and effective growth toward greater common strength and unity.  The countries of Western Europe, including the free Republic of Germany are working together, and the whole free world is the gainer.