We must increase our support of the United Nations as an instrument to end the Cold War instead of an arena in which to fight it.  In recognition of its increasing importance and the doubling of its membership

—­we are enlarging and strengthening our own mission to the U.N.

—­we shall help insure that it is properly financed.

—­we shall work to see that the integrity of the office of the Secretary-General is maintained.

—­And I would address a special plea to the smaller nations of the world—­to join with us in strengthening this organization, which is far more essential to their security than it is to ours—­the only body in the world where no nation need be powerful to be secure, where every nation has an equal voice, and where any nation can exert influence not according to the strength of its armies but according to the strength of its ideas.  It deserves the support of all.

Finally, this Administration intends to explore promptly all possible areas of cooperation with the Soviet Union and other nations “to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors.”  Specifically, I now invite all nations—­including the Soviet Union—­to join with us in developing a weather prediction program, in a new communications satellite program and in preparation for probing the distant planets of Mars and Venus, probes which may someday unlock the deepest secrets of the universe.

Today this country is ahead in the science and technology of space, while the Soviet Union is ahead in the capacity to lift large vehicles into orbit.  Both nations would help themselves as well as other nations by removing these endeavors from the bitter and wasteful competition of the Cold War.  The United States would be willing to join with the Soviet Union and the scientists of all nations in a greater effort to make the fruits of this new knowledge available to all—­and, beyond that, in an effort to extend farm technology to hungry nations—­to wipe out disease—­to increase the exchanges of scientists and their knowledge—­and to make our own laboratories available to technicians of other lands who lack the facilities to pursue their own work.  Where nature makes natural allies of us all, we can demonstrate that beneficial relations are possible even with those with whom we most deeply disagree—­and this must someday be the basis of world peace and world law.

V.

I have commented on the state of the domestic economy, our balance of payments, our Federal and social budget and the state of the world.  I would like to conclude with a few remarks about the state of the Executive branch.  We have found it full of honest and useful public servants—­but their capacity to act decisively at the exact time action is needed has too often been muffled in the morass of committees, timidities and fictitious theories which have created a growing gap between decision and execution, between planning and reality.  In a time of rapidly deteriorating situations at home and abroad, this is bad for the public service and particularly bad for the country; and we mean to make a change.