John F. Kennedy: “Each day we draw nearer the hour of maximum danger, as weapons spread and hostile forces grow stronger.”

If, on the other hand, we hang back in deference to local economic pressures, we will find ourselves cut off from our major allies.

For together we face a common challenge: to enlarge the prosperity of free men everywhere--to build in partnership a new trading community in which all free nations may gain from the productive energy of free competitive effort.

Before my term has ended, we shall have to test anew whether a nation organized and governed such as ours can endure.

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