THE TASK OF THE NEXT PRESIDENT

Vice President Nixon has told friends that he has neither the talent nor the personality to be a great orator. But by the time he was halfway through his acceptance speech--much of it memorized, some of it extemporized, all of it the result of weeks of reading and scribbling--he had brought the Republican Convention to its emotional peak. Cheering, foot-stomping delegates interrupted him 74 times (v. 36 for Jack Kennedy) as he laid down his own program for the American future. Excerpts:

WE are in a race tonight, my fellow Americans, in a race for survival in which our lives, our fortunes, our liberties are at stake. We are ahead now. But the only way to stay ahead in a race is to move ahead, and the next President will make decisions which will determine whether we win or whether we lose.

What must he do? These things, I believe: he must resolve first and above all that the United States must never settle for second best in anything. Militarily the security of the United States must be put before all other considerations. Diplomatically, our next President must be firm, firm on principle. But he must never be belligerent. While he must never answer insults in kind, he must leave no doubt at any time that, whether it is in Berlin or in Cuba or anywhere else in the world, America will not tolerate being pushed around by anybody, any place. We have already paid a terrible price in lives and resources to learn that appeasement leads not to peace but to war. And he must develop a grand new strategy that will win the battle for freedom for all men and women without a war. That is the great task of the next President of the United States.

This will be a difficult task. Difficult because at times our next President must tell the people not what they want to hear but what they need to hear. Why, for example, it may be just as essential to the national interest to build a dam in India as in California. It will be difficult, too, because we Americans have always been able to see and understand the danger presented by missiles and airplanes and bombs, but we found it hard to recognize the even more deadly danger of the propaganda that warps the mind, the economic offensive that softens the nation, the subversion that destroys the will to resist tyranny.

The Strike Force

There are some things we must do.

First, we must take the necessary steps which will assure that the American economy grows at a maximum rate so that we can maintain our present massive lead over the Communist bloc.

There isn't any magic formula by which government in a free nation can bring this about. The way to ensure maximum growth in America is not by expanding the functions of government but by increasing the opportunities for investment and creative enterprise for millions of individual Americans.

Second, our government activity must be reorganized--reorganized to take the initiative from the Communists and to develop and carry out a worldwide strategy, an offensive for peace and freedom. The complex of agencies which has grown up through the years for exchange of persons, for technical assistance, for information, for loans and for grants, all these must be welded together into one powerful economic and ideological striking force under the direct supervision and leadership of the President.

The Communists proclaim over and over again that their aim is the victory of Communism throughout the world. It is not enough for us to reply that our aim is to contain Communism, to defend the free world against Communism, to hold the line against Communism. The only answer to a strategy of victory for the Communist world is a strategy of victory for the free world.

But let the victory we seek be not victory over any other nation or any other people. Let it be the victory of freedom over tyranny, of plenty over hunger, of health over disease, in every country of the world. When Mr. Khrushchev says our grandchildren will live under Communism, let us say his grandchildren will live in freedom.

Let us welcome Mr. Khrushchev's challenge to peaceful competition of our systems. And further, let us welcome the challenge presented by the revolution of peaceful peoples' aspirations in South America, in Asia, in Africa. We can't fail to assist them in finding a way to progress with freedom.

The Total Commitment

What America needs today is not just a President, not just a few leaders, but millions of Americans working for the victory of freedom. Each American must make a personal and total commitment to the cause of freedom and all it stands for.

It means wage earners and employers making an extra effort to increase the productivity of our factories. It means our students in schools striving for excellence rather than adjusting to mediocrity. It means supporting, encouraging our scientists to explore the unknown, not for just what we can get but for what we can learn.

And it means, on the part of each

American, assuming personal responsibility to make this country which we love a proud example of freedom for all the world. Each of us, for example, doing our part in ending the prejudice which, 100 years after Lincoln, to our shame still embarrasses us abroad and saps our strength at home. Each of us participating in this and other political campaigns, not just by going to the polls and voting, but working with the candidate of your choice.

And it means, my fellow Americans, it means sacrifice. But not the grim sacrifice of desperation, but the rewarding sacrifice of choice which lifts us out of the humdrum life in which we live and gives us the supreme satisfaction which comes from working together in a cause greater than ourselves, greater than our nation, as great as the whole world itself.

The Exciting Difference

There is a difference today, an exciting difference. For the first time in human history we have the resources to wage a winning war against poverty, misery and disease wherever it exists in the world, and upon the next President of the United States will rest the responsibility to inspire and to lead the forces of freedom toward this goal.

I can only say tonight to you that I believe in the American dream because I have seen it come true in my own life. I know something of the threat which confronts us, and I know something of the effort which will be needed to meet it. I have seen hate for America, not only in the Kremlin, but in the eyes of Communists in our own country and on the ugly face of a mob in Caracas. I have heard doubts about America expressed not just by Communists but by sincere students and labor leaders in other countries wondering if we had lost the way. And I have seen love for America in countries throughout the world--in Djakarta, in Bogota, in the heart of Siberia, in Warsaw--250,000 people in the streets on a Sunday afternoon, singing, crying with tears running down their cheeks and shouting: "Niech! Zyje! Long live the United States!"

And I know, my fellow Americans, I know tonight that we must resist the hate. We must remove the doubts. But above all we must be worthy of the love and the trust of millions on this earth for whom America is the hope of the world.

A hundred years ago Abraham Lincoln was asked during the dark days of the tragic war between the states whether he thought God was on his side. His answer was, "My concern is not whether God is on our side, but whether we are on God's side." My fellow Americans, may that ever be our prayer for our country. And in that spirit, with faith in America, with faith in her ideals and in her people, I accept your nomination for President of the United States.

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