I am fully confident that the response of the Congress and of the American people will make this time of test a time of honor.  Mankind then will see more clearly than ever that the future belongs, not to the concept of the regimented atheistic state, but to the people—­the God-fearing, peace-loving people of all the world.

The Address as reported from the floor appears in the Congressional Record (vol. 104, p. 171).

***

State of the Union Address
Dwight D. Eisenhower
January 9, 1959

Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the 86th Congress, my fellow citizens: 

This is the moment when Congress and the Executive annually begin their cooperative work to build a better America.

One basic purpose unites us:  To promote strength and security, side by side with liberty and opportunity.

As we meet today, in the 170th year of the Republic, our Nation must continue to provide—­as all other free governments have had to do throughout time—­a satisfactory answer to a question as old as history.  It is:  Can Government based upon liberty and the God-given rights of man, permanently endure when ceaselessly challenged by a dictatorship, hostile to our mode of life, and controlling an economic and military power of great and growing strength?

For us the answer has always been found, and is still found in the devotion, the vision, the courage and the fortitude of our people.

Moreover, this challenge we face, not as a single powerful nation, but as one that has in recent decades reached a position of recognized leadership in the Free World.

We have arrived at this position of leadership in an era of remarkable productivity and growth.  It is also a time when man’s power of mass destruction has reached fearful proportions.

Possession of such capabilities helps create world suspicion and tension.  We, on our part, know that we seek only a just peace for all, with aggressive designs against no one.  Yet we realize that there is uneasiness in the world because of a belief on the part of peoples that through arrogance, miscalculation or fear of attack, catastrophic war could be launched.  Keeping the peace in today’s world more than ever calls for the utmost in the nation’s resolution, wisdom, steadiness and unremitting effort.

We cannot build peace through desire alone.  Moreover, we have learned the bitter lesson that international agreements, historically considered by us as sacred, are regarded in Communist doctrine and in practice to be mere scraps of paper.  The most recent proof of their disdain of international obligations, solemnly undertaken, is their announced intention to abandon their responsibilities respecting Berlin.

As a consequence, we can have no confidence in any treaty to which Communists are a party except where such a treaty provides within itself for self-enforcing mechanisms.  Indeed, the demonstrated disregard of the Communists of their own pledges is one of the greatest obstacles to success in substituting the Rule of Law for rule by force.