John F. Kennedy: “But if these programs were ever to be ended, our failures in a dozen countries would be sudden and certain.”

For you and I are privileged to serve the great Republic in what could be the most decisive decade in its long history.

Neither money nor technical assistance, however, can be our only weapon against poverty.

A year ago, in assuming the tasks of the Presidency, I said that few generations, in all history, had been granted the role of being the great defender of freedom in its hour of maximum danger.

For this is the most urgent task confronting the Congress in 1963.