the industrialized countries but really get down to the enduring problems of the poor nations.

ΝΑΤΟ

I emphasized the President's belief that, if we wish NATO to continue as a viable instrument for peace and peaceful progress, the first priority for both ourselves and Western Europe must be to maintain its deterrent strength as insurance against disarray in the West and temptation in the East.

All the Atlantic nations-including our own-face budgetary or international payments problems. But now, as new opportunities are apparent in the East, it is more important than ever that we maintain both an effective military deterrent and our political cohesion. What we have gained so painfully in face of a common threat over the past generation, we cannot afford to lose at the moment when that threat may finally seem to lessen. And that will mean, for all of us, some measure of sacrifice including financial sacrifice.

I restated the President's pledge that we were prepared to meet our full commitment to NATO, but that others must be willing to do the same. I found a positive response and an eagerness to give NATO new life especially in the areas of nuclear planning and political consultation.

EAST-WEST

A few weeks ago at Fulton, Missouri, I looked ahead to the time when the Iron Curtain might be replaced by an open door. I found our Western European partners just as eager as we are to pursue that objective. There is a deep desire in Western Europe for reconciliation with the East. I look upon this as positive, provided that we all move East together. (If you'll pardon what a friend of mine calls my Wild East analogy, we stand a far better chance of safely reaching our Eastern destination if our wagons are in line, and if we mount a reliable shotgun guard, than if the wagons set out separately, each in its own direction.)

I also found a belief in Western Europe one not widely held even a few months ago that our new peaceful engagement with the East might eventually lead, in the future sometime far ahead, to a peacefully reunited Germany and settlement in Central Europe.

WESTERN EUROPEAN UNITY

Now, what about the shining new united Western Europe for which we held such hope only a few years ago? I found a new momentum toward that unity.

The British Government is clearly committed to Europe. British public opinion is clearly favorable. And five of the six Common Market partners are clearly ready to support a forthright British initiative. British entry into the Common Market and entry for the EFTA partners and other European nations--will not take place tomorrow. But, for the first time in a long time, there was a feeling that it will happen. European unity is moving again.

For our part, we welcome this new momentum. But I made it equally clear that we regard construction of Western European unity

as a business for European nations. I can think of nothing which could deter this great enterprise more effectively than to be stamped "Made in America."

MONETARY REFORM

There was another major subject discussed during my trip: international monetary policy. I am convinced that this is a subject understood by no one, including the experts. Therefore, I will not spend any time today trying to convince you of the merits of one or another plan of reform. Most of you associate me too greatly with reform as it is. However, I will make clear that, in international monetary policy, we are the ones who are for reform, and I found that most of our partners are, too.

I think we are making some progress and that, at the Rio Conference in September, we may finally be able to begin to break the log jam on international liquidity with resulting opportunities for growth for both the industrialized and developing nations.

VIETNAM

Finally-and I am sure you thought I would end this speech without mentioning it-I will say a word about Vietnam. Contrary to one or two news reports, I did not embark on any Vietnam sales mission. But where others raised the question of Vietnam, I outlined our country's policies and objectives.

I think it should be understood that the overwhelming majority of national leaders with whom I spoke understand our presence and objectives in Vietnam. If we have problems in Europe concerning Vietnam, they are problems involving some segments of public opinion. But I emphasize that they are not problems with the people who make decisions and policies on behalf of their governments. It was not lost on any European national leader that, in Vietnam, we are keeping a commitment. But that is another speech, and I will not give it here.

Twenty years ago, Western Europe lay in ruin-helpless and prostrate at the end of a long and terrible night. How many in this room believed then that today we would be able to talk about the end of the postwar period and, eventually, the end of the Iron Curtain? Yet, we are able to do just that.

If we enter the last third of this century weak, disunited and uncertain... with little or no faith in ourselves or anyone else and with each nation going its separate way.... .. then this will be the last century for the cause of freedom and self-determination. But if we maintain in the years ahead the cohesion, the vision, and the common purpose which we have sustained since World War II, I have no doubt that the remainder of this century can bring even greater results than those of the past 20 years. If we have come this far while our European partners have only begun to regain their strength, how far can we go when the Atlantic world stands prosperous and free as never before?

Now we stand at the threshold of a new age-an age in which all of us along the Atlantic basin . . . all of us who share a common heritage

and common values-will be able to work together toward man's final liberation around the world. Now we can have the chance to make into living reality the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his Inaugural Address thirty years ago:

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have too much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

Now we of the Atlantic family must lift our sights to the world beyond that has lain silent and in poverty for far too long. Let the course ahead be clear. We shall not achieve great goals with limited investments. We shall not achieve mighty purposes with petty actions. We will not find our way guided by small dreams.

There is a long road ahead which will test our character and our fiber. Only one week ago in Punta del Este, Uruguay, President Johnson set forth the task that lies ahead for us as Americans.

We no longer inhabit a new world. We cannot escape from our problems, as the first Americans could, in the vastness of an uncharted hemisphere. If we are to grow and prosper, we must face the problems of our maturity. And we must do it boldly, wisely and now * * *

The time is now. The responsibility is ours. Let us declare the next ten years the Decade of Urgency. Let us match our resolve and our resources to the common tasks until the dream of a new America is accomplished in the lives of all our people.

President Johnson set forth our vision of a free and peaceful hemisphere. In partnership with the nations of the Atlantic, that vision can and will be extended to a free and peaceful world.

[The Atlantic Council of the United States, Washington, D.C., May 1967] POLICY STATEMENT OF THE ATLANTIC COUNCIL OF THE U.S.

Council Officers: Livingston T. Merchant (Chairman); Lauris Norstad and Dean Acheson (Vice Chairmen)

The Atlantic Council of the United States was founded in the conviction that the nations of the Atlantic area form a community with a common heritage, dependent upon each other in the future as in the past for their freedom and well-being.

We are free societies, determined to defend our freedom. All of our institutions are based on the dignity of the individual, on our respect for law and on our conviction that the human spirit is nurtured and can flower only in freedom and diversity.

In the past, free societies have responded collectively to aggression only belatedly and at great cost. In the nuclear age the cost of such delay would be utterly prohibitive. Security depends upon the maintenance of sufficient collective strength and unity in peacetime to prevent aggression and in the pursuit of far-sighted policies designed to eradicate the desire for aggression.

We of the Atlantic Community should have long since learned that political, military and economic arrangements suitable for the 18th and 19th centuries must be modernized to meet the needs of the 20th and 21st centuries not merely for survival but for the positive development of peace and prosperity.

Neither present factors such as the Vietnam war or the present attitude of the French Government toward NATO, nor future ones such as the emergence of China as a growing threat or the increasing pressures of population in underdeveloped areas upon the world's resources can be allowed to obscure the imperatives of progressive unity within the Atlantic Community. Progress may come slowly and from unpredictable directions. But surely science, technology and the economies of scale are greatly and rapidly changing the face of individual nations and the relations of those of us in the Atlantic Community to each other, to those who would harm us and to those of the developing world. All these changes insistently demand the adaptation of old institutions or the creation of new ones.

The Atlantic Council supports certain specific steps to improve our collective capability to manage our problems in order to avoid being mired in them through continued, unquestioning acceptance of concepts which have seen their day.

In particular the Council advocates greater use of the NATO and OECD machinery to harmonize policies and concert action on matters of common concern. It believes that United States leadership and evidence of willingness to participate fully in this process is an essential ingredient if we are to achieve results.

We support an intensified process of consultation in the North Atlantic Council on potentially dangerous situations to provide timely opportunity for member governments to consider issues and put forward their proposals at the earliest possible stages. We urge that the Council in Permanent Session continue to seek harmonization of our respective external policies.

We welcome the creation of the NATO Nuclear Defense Committee as a step toward promoting joint strategic planning for those members of the Alliance prepared to share its military responsibilities.

The Council strongly hopes that the progress toward agreement already achieved by experts of the Group of Ten on means of strengthening the international monetary system will be promptly advanced to intergovernmental agreement in the overriding common interest.

The Council favors increasingly free trade for the Atlantic area and eventually the entire free world, with first priority accorded to seeking the maximum achievement possible in the Kennedy Round. The Council also urges strengthening the OECD in all practicable ways and putting it to greater use.

The Council recommends a larger, more effective and better integrated contribution by the industrially advanced members of the Atlantic Community to meet the needs and hopes of the developing nations. To achieve the latter, the Council believes that self-help, increased attention to food production and population control are essential elements.

The Council will support all effective measures to improve conditions for international investment and multi-national business operations within the growing Atlantic Business Community and, insofar

as it is within the capability of the Community, within the developing countries as well, in order to promote the economic well-being, the political stability and the freedom of all.

The Council favors the growth of economic and political unity within an expanding European Economic Community in ways which will strengthen rather than weaken the roots of unity between all members of the Atlantic Community. The Council likewise supports continuing efforts to improve economic and cultural relations with the countries of central and eastern Europe within the obvious limits of the security of the Atlantic Community itself.

The Council endorses increased cooperation-in industry and between governments-within the Community in scientific research and in technological development.

The Council favors substantially increasing the exchange of students, teachers, scholars and those engaged in research in order to revitalize the scholarly traditions of our Community. The Council supports a greater flow of information and educational materials and increased artistic and cultural interchanges among all the Atlantic countries. The Council believes that youth and adults alike should be taught the fundamental facts of the common history of our countries which compose the Atlantic Community, stressing contemporary ties and their enormous potential for solving common problems.

In the parliamentary field, the Council supports formal establishment of a North Atlantic Assembly by representatives of the several Parliaments. It expresses the hope that its meetings and discussions will lead to compatible legislation within our several countries designed to stimulate the interchange of goods, capital and technology and otherwise to contribute to a growing sense of unity.

The foregoing policies are generally accepted and actions to ensure their execution are in train. There are other far-reaching areas of our community life, however, which should be seriously studied by governments and private organizations on both sides of the Atlantic. Among these are the feasibility of an Atlantic free trade area, with both its initial and its ultimate membership left for negotiation. Others include:

The freer movement of capital, ideas and people as well as goods; Common satellite communications systems for civil as well as military use;

The relationship of greater European unity to greater Atlantic unity; The problems which the size and power of the United States in relation to other members of the Atlantic Community pose for greater unity, and means of solving those problems; and

The modernization of existing institutions, or the establishment of new institutions, adequate to meet the political, military and economic challenges of this era. In this connection the Atlantic Council notes with approval the appointment of a study committee by the NATO Council as a result of the Belgian initiative which may become the equivalent of the Special Governmental Commission, recommended by the Atlantic Convention of NATO Nations on January 19, 1962. The Atlantic Council has previously endorsed this recommendation and regards this action on the part of the NATO Governments as a matter of urgency.

Looking toward the future, the Atlantic Council of the United States dedicates itself to the constant search for ways and means to