PRESIDENT John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the most eloquent and articulate leader of our time. While no President can personally case the original draft of every message, proclamation, letter, or speech, he took pains to have a major hand in every major Presidential paper. A gifted writer and speaker since his youth, he chose his words with particular care, preferring precision to generalities, simplicity in place of pomposity, and understatement rather than exaggeration.  He wished his statement to be comprehensive but still concise, emphatic without being repetitive, well-documented and organized without being dull and incomprehensible.
       His extemporaneous speeches and press conference remarks sparkled with an extraordinary amount of soft-spoken humor and candor. His formal toasts and ceremonial talks put all at ease with their informality. His knowledge of history and literature, combined with unusual empathy with his audiences, brightens many of the pages that follow.
      What mattered most, of course, were not the words but the ideas they conveyed - and John F. Kennedy more than any other man of our time was willing to try out new ideas and challenge old entrenched ones. He looked to the future as well as the past, primarily to what was required and not merely to what was popular. His only commitment was to his country and conscience, and no petty partisan interest or other narrow dogma could detract or diminish his determination to do what was right.
      The public papers of a President cannot capture the full flavor of the man and his philosophy - for there is much that is not said or written publicly, and much that is not said or written at all, only felt and observed.  Nevertheless these papers constitute a basic and invaluable part of a record which all should know.
      1963 - like 1961 and 1962 - was filled with moments of crisis and pressure for President Kennedy - crises and pressures which he met with his customary skill and grace, as reflected in many of these pages. No similar volume of Presidential papers in our time, certainly, would show such compassion for the rights of man and such courage in the search for peace.
      That this volume - and series - should come to a sudden, senseless end on the tragic day of November 22d is a fact still too painful to discuss or even comprehend. Countless individuals have noted that the President's death affected them even more deeply than the death of their own parents. The reason, I believe, is that the latter situation most often represented a loss of the past - while the assassination of President Kennedy represented an incalculable loss of the future. It is a small but important source of comfort to realize that in this volume, and in the companion volumes for 1961 and 1962, he succeeded in presenting to us all his wise and thoughtful recommendations for every major area of American public policy.
      The task of every citizen, in public or private life, is to accept and preserve and extend this legacy and, above all, to be worthy of it.

The White House
December 1963