John F. Kennedy: “Nothing we could do to help the developing countries would help them half as much as a booming U.S. economy.”

These various elements in our foreign policy lead, as I have said, to a single goal--the goal of a peaceful world of free and independent states.

I speak today in an hour of national peril and national opportunity.

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

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