My fellow citizens: 

The world and we have passed the midway point of a century of continuing challenge.  We sense with all our faculties that forces of good and evil are massed and armed and opposed as rarely before in history.

This fact defines the meaning of this day.  We are summoned by this honored and historic ceremony to witness more than the act of one citizen swearing his oath of service, in the presence of God.  We are called as a people to give testimony in the sight of the world to our faith that the future shall belong to the free.

Since this century’s beginning, a time of tempest has seemed to come upon the continents of the earth.  Masses of Asia have awakened to strike off shackles of the past.  Great nations of Europe have fought their bloodiest wars.  Thrones have toppled and their vast empires have disappeared.  New nations have been born.

For our own country, it has been a time of recurring trial.  We have grown in power and in responsibility.  We have passed through the anxieties of depression and of war to a summit unmatched in man’s history.  Seeking to secure peace in the world, we have had to fight through the forests of the Argonne, to the shores of Iwo Jima, and to the cold mountains of Korea.

In the swift rush of great events, we find ourselves groping to know the full sense and meaning of these times in which we live.  In our quest of understanding, we beseech God’s guidance.  We summon all our knowledge of the past and we scan all signs of the future.  We bring all our wit and all our will to meet the question: 

How far have we come in man’s long pilgrimage from darkness toward light?  Are we nearing the light—­a day of freedom and of peace for all mankind?  Or are the shadows of another night closing in upon us?

Great as are the preoccupations absorbing us at home, concerned as we are with matters that deeply affect our livelihood today and our vision of the future, each of these domestic problems is dwarfed by, and often even created by, this question that involves all humankind.

This trial comes at a moment when man’s power to achieve good or to inflict evil surpasses the brightest hopes and the sharpest fears of all ages.  We can turn rivers in their courses, level mountains to the plains.  Oceans and land and sky are avenues for our colossal commerce.  Disease diminishes and life lengthens.

Yet the promise of this life is imperiled by the very genius that has made it possible.  Nations amass wealth.  Labor sweats to create—­and turns out devices to level not only mountains but also cities.  Science seems ready to confer upon us, as its final gift, the power to erase human life from this planet.

At such a time in history, we who are free must proclaim anew our faith.  This faith is the abiding creed of our fathers.  It is our faith in the deathless dignity of man, governed by eternal moral and natural laws.