Gentlemen, Mr. Webb, Mr. Bundy:
     I want to express my great appreciation to you on behalf of the people of this country for your being here, and also for the effort that you are putting in, in the Advertising Council, in a very high form of public service.
     This effort was started 18 years ago, during the wartime administration of Franklin Roosevelt, and I am sure that there is no one here who would suggest that the need for your services are less critical today than they were then.
     This is a free society and a free economy, and we do believe that freedom and, really, progress is best served by permitting people to advance their private interests, and the combination of this great effort, we believe, advances the public interest. But I don't think that there's any American who would stop there and feel that the public interest is served alone by serving one's private interest.
     I think all of us have a public obligation, all of us owe some of our lives and some of our effort to the advancement of the interests of our society, particularly when our society bears such heavy burdens as it does here and around the world. And therefore, your willingness - as advertisers, as businessmen, as publishers, as television owners and producers - your willingness to devote, as you did last year, $100 million to the advancement of public causes is greatly appreciated. It is a real service. You have every reason to feel that it performs a worthy national purpose. The fact that so many members of this administration, I think the entire Cabinet, have come here indicates, I hope, in some degree our appreciation of what you are trying to do.
     I hope this year you will devote yourselves especially as private citizens and also as members of this Council to the program that we have suggested for advancing our trade program, particularly our ties with Western Europe. We have a great story to tell, and I am hopeful that as Western Europe, which has really come out of the ashes in such a short time, and the tremendous vitality of the United States, and that of Japan, if tied closer and closer together, can serve as a valuable base from which we can expand the cause of freedom around the world.
     None of us who believes in freedom can help but be impressed and convinced more than ever of the essential vigor of our cause than to compare West Germany and East Germany, Japan and China, West Berlin and East Berlin. The story is very clearly told. Chairman Khrushchev made a long speech and has difficult agricultural problems. And so do we. But I certainly would not exchange ours. With 8 percent of the population of our country on agriculture, our problem is overproduction. With a much larger percentage of the population on his farms, his problem is underproduction.
     So that this is a great system and a great cause with which we are identified, and I am especially anxious, both from our own economic interests - agriculture, labor and business - that we become more intimately associated with the great effort which is being made in Europe.
     We, after all, played a large role in building that economy. We have, as you know, talked a good deal about the Alliance for Progress, but in the short space of 3 or 4 years we put over thirteen and a half billion dollars into building Europe. And now Europe is becoming stronger. Its economic growth rate is almost double ours, in Germany, France, and Italy.
     We want to maintain, both for economic and political reasons, the closest association with Europe, and stretching the other way with Japan. And therefore, this program is important. It is a bipartisan program. It has had the support of men like Christian Herter and Will Clayton. It has had the general endorsement of men like President Eisenhower and Henry Cabot Lodge, and others. It is not a matter which should separate us on the basis of party, but is a matter which I think concerns us all as Americans and as people who believe in the development of our country.
     So that I hope that you will, after analyzing it, recognizing that there are disadvantages to every proposal, recognize that in this case the advantages far outweigh any disadvantages, and that it is a method of strengthening our country, strengthening it in the fight to preserve it, and also strengthening our opportunities.
     And it is, I believe, a most vital matter in the coming year. It is not a matter which has great political appeal, perhaps, to either party, but it is a matter which is of basic importance to the United States and, as influential leaders of the United States, deserves your interest and I hope will merit your support.
     We live in a difficult time, and our problems are difficult, and I know many Americans get discouraged, and also are concerned with whether we are doing enough in many areas of the world. My strong feeling is that the people of this country are not fully aware of what a tremendous burden we really carry, and really how pleased we should be and proud of the tremendous effort which we make to sustain freedom in so many places.
     We make a tremendous contribution, even today, to the defense of Western Europe - even at great cost to ourselves. Our balance of payments problem would disappear overnight if it were not for the effort which we are making in Europe and other places around the world to permit those areas to maintain their freedom.
     When we are on occasions lectured to by others about getting our house in order, I would remind them that if the United States had been concerned only with that problem and not with the defense of freedom, that the balance of trade has been in our favor every year with the exception of 1 year in the last 10 or 15 years, and gold could pour into our coffers - and what we do in Western Europe which is a prosperous area - we are carrying a load in Latin America - we carry a great load in Africa - we carry a great load in Asia - Greece, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Viet-Nam, the Republic of China - all the way up to South Korea. And even in those areas where we are joined by others in a consortium, it is the United States that bears by far the major burden. So that we need apologize to none.
     What we hope is that our example of effort over the period of 15 years since the Marshall plan will inspire others to join with us, particularly those who are now prosperous, in an effort to permit newly independent states to develop and maintain their independence.
     So that as an American I am proud of the effort that this country has made. It is almost unprecedented. We don't seek satellites but friends. None of our efforts, really, in the area I was just talking about, is directed to an economic advantage to us. We seek the association of others. We welcome them. We hope that all will recognize what we recognized 15 years ago, that if a few are prosperous and many are poor, the stability of the world will be endangered. I want to express my thanks to you again. You are performing a public service, and in these days it is an obligation on us all to do that. And I only wanted you to know that your efforts are appreciated - are known - and that you can feel satisfaction that you have lifted your hand on behalf of your country at a time when it needed your help.
     Thank you.