Europe’s enlightened leaders have long been aware of these facts.  All the devoted work that has gone into the Schuman plan, the European Army, and the Strasbourg Conference has testified to their vision and determination.  These achievements are the more remarkable when we realize that each of them has marked a victory—­for France and for Germany alike over the divisions that in the past have brought such tragedy to these two great nations and to the world.

The needed unity of Western Europe manifestly cannot be manufactured from without; it can only be created from within.  But it is right and necessary that we encourage Europe’s leaders by informing them of the high value we place upon the earnestness of their efforts toward this goal.  Real progress will be conclusive evidence to the American people that our material sacrifices in the cause of collective security are matched by essential political, economic, and military accomplishments in Western Europe.

(6) Our foreign policy will recognize the importance of profitable and equitable world trade.

A substantial beginning can and should be made by our friends themselves.  Europe, for example, is now marked by checkered areas of labor surplus and labor shortage, of agricultural areas needing machines and industrial areas needing food.  Here and elsewhere we can hope that our friends will take the initiative in creating broader markets and more dependable currencies, to allow greater exchange of goods and services among themselves.

Action along these lines can create an economic environment that will invite vital help from us.

This help includes: 

First:  Revising our customs regulations to remove procedural obstacles to profitable trade.  I further recommend that the Congress take the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act under immediate study and extend it by appropriate legislation.  This objective must not ignore legitimate safeguarding of domestic industries, agriculture, and labor standards.  In all executive study and recommendations on this problem labor and management and farmers alike will be earnestly consulted.

Second:  Doing whatever Government properly can to encourage the flow of private American investment abroad.  This involves, as a serious and explicit purpose of our foreign policy, the encouragement of a hospitable climate for such investment in foreign nations.

Third:  Availing ourselves of facilities overseas for the economical production of manufactured articles which are needed for mutual defense and which are not seriously competitive with our own normal peacetime production.

Fourth:  Receiving from the rest of the world, in equitable exchange for what we supply, greater amounts of important raw materials which we do not ourselves possess in adequate quantities.

III.

In this general discussion of our foreign policy, I must make special mention of the war in Korea.