Today we can set ambitious goals for the future:--full education for every citizen to the limits of his capacity to absorb it;--good health for every citizen to the limits of our country's capacity to provide it.

We should all remember the nurses, doctors, and countless volunteers who stand watch around the clock in hospitals, tents, shelters--wherever there is human need or suffering--here and in Vietnam this very minute.

This administration intends to bring the healing miracle of modern medicine to everyone in this country, no matter how remotely they live from the city.

We must make sure that they can meet their health needs.

The Nurse Training Act of 1964, which we have met this morning to finally sign and complete, represents the response of an enlightened Congress to the urgent need.

Ours is the wealthiest of nations, yet one-sixth of our people live below minimal levels of health, housing, food and education.

Action must also be taken to improve the care, the training, and the rehabilitation of those who are already afflicted by retardation.

I am gratified to learn that the Commissioners have already started surveying the mental health problems and needs of the District and developing a comprehensive community mental health plan.

Mental retardation ranks with mental health as a major health, social, and economic problem in this country.

I have suggested having a peace corps of young men and women who will be willing to spend 2 or 3 years of their lives as teachers and nurses, working in different countries which are backward and which are just beginning to develop, spreading the cause of freedom.

So in the same fashion, other diseases coming under control have each had as one of the contributing factors these great dedicated officers, doctors and technicians, nurses and others of the Armed Services' Medical Corps.

All duties, powers, and functions incident to the hospitalization of members or former members of the uniformed services placed on the temporary disability retired list or permanently retired for physical disability or receiving disability retirement pay who require hospitalization for chronic diseases shall be vested in the Administrator of Veterans' Affairs.

Medical science has won victory after victory over the deadliest diseases of a generation ago.

Any local physician employed on a fee basis or a part-time basis, where, in the opinion of the commission, the establishment of registers is impracticable.

The public health has apparently never been better than it has been over the past 6 months.

BOTH personally and as Honorary Chairman of the American Child Health Association it is a pleasure to most cordially wish you every success in the new season's work at Seaside Hospital which so effectively serves the needy children of New York.

I am glad to lend the encouragement of the Presidency to the movement symbolized by National Hospital Day.