Twenty months later our efforts have produced a new reality:  The doors of the billion dollar Asian Development Bank that I recommended to the Congress, and you endorsed almost unanimously, I am proud to tell you are already open.  Asians are engaged tonight in regional efforts in a dozen new directions.  Their hopes are high.  Their faith is strong.  Their confidence is deep.

And even as the war continues, we shall play our part in carrying forward this constructive historic development.  As recommended by the Eugene Black mission, and if other nations will join us, I will seek a special authorization from the Congress of $200 million for East Asian regional programs.

We are eager to turn our resources to peace.  Our efforts in behalf of humanity I think need not be restricted by any parallel or by any boundary line.  The moment that peace comes, as I pledged in Baltimore, I will ask the Congress for funds to join in an international program of reconstruction and development for all the people of Vietnam—­and their deserving neighbors who wish our help.

We shall continue to hope for a reconciliation between the people of Mainland China and the world community—­including working together in all the tasks of arms control, security, and progress on which the fate of the Chinese people, like their fellow men elsewhere, depends.

We would be the first to welcome a China which decided to respect her neighbors’ rights.  We would be the first to applaud her were she to apply her great energies and intelligence to improving the welfare of her people.  And we have no intention of trying to deny her legitimate needs for security and friendly relations with her neighboring countries.

Our hope that all of this will someday happen rests on the conviction that we, the American people and our allies, will and are going to see Vietnam through to an honorable peace.

We will support all appropriate initiatives by the United Nations, and others, which can bring the several parties together for unconditional discussions of peace—­anywhere, any time.  And we will continue to take every possible initiative ourselves to constantly probe for peace.

Until such efforts succeed, or until the infiltration ceases, or until the conflict subsides, I think the course of wisdom for this country is that we just must firmly pursue our present course.  We will stand firm in Vietnam.

I think you know that our fighting men there tonight bear the heaviest burden of all.  With their lives they serve their Nation.  We must give them nothing less than our full support—­and we have given them that—­nothing less than the determination that Americans have always given their fighting men.  Whatever our sacrifice here, even if it is more than $5 a month, it is small compared to their own.

How long it will take I cannot prophesy.  I only know that the will of the American people, I think, is tonight being tested.