This faith defines our full view of life.  It establishes, beyond debate, those gifts of the Creator that are man’s inalienable rights, and that make all men equal in His sight.

In the light of this equality, we know that the virtues most cherished by free people—­love of truth, pride of work, devotion to country—­all are treasures equally precious in the lives of the most humble and of the most exalted.  The men who mine coal and fire furnaces and balance ledgers and turn lathes and pick cotton and heal the sick and plant corn—­all serve as proudly, and as profitably, for America as the statesmen who draft treaties and the legislators who enact laws.

This faith rules our whole way of life.  It decrees that we, the people, elect leaders not to rule but to serve.  It asserts that we have the right to choice of our own work and to the reward of our own toil.  It inspires the initiative that makes our productivity the wonder of the world.  And it warns that any man who seeks to deny equality among all his brothers betrays the spirit of the free and invites the mockery of the tyrant.

It is because we, all of us, hold to these principles that the political changes accomplished this day do not imply turbulence, upheaval or disorder.  Rather this change expresses a purpose of strengthening our dedication and devotion to the precepts of our founding documents, a conscious renewal of faith in our country and in the watchfulness of a Divine Providence.

The enemies of this faith know no god but force, no devotion but its use.  They tutor men in treason.  They feed upon the hunger of others.  Whatever defies them, they torture, especially the truth.

Here, then, is joined no argument between slightly differing philosophies.  This conflict strikes directly at the faith of our fathers and the lives of our sons.  No principle or treasure that we hold, from the spiritual knowledge of our free schools and churches to the creative magic of free labor and capital, nothing lies safely beyond the reach of this struggle.

Freedom is pitted against slavery; lightness against the dark.

The faith we hold belongs not to us alone but to the free of all the world.  This common bond binds the grower of rice in Burma and the planter of wheat in Iowa, the shepherd in southern Italy and the mountaineer in the Andes.  It confers a common dignity upon the French soldier who dies in Indo-China, the British soldier killed in Malaya, the American life given in Korea.

We know, beyond this, that we are linked to all free peoples not merely by a noble idea but by a simple need.  No free people can for long cling to any privilege or enjoy any safety in economic solitude.  For all our own material might, even we need markets in the world for the surpluses of our farms and our factories.  Equally, we need for these same farms and factories vital materials and products of distant lands.  This basic law of interdependence, so manifest in the commerce of peace, applies with thousand-fold intensity in the event of war.