Despite our desire to limit conflict, it was necessary to act:  to hold back the mounting aggression, to give courage to the people of the South, and to make our firmness clear to the North.  Thus. we began limited air action against military targets in North Vietnam.  We increased our fighting force to its present strength tonight of 190,000 men.

These moves have not ended the aggression but they have prevented its success.  The aims of the enemy have been put out of reach by the skill and the bravery of Americans and their allies—­and by the enduring courage of the South Vietnamese who, I can tell you, have lost eight men last year for every one of ours.

The enemy is no longer close to victory.  Time is no longer on his side.  There is no cause to doubt the American commitment.

Our decision to stand firm has been matched by our desire for peace.

In 1965 alone we had 300 private talks for peace in Vietnam, with friends and adversaries throughout the world.

Since Christmas your Government has labored again, with imagination and endurance, to remove any barrier to peaceful settlement.  For 20 days now we and our Vietnamese allies have dropped no bombs in North Vietnam.

Able and experienced spokesmen have visited, in behalf of America, more than 40 countries.  We have talked to more than a hundred governments, all 113 that we have relations with, and some that we don’t.  We have talked to the United Nations and we have called upon all of its members to make any contribution that they can toward helping obtain peace.

In public statements and in private communications, to adversaries and to friends, in Rome and Warsaw, in Paris and Tokyo, in Africa and throughout this hemisphere, America has made her position abundantly clear.

We seek neither territory nor bases, economic domination or military alliance in Vietnam.  We fight for the principle of self-determination—­that the people of South Vietnam should be able to choose their own course, choose it in free elections without violence, without terror, and without fear.

The people of all Vietnam should make a free decision on the great question of reunification.

This is all we want for South Vietnam.  It is all the people of South Vietnam want.  And if there is a single nation on this earth that desires less than this for its own people, then let its voice be heard.

We have also made it clear—­from Hanoi to New York—­that there are no arbitrary limits to our search for peace.  We stand by the Geneva Agreements of 1954 and 1962.  We will meet at any conference table, we will discuss any proposals—­four points or fourteen or forty—­and we will consider the views of any group.  We will work for a cease-fire now or once discussions have begun.  We will respond if others reduce their use of force, and we will withdraw our soldiers once South Vietnam is securely guaranteed the right to shape its own future.