I do not know how much time may elapse before the communist rulers bring themselves to recognize this truth.  But when they do, they will find us eager to reach understandings that will protect the world from the danger it faces today.

It is no wonder that some people wish that we had never succeeded in splitting the atom.  But atomic power, like any other force of nature, is not evil in itself.  Properly used, it is an instrumentality for human betterment.  As a source of power, as a tool of scientific inquiry, it has untold possibilities.  We are already making good progress in the constructive use of atomic power.  We could do much more if we were free to concentrate on its peaceful uses exclusively.

Atomic power will be with us all the days of our lives.  We cannot legislate it out of existence.  We cannot ignore the dangers or the benefits it offers.

I believe that man can harness the forces of the atom to work for the improvement of the lot of human beings everywhere.  That is our goal.  As a nation, as a people, we must understand this problem, we must handle this new force wisely through our democratic processes.  Above all, we must strive, in all earnestness and good faith, to bring it under effective international control.  To do this will require much wisdom and patience and firmness.  The awe-inspiring responsibility in this field now falls on a new Administration and a new Congress.  I will give them my support, as I am sure all our citizens will, in whatever constructive steps they may take to make this newest of man’s discoveries a source of good and not of ultimate destruction.

We cannot tell when or whether the attitude of the Soviet rulers may change.  We do not know how long it may be before they show a willingness to negotiate effective control of atomic energy and honorable settlements of other world problems.  We cannot measure how deep-rooted are the Kremlin’s illusions about us.  We can be sure, however, that the rulers of the communist world will not change their basic objectives lightly or soon.

The communist rulers have a sense of time about these things wholly unlike our own.  We tend to divide our future into short spans, like the two-year life of this Congress, or the four years of the next Presidential term.  They seem to think and plan in terms of generations.  And there is, therefore, no easy, short-run way to make them see that their plans cannot prevail.

This means there is ahead of us a long hard test of strength and stamina, between the free world and the communist domain-our politics and our economy, our science and technology against the best they can do—­our liberty against their slavery—­our voluntary concert Of free nations against their forced amalgam of “people’s republics”—­our strategy against their strategy-our nerve against their nerve.

Above all, this is a test of the will and the steadiness of the people of the United States.