In too much of the earth there is want, discord, danger.  New forces and new nations stir and strive across the earth, with power to bring, by their fate, great good or great evil to the free world’s future.  From the deserts of North Africa to the islands of the South Pacific one third of all mankind has entered upon an historic struggle for a new freedom; freedom from grinding poverty.  Across all continents, nearly a billion people seek, sometimes almost in desperation, for the skills and knowledge and assistance by which they may satisfy from their own resources, the material wants common to all mankind.

No nation, however old or great, escapes this tempest of change and turmoil.  Some, impoverished by the recent World War, seek to restore their means of livelihood.  In the heart of Europe, Germany still stands tragically divided.  So is the whole continent divided.  And so, too, is all the world.

The divisive force is International Communism and the power that it controls.

The designs of that power, dark in purpose, are clear in practice.  It strives to seal forever the fate of those it has enslaved.  It strives to break the ties that unite the free.  And it strives to capture—­to exploit for its own greater power—­all forces of change in the world, especially the needs of the hungry and the hopes of the oppressed.

Yet the world of International Communism has itself been shaken by a fierce and mighty force:  the readiness of men who love freedom to pledge their lives to that love.  Through the night of their bondage, the unconquerable will of heroes has struck with the swift, sharp thrust of lightning.  Budapest is no longer merely the name of a city; henceforth it is a new and shining symbol of man’s yearning to be free.

Thus across all the globe there harshly blow the winds of change.  And, we—­though fortunate be our lot—­know that we can never turn our backs to them.

We look upon this shaken earth, and we declare our firm and fixed purpose—­the building of a peace with justice in a world where moral law prevails.

The building of such a peace is a bold and solemn purpose.  To proclaim it is easy.  To serve it will be hard.  And to attain it, we must be aware of its full meaning—­and ready to pay its full price.

We know clearly what we seek, and why.

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.  And now, as in no other age, we seek it because we have been warned, by the power of modern weapons, that peace may be the only climate possible for human life itself.

Yet this peace we seek cannot be born of fear alone:  it must be rooted in the lives of nations.  There must be justice, sensed and shared by all peoples, for, without justice the world can know only a tense and unstable truce.  There must be law, steadily invoked and respected by all nations, for without law, the world promises only such meager justice as the pity of the strong upon the weak.  But the law of which we speak, comprehending the values of freedom, affirms the equality of all nations, great and small.