H.
WILLIAM
WEATHERSBY
Publisher DEAN
BROWN
Editor
V. S.
NANDA
Managing
Editor
LOKENATH
BHATTACHARYA
IN THIS ISSUE JOHN F. KENNEDY
4
by Arthur M; Schlesinger, Jr.
A VISION OF ENERGY AND GRACE
12
A DEATH IN THE AMERICAN FAMILY
22
THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY
27
Senior Staff Editor
V. S.
MANIAM
Feature Editor
B. Roy
CHOUDHURY
Senior Artist NAND
K.
KATYAL
by Allan Nevins
Design Artist AVINASH
PASRICHA
THE RULE OF LAW
34
LYNDON B. JOHNSON
35
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Circulation
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Front Cover: President Lyndon B Johnson. Back Cover: Presidents S.Radhakrishnan and John Kennedy illJune 1963.
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"This is a dangerous and uncertain world . . . . No one expects our lives to be easy-not
in this decade) not in this century."
HE PRESIDENT of the United States of America was dead.
T
The war hero, the Congressman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, the Senator from Massachusetts, the eloquent, exuberant political campaigner, the youngest man ever elected President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was dead at forty-six years of age, shot down by an assassin in the streets of Dallas, Texas, in the bright noon sunshine. Now there was a new President. Seven times before that tragic moment in Dallas an American President had died in office, three times by assassination. Seven times before the office had been filled by the Vice President. That was the law. That was the way prescribed in a one sentence clause in the American Constitution of 1787. Should the President die in office, his powers and duties were to be assumed by the Vice President. And that was the way it would be done in America in 1963, swiftly, quietly, according to law. On November 22, 1963, Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson became President Lyndon Baines Johnson. The days that followed are now part of history. There were long hours of painful grief for people across a continent and around the world. There were scenes of such inexpressible sorrow as these ••• the small boy, age threethe beloved "John-John"-saluting his father's casket as it passed by •.• the tall new President placing a wreath before the flag-draped casket of his dead chief. And then, there were scenes of renewed hope and confidence • • . as the new President went before the Congress and the world, and slowly, surely, in a voice touched with the soft tones of his native Texas, with words ringing with conviction, rededicated his government and his people to their highest principles and dreams.
JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY VERY SIGNIFICANT statesman must possess-and be possessed by-a vision of the future. He must have some instinct about the grand movements of history and must perceive some direction in which he supposes the world is moving. He must have a conception of the historical process which connects what has been and what is to come and which therefore gives his present deeds and decisions a setting and a point. Implanted within him, there must be an image, not necessarily conscious or explicit, but plastic and capacious, of the world he strives to bring into being. For some political figures in our time, this vision has been malevolent-as Hitler's nightmare conviction about the inevitable victory of the thousand-year Reich and the Master Race; or Lenin's cold prophecy of inexorable social evolution through predestined stages to the predestined conclusion of a monolithic communist world. For others, the vision has been romantic-as Churchill's chivalrous view of a world where gallant captains battle to keep alive the values of decency and honour; or de Gaulle's unconquerable faith in the nation-state as the ultimate reality. For the great American leaders of this centuryTheodore Roosevelt, Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt-the vision has been characteristically pragmatic. It has been flexible, generous and untidy, tolerant of diversity and discord, contemptuous of dogma and ideology, exhilarated by the idea of a changing world in an unfinished universe, yet profoundly committed, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, to the vindication of man's unalienable rights to "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." John F. Kennedy inherited this American vision. But he gave it distinctive and penetrating expression. His was the vision of the first President of the United States to be born in the twentieth century. And his was the vision of a man who saw the human struggle, not as a moralist, but as an historian, even as an ironist-yet for whom irony never severed the nerve of action.
E
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., has served as a Special Assistant to both President Kennedy and President Johnson. The son of a noted historian, he has been a Professor of History at Harvard and a prolific writer on American politics. He is the author of three volumes on Franklin D. Roosevelt and a study of Andrew Jackson, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize.
He was born during the First World War. He came of age during the Great Depression. He fought, and nearly died, in the Second World War. Though his own life had been exceptionally privileged, history in his time had been a panorama of disenchantment, in which the mature man had but few realities left to cling to-family, friendship, physical courage, intellectual discipline, compassion, wit, power. Experience led him to distance himself from emotion. Yet only the unwary could suppose that this was because he felt too little. It was because he felt too much and had to compose himself for a world which was filled with disorder and anguish. In his five-year report as a member of the Class of 1940 at Harvard, written soon after the end of the Second World War, he announced himself as a pessimist about the future. In a press conference a few months before his assassination, speaking about the demobilization of the reserves after the Berlin crisis, he said, "There is always an inequity in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded, and some men never leave the country .... Life is unfair." He said this, not with bitterness, but with the knowledge of one who had lived through a bitter age-a knowledge which stamped him as a son of that age. And thus he began his inaugural address by saying, "Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has passed to a new generation of Americans-born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace." He spoke for this generation, not alone in his own country, but, I believe, throughout the world. He understood the generation's moodthe disdain for pomposity, the mistrust of rhetoric, the impatience with the postures and pieties of the past, the expectation of disappointment. And, at the same time, he understood this generation's longings-for fulfilment in experience, for the subordination of selfish impulses to higher ideals, for valour and affection and honour. Hopeless as the world might be, it was a world made by man, and it could therefore be changed by man and even perhaps saved by man. He agreed with Abraham Lincoln, who, deeply convinced of the frailty of human striving, nevertheless called for "firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right." By affirming the obligation to act, John Kennedy lifted his own generation out of its superficial disillusion, its transient love affair with impotence and self, and imbued it with new convictions of purpose and hope. Continued on next page
"It is the profound tendencies of history and not the passing excitements that will shape our future."
And so John Kennedy looked on the world and perceived in complexity and discouragement no argument against participation. And, as he looked on the world, he saw it with the eyes of an historian. He did not see it as a great battlefield between good and evil, right and wrong, good guys and bad guys; but rather as an obscure and intricate drama, in which men, institutions and ideas, all bedevilled by the sin of self-righteousness, conspired to rush humanity to the brink of destruction, and where salvation lay in man's liberation from ideology, myth, stereotype and fanaticism, and in getting down to the business at hand. He was supremely a man of reason in an irrational world. But he was a man of reason who never flinched from the obligation to act. His vision of the world was strong and lucid-and he came at the end to feel much greater optimism about the shape of things to come than he had felt at the close of the war. "It is the profound tendencies of history," he said in an address at the University of California on March 23, 1962, "and not the passing excitements, that will shape our future." These profound historic tendencies, he said, were moving the world, not towards speedily towards a genuine world community, in which each uniformity, but towards diversity-towards "a world where, nation would express its own identity without violating its within the framework of international co-operation, every loyalty to the order of international equity and peace-the country can solve its own problems according to its own traditions and ideals." The emerging world would be "a world order which was finding its first approximate embodiment in the United Nations. And, in the age of the nuclear bomb, such based on diversity, self-determination, freedom." The principles of this emerging world, he pointed out, a world became not just an agreeable hope but an urgent neces"far from being opposed to the American conception of world sity. As he told the United Nations on September 25, 1961, "A nuclear disaster, spread by wind and water and fear, could order, represent the very essence of our view of the future." well engulf the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the He dismissed the notion "that the American mission is to remake committed and the uncommitted alike. Mankind must put an the world in the American image." And he pointed out too that the emerging world would inevitably reject the communist idea . end to war-or war will put an end to mankind .... We in this "of a monolithic world-a world where all knowledge has a hall shall be remembered either as part of the generation that single pattern, all societies move towards a single model, and turned this planet into a flaming funeral pyre or the generation all problems and roads have a single solution and a single that met its vow 'to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.' ... Together we shall save our planet, or destination;" that it would "irresistibly burst the bonds of the together we shall perish in its flames." communist organization and the communist ideology." This was the pattern of his policy in the world: he sought, No one who examines the modern world can doubt that the day in and day out, a world of peace, of liberty and of justice. great currents of history are carrying the world away from To achieve such a world, it was first necessary to make the the monolithic idea towards the pluralistic idea-away from world unsafe for aggression. Kennedy liked the image of the communism and towards national independence and freeAmerican jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes-the image of "freedom dom. No one can doubt that the wave of the future is not leaning on her spear" -and he knew that only force could deter the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but force. Thus he built up the armed strength of his country and, the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and in particular, he enlarged its capacity to respond to aggression free men. at all levels, from nuclear war through conventional war to His hope, as he said at American University, Washington, on guerilla attack. Thus too he committed his nation to the defence June 10, 1963, was to "make the world safe for diversity." of the freedom of West Berlin. Thus he offered support to The world, as he saw it, had room for a great variety of nations like India and Viet Nam threatened by external foes. economic systems, political creeds and religious faiths, so long Thus, above all, when faced by the Soviet effort to install nuclear as each respected the right of others to exist. The point of weapons in Cuba, he confronted the Soviet leaders with the American foreign policy, in his mind, was to move steadily and
choice between war and retreat and compelled them to liquidate the most drastic threat to the peace since the Second World War. In crisis, he was forever cool and restrained, but no one could doubt his determination to end aggression on this planet. Yet the deterrence of aggression could never be enough. All nations, whatever their national ambitions, whatever their ideologies, had, he believed, a common interest in the survival of man. This common interest was the bridge across the dark abyss. President Kennedy's deepest purpose was to strengthen that bridge against the storms of suspicion and fear. From the start of his administration, he had striven for a treaty outlawing nuclear tests. Though the test-ban treaty of 1963 did not go so far as he might have wished, it represented an enormous gain in mankind's defence against self-destruction. For Kennedy, it was the first step in a journey which he hoped would some day end in the establishment of general and complete disarmament and the abolition of the institution of war. He had no illusions about reaching his destination over-night. But this never seemed to him an excuse for postponing the trip. He had a favourite story about Marshal Lyautey, who once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slowgrowing and would not reach maturity for a hundred years. Lyautey replied, "In that case, there is no time to lose. Plant it this afternoon." As he laboured to remove the overhanging threat of nuclear war, so he laboured to build the independence and strength of the free states of the world. Under his leadership, the American foreign aid programme altered its direction and began to concentrate on the provision of development assistance to the emerging nations. Very little was closer to his heart than the Alliance
for Progress, that vast, continent-wide effort to raise living standards, promote economic growth, induce social reform and combat poverty, illiteracy and disease in the Western hemisphere. He looked forward too to an ever closer partnership between the United States and Western Europe and welcomed the success of the European Common Market, regardless of the economic problems it posed for the United States. He was deeply concerned with the problems of the new nations of Africa, personally supervised the policies which preserved the unity of the Congo and worried a great deal on the best way of dealing with the evil of apartheid. In the Middle East and Asia, he followed in astonishing detail the efforts of the developing nations to strengthen their political and economic vitality. And he hoped that the stabilization of commodity prices and the expansion of trade would bind the free states, old and new, together in a rising tide of economic and social welfare. But, in last resort, a statesman's vision of the world gains its force and purpose from his vision of his own country. Kennedy had a lofty conception of the United States and well knew where his own nation had fallen short of its own best standards. Nothing concerned him more in his Presidency than the struggle to assure Negro Americans their equal rights as American citizens. "We are confronted primarily with a moral issue," he said. "It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution .... This nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free." No President since Lincoln laboured harder in this struggle, and none won so completely the loyalty and love of the Negro community. With the assistance of Vice President Lyndon Johnson, he worked Continued all next page
"We shall do our part to build a world of peace) where the weak are safe) and the strong are just.))
to gain the Negro equal opportunities in employment. With the assistance of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, he used the full force of the executive power to end discrimination in education, in transportation, in voting, in housing. He twice called out the armed forces to insure Negro students their right to attend state universities. This was only part of his vision of America. He regarded poverty and unemployment as nearly as great a national scandal as segregation, and he repeatedly called on Congress to take action to enlarge economic opportunity and stimulate economic growth. He sought to improve the quantity and quality of education and medical services available to the people, to conserve and develop the natural resources of the nation and to improve the national estate. Nor was his interest narrowly confined to social and economic matters. He saw America, not as an old nation, self-righteous, conservative, complacent in its grossness and materialism, but as a young nation, questing, self-critical, dissatisfied, caring for greatness as well as bigness, caring for the qualities of mind, sensibility and spirit which sustain culture, produce art and elevate society. He was the most civilized President America had had since Jefferson, and his wife made the White House the most civilized house in America. Never had any President so recognized and respected the central place of the arts in a vital society. A month before his assassination, President Kennedy spoke at the dedication of a library at Amherst College to the memory of his good friend Robert Frost. He said at that time: The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the nation's greatness. But the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable .... For they determine whether we use power or power uses us. And he concluded: I look forward to a great future for America-a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purposes. I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty ... which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft . .. which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well. This was his America and his world-and it will not perish with him. For John Kennedy was no accident in American politics, no aberration in American society. He became the youngest man ever elected President of the United States because he expressed so faithfully, vividly and brilliantly the deepest and best impulses in American life. The energies he released, the standards he established, the ideals he set-these will inspire and guide his fellow countrymen for generations to come. He leaves behind an invincible legacy-of civility and courage and honour and faith. •
HEROISM, SPORTS, LOVEWITH VIGOUR
V
WAS ONE of John Kennedy's favourite words. It was a quality he greatly admired and greatly possessed. He came from what must be one of the world's most vigorous families. "When the going gets tough," their father told the Kennedy children, "the tough get going." As children and as adults, they swam, sailed, and battled each other at tennis and touch football as fiercely as they admired each other. When Jack ran for office, everybody helped in the campaigns. At seventy his mother was still meeting and charming voters for him. To strengthen his back, injured at football, he did five months of exercises, enough to get into the Navy during World War II. Assigned to a desk in Washington, he pleaded for active duty in the Pacific and got it. When spinal operations in 1954 and 1955 made him an invalid, he used his months in bed to write a book. Characteristically, it was a study of examples of courage in American politics (See SPANJanuary 1963). As President, he stirred up more people, ideas, and enthusiasm than had been stirred since the early days of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. IGOUR
1939 picture of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr" with his two eldest sons, Joe, Jr., killed in action in World War II, left. and John, right.
Tumultuous path to an eloquent beginning
The Kennedy family in 1960. Left to right, seated: Eunice Kennedy Shriver; Mrs. Joseph Kennedy; Joseph Kennedy, Sr.; Jacqueline Kennedy; Edward Kennedy. Standing: Mrs. Robert Kennedy; Stephen Smith; Jean Kennedy Smith; J. F. K.; Robert Kennedy; Patricia Kennedy Lawford; Sargent Shriver; Mrs. Edwqrd Kennedy; Peter Lawford.
"We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom-symbolizing an end as well as a beginning-signifying renewal as well as change.Âť -JOHN
F.
KE
NEDY
Inaugural Address
A VISION OF ENERGY AND GRACE ERFECT SYMBOL of the brief Kennedy era, a rocket lifts off on its journey to space. John F. Kennedy dreamed that his country would lead mankind in exploring the stars. At his urging, rockets and men's minds soared to seek knowledge; at his example, American spirits soared, too. His countrymen saw in him the best of what they hoped were their national characteristics. His energy, his confidence, his goodwill inspired their reflections in other men. He was a man of ideas. To advise him he called on some of the nation's brightest minds. He loved to talk about ideas and he was quick to find a graceful phrase. He enjoyed the test of reporters' questions at press conferences and his answers were likely to be crisp and witty. He had a certain style. He carried his terrible responsibilities as he did his great virtues, with easy dignity. He needed people. From the love and admiration of thousands of people whom he could greet only with a handshake or wave, he seemed to draw something which was vital to his life. How much Americans in turn drew from him they now know. Continued on next page
P
THE REACH OF THE DREAM WAS WORLD-WIDE
Mrs. Kennedy, during her 1961 India visit, evoked the same enthusiasm from people.
((What kind of a peace do we seek? ... Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace) the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living) the kind that enablesmen and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children-not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women) not merely peace in our time but peace for all time."
At dinner honouring Nobel awardees, President and Mrs. Kennedy exchange greetings with author Pearl Buck, left, poet Robert Frost, right. 16
SPAN
March 1964
HE WANTED THE WHITE HOUSE TO BE A CENTRE OF POETRY AS WELL AS POWER
"When power leads man to arrogance) poetry reminds him of his limitations. narrows
When power
the area of man) s concern) poetry
cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgment.))
President Kennedy warmly thanks world-famous cellist Pablo Casals (back to camera) on completion of his concert in the East Room of the White House.
~'''''
The sea held a great attraction for John Kennedy and he returned to it whenever he could, sometimes playing on the beach with his family.
ABOUT DISARMAMENT HE SAID: "IT'S THE CHILDREN I WORRY ABOUT." "Two years ago I told this body that the United States had proposedJ and was willing to signJ a limited test ban treaty. Today that treaty has been signed. It will not put an end to war . . . . But it can be a lever....
J'
At a solemn ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery eleven days before assassination, President Kennedy smiles at cavorting son, John, Jr.
A DEATH IN THE AMERICAN FAMILY WAS ON MONDAY. The day was cold, but sunny, with a clear blue sky. A million people lined the streets. The drums began their heavy, muffled thunder and the casket rolled through the city on a black caisson pulled by three pairs of matched grey horses. At the White House a crowd silently fell in behind the caisson. Leading them was a brave and beautiful woman in black, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, marching with her dead husband's brothers, behind the casket. They were followed by the President and 220 other world leaders. There had been a death in the American family and they had come to pay their respects. It was a crowd unlike any ever seen walking the streets of Washington, or any city. They walked Continued on next page
T
HE FUNERAL
Funeral procession crosses Arlington Memorial Bridge. Lincoln Memorial, left, and Washington Monument, right, are in background.
There were moments the living would never forget
eight blocks to St. Mathew's Cathedral where Mrs. Kennedy was joined by her children, Caroline, five, and John, Jr., three. The ritual was nearly ended. For two days the American President's body had lain in state, first in the White House, then inside the great rotunda, under the towering dome of the Capitol, where 120,000 people in long silent lines moved past the flagdraped casket. All Sunday afternoon, all through Sunday night the mourners had come. More than a hundred million persons saw it all on television. For each of them there were moments they would never forget. Perhaps it was the tiny hand raised in a farewell salute; perhaps it was simply the sight of all those people along the funeral route, those thick, sunlit crowds that were so silent that the steady clip-clop of the horses could be heard a block or more away. And as official Washington paid its final respects to John Kennedy, millions across the country-and around the world-attended memorial services. In India, President Radhakrishnan, Vice President Zakir Husain and Prime Minister Nehru joined some 8,000 Indians and Americans for a simple and moving service at the American Embassy. And on that cold Monday John Kennedy was buried. Along Pennsylvania Avenue, the "Avenue of the Presidents," the casket passed a mourning people, carried by the same black caisson that once bore the body of Franklin D. Roosevelt. It moved past the Lincoln Memorial and across the Potomac River to Arlington National Cemetery, the end of a long journey for John F. Kennedy. President Radhakrishnan, left, and Vice President Zakir Husain, right, were among many attending New Delhi servicefor Kennedy.
'I could stay here forever' T WAS A WARM DAY in March last year and John Kennedy wanted a breath of air. With a friend he drove to the CustisLee mansion in Arlington National Cemetery and from the hilltop enjoyed the magnificent view of W¡ashington. "I could stay here forever," he said. Now, a year later, this wish has been tragically fulfilled, and John Kennedy is buried on the side of that hill. His grave overlooks the Potomac River and the city of Washington, the city he loved and the scene of his trials and triumphs. Only one other President-William Howard Taft (19081912)-is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. But it is the final resting place of more than 100,000 American military and civilian personnel. who have been buried there since 1864 when it was first used as a cemetery for the dead of the American Civil War. It is now the final resting place for many distinguished Americans including Admiral Richard E. Byrd, explorer of Antarctica, and General George C. Marshall, the originator of the American foreign aid programme. Arlington is also the site of the Tomb of the Unknowns. The Unknown Soldier of World War I was entombed on the East front of the Memorial Amphitheatre on November 11,1921, and on May 30, 1958, unknown servicemen of World War II and the Korean War were entombed beside the earlier hero. Mr. Kennedy's grave is a few yards in front of the CustisLee mansion, once the home of Robert E. Lee. It was in this house on April 20, 1861 that Colonel Lee decided to resign his commission in the U.S. Army. A few months later he took command of the Army of Northern Virginia and led Southern troops for more than four years in the Civil War.
I
The house was built in the first decade of the nineteenth century by George Washington Parke Custis, a relation through marriage of the first President of the United States. When he died he left his Arlington estate to his daughter, Mrs. Robert E. Lee, but it was confiscated by the U.S. Government during the Civil War and some 200 acres were set aside for a national cemetery. Now there is a new grave in Arlington and that hallowed ground has new significance for all who cherish freedom. •
THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY . .
.
.
)
The White House in the earIy nineteenth century.
. . en w h 0 h ave served as President of. the Under thzrty-szx m . power and prestzge to h iffice has grown m . United States, t eo. l thefollowingartzclea if II electzve offices. n . h d l tllment of the Preszdenbecome the greatest 0 a . . n discusses t e eve Or distinguished htstorza h th of officeI75 years ago. Washington took t e oa cysm. ce Georae b
"The President is at liberty) both in law and in conscience)to be as big a man as he can.))
officers in the United States, the President is not only much the most important, but much the closest to the people. Members of Congress represent their own district or state; members of the Supreme Court represent the requirements of the Constitution and the impersonal principles of law and justice; but the President represents the whole nation-all its parties, all its faiths, all its economic elements and social groups. The President possesses unrivalled means, moreover, for speaking to and for the whole people. Hence it is that when a President dies in office from natural causes, as William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Warren Harding, and Franklin D. Roosevelt did, and still more when he is cut off by assassination, as were Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy, the entire population mourns. For Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Kennedy the mourning was particularly deep and passionate. All three were leaders of charm and power, whose strong personalities and warmth of heart had inspired a rare degree of personal affection. Lincoln had brought the nation triumphantly through a civil war which had cost 600,000 lives and endless anxiety and agony; Roosevelt had led it out of a prostrating depression and through the gigantic sacrifices demanded by the Second World War; both had accomplished their main work, though they could still have done much more. Kennedy's position at death was different, and his loss even more poignant. In his two years and ten months in office he had made a brilliant beginning. But it was only a beginning,
O
F ALL GOVERNMENTAL
Allan Nevins. the eminent historian. author and editor. draws on an extraordinary fund of knowledge for this authoritative
interpretation
of
the highest
office
in the
United
States. Professor at Columbia University from 1931 to 1958. Dr. Nevins has won many honours. including a Pulitzer Prize. for his studies in American history and statesmanship.
and the nation wept for him as the framer of a large programme incompletely fulfilled. The Presidency can be and repeatedly has been the most powerful political office on earth. It is at all times, in what Kennedy called our "untidy" present-day world, the most complicated of offices, inexorable in its many-sided demands. The President has duties in the execution of old laws, duties in originating, guiding, and judging new legislation, diplomatic duties, budgetary duties, appointive duties, and, in time of war, duties as commander-in-chief of the army and navy; all in addition to his ceremonial duties as head of state. The Constitution-makers of the United States, in 1787, planned the office on large lines, and national exigencies and strong executives have expanded its functions and powers. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, . James Madison, and the other leaders who sat in Independence Hall in Philadelphia to write the Constitution created an office entirely novel when they established the Presidency. They had in mind, to be sure, the position held by governors in the thirteen colonies, later states. They were influenced by British precedent in the powers accorded the king. But they gave the President an authority far larger than that enjoyed by the state governors, who had been deliberately kept weak. They so arranged matters, moreover, that the President's power would increase, whereas in Britain the royal power steadily declined. In one respect only did the plans of the Constitution-makers go awry. They wished the President to stand outside and above parties, and be elected in a way that would ensure his independence of faction. The first Chief Magistrate, Washington, did indeed stand aloof from and superior to party. But all other Presidents have been members and usually heads of a party organization. It was the original plan that a President above party should be chosen by an electoral
college of prominent citizens anxious only to find the strongest, wisest, and justest person in the republic, without thought of party allegiance. That plan was unworkable. It quickly became evident that government in the United States, as in all other countries, could operate only with and through parties. The new nation, like other English-speaking countries, became wedded to a two-party system, though minor parties have from time to time briefly appeared. The President is in no sense a prime minister; the executive and legislative branches are balanced against each other, not united under ministerial leadership. But no President is likely to get the legislation he wants unless he has a strong party following in Congress, and he is still less likely to .get re-elected unless he has a strong party behind him in the country.
WE
therefore, add to the duties already enumerated the responsibility of party leadership. It is not always effectively exercised. But the greatest Presidents after WashingtonThomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, and Woodrow Wilsonmarshalled their party strength astutely. John F. Kennedy was a farsighted head of the Democratic Party, and his last journey was taken partly to compose a party quarrel in Texas. This does not affect the fact that the President represents and serves the whole people. He is an American first and all the time; he is a Republican or Democrat second and a small part of the time. If the two loyalties conflict, he accepts the broad national interest. Some Presidents, such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, have emphasized bi-partisanship. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a lifelong Democrat, named first two Progressive Republicans and then two Republicans to his Cabinet. President Kennedy unhesitatingly defied most Southern Democrats
A born leader. first President 'George Washington held the new nation together in the years after the Revolutionary War.
MUST,
Thomas Jefferson championed the democratic ideas 0/ Declaration 0/ Independence. introduced party system to U.S. politics.
"The Presidency is not merely an administrative office .... It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership."
rians later, censured the arbitrary arrests and imprisonments, the suppression of newspapers, and the disruption of public meetings, as highly unfortunate. But Lincoln had two excuses: one, apparent necessity, and the other the temporary nature of his measures. As he repeatedly said, these invasions of individual rights were shortlived; once the nation was safe, they would end. The President's most revolutionary measure, his emancipation of the slaves in rebellious areas by Presidential proclamation, met general approval in loyal quarters. He proclaimed this emancipation under the war powers of the President, which were abundantly sufficient to cover it. Nearly all of his sweeping war measures were justified in the eyes of the people by the crisis, and the nation rejoiced that he showed a strength adequate for the hour.
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of comparative quiescence in the Presidency, a new era began when Theodore Roosevelt entered the White House at the beginning of the century. He exhibited a flair for leadership which taught the country and the world something new about the powers of the President. A cautious man would not have interfered so determinedly to end the great anthracite coal strike-but he did. A conservative man would not have taken a hand in the Algeciras Conference, or in ending the RussoJapanese War-but he did .. He showed more than any predecessor how effectively the Presidency could be used as a pulpit or a forum. He gave the United States a new stature in world affairs. Even before the emergence of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt the reasons which James Bryce gave in The American Commonwealth for the recurrent failure of Americans to elect great men as Presidents were losing their force. Bryce quite properly objected to the ÂĽfER A PERIOD
uproar, confusion, and cheap demagogy which went (and alas still go) every four years into a Presidential election. He was correct in 1893 in writing that a smaller proportion of men of first-rate ability entered public affairs in America than in Germany or in Great Britain. He added as another reason that eminent figures make more enemies than obscure men, who were hence likelier of a nomination. He thought that the methods and habits of Congress and political life generally gave men fewer opportunities to show distinction in thought, speech, or administration than was the fact in the free countries of Europe. The situation was changing, however, even as Bryce wrote. No longer was it true, that nearly all the best brains went into business. The Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Morgans had their successors, but by 1900 many more youths of promise went into the professions, the arts, and state or national service. The era of progressive reform brought men of power, vision, and liberal ideas into politics in large numbers. Public life under Theodore Roosevelt, and still more under Woodrow Wilson, gave less shelter , to reactionaries, and offered more challenges to ability. A fair comparison of national leaders of America in the new century with those of Europe would show the United States in a better position than France or Germany, and on a plane of equality with Britain. The Presidency as filled by the second Roosevelt again enjoyed and used all the powers with which a succession of crises endowed it. To combat the Great Depression, Roosevelt demanded and got something like the temporary dictatorial authority which Lincoln had grasped in 1861. This was in domestic affairs. When the Second World War began he used all the plenary powers of a commander-in-chief, both on the home front and in foreign affairs. In the famous "hundred days" with which he began in 1933,
the resourceful President employed to the full a new power, that of preparing legislation which he got introduced into Congress on an emergency basis. This initiative in legislation his successors, despite Congressional opposition, have kept.
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JOHN F. KENNEDY himself we had a man who was assuredly destined for the "front rank" of which Bryce spoke. He was carefully educated, widely-read and well-travelled. His record in the Second World War was of unusual gallantry. He rose steadily and by merit to the Presidency. Nobody doubted for a moment his intellectual distinction, or his desire to promote culture and the arts in America. Yet such was his political skill and his feeling for the common man that his interest in the higher aspects of civilization never became an impediment to his career. Like Wilson and the two Roosevelts, he was an illustration of the fact that America now consistently tries to lift great men to the Presidency. As much as others who have held the Presidency, Kennedy met his principal difficulties in Congressional opposition and delay. The Executive and Legislative branches are usually in a state of rivalry, and this rivalry is accentuated whenever Congress feels that it has been slighted or overshadowed. After Lincoln, after Wilson, and after Franklin D. Roosevelt came a reaction. The seniority rule has placed the chairmanship of important committees in the hands of Southern conservatives, and a hostile chairman can sometimes wreck a President's favourite measure. It does not matter that the President's party may control both houses, as the Democrats do today. President Kennedy encountered the same trouble with Congress as his predecessors. But with tact, persistence, and a sound cause, he was making slow but sure progress when he fell. He would yet have given new proofs of the effectiveness of the Presidency for the public weal. •
Iron-willed idealist, Woodrow Wilson was keenly concerned about world peace, laboured hard to establish League of Nations.
A skilled political leader, F.D.R. swiftly expanded Presidential powers to meet human challenge of the Great Depression.
THE RULE OF LAW oPRESIDENT, however popular, powerful, or persuasive, can ever fully determine the course of the American nation. For the United States of America is a nation ruled not by one man, or by one group of men, but by law. The Constitution of 1787 established a system of government in which men make the law (elected representatives in the Congress), men decide on the legality of the law when it is challenged (nine members of the Supreme Court), and a man (the President) carries out the law. He is the one official elected to represent all the people, to lead the whole nation. Yet no great policy of his, domestic or foreign, can be carried out without the support of Congress. In the Congress of the United States sit 535 men and women, elected by the people to represent their districts and states, and to serve their needs.
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From chambers in the Capitol Building they decide on such matters as Federal spending, and treaties with other nations. Standing before the Capitol is a weathered bronze statue of John Marshall, first great Chief Justice of the United States. It is a fitting symbol of the Supreme Court's presence in the American system of government. Laws are made within the great domed structure, but the Court has the power to rule on the constitutionality of those laws. Thus the legislative, the judicial, and the executive branches of the government in Washington create the vital "checks and balances" that every American schoolboy learns about by the time he is old enough to read. There is, of course, one additional and all important check and balance to the system: the prevailing voice of the people. •
A Man of God) Freedom and Peace
LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON
"Let us carry forward the plans and programmes of John Fitzgerald Kennedy-not because of our sorrow or sympathy-but because they are right."
and crucial fact about Lyndon Johnson, a fact established by history itself, is that never in all the long story of free American Government has a man come suddenly to the Presidency with so full and so intimate a preparation for that high and lonely office. This, the 36th President of the United States, had been thirty-two consecutive years in the service of his country, in national office, when an act of assassination thrust him into our greatest office of all. A quarter of a century ago-one-fourth of perhaps the most urgent and the most fateful century in man's history-Lyndon Johnson was a powerful, if young, member of the United States House of Representatives. His greatest concern at that time was this: to assist the Democratic President who was his mentor and, in a political sense, almost his fatherFranklin D. Roosevelt-in turning the United States away from its traditional isolationism behind two oceans. Having been an interventionist in those years before the Second World War, Congressman Johnson felt a moral obligation to leave his seat in the House of Representatives when l1is country went to war. Though exempted by law from military duty, he volunteered for service in the United States Navy and participated, as a Lieutenant Commander, in heavy action in the, Pacific Theatreaction for which he was decorated with the Silver Star for gallantry. Because his service in Congress was in fact more urgently needed'by President Roosevelt, Navy Commander Johnson was recalled from active duty on the President's personal order. In due time, he rose from the House of Representatives to the Senate of the United States. And in his first term,. in defiance of all the ordinary rules of that old institution, he. became the elected leader of the Democratic Party there. HE CENTRAL
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Highly respected as a journalist, honoured as a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, William S. White has for over three decades been an intimate observer .of the American political scene. To his fellowTexan and personal friend Lyndon Johnson he has devoted particularly close attention, reporting and commenting on the new President's career from its very beginning.
There are disagreements about some details of Lyndon Johnson's careerin this society where such disagreement is not only welcomed but regarded as essential-but one fact, at least, is, again, established by history. This is that Mr. Johnson became the most respected, the most powerful, the most activist leader of the Senate in the nearly two centuries of that institution's existence. The vagaries of American politics helped cast this extraordinarily able Democrat in his dominant role during the eight years of the Presidency of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. For nearly all of that period the Democrats held control of the Congress while the Republicans held the White House. All through that time, Lyndon Johnson-along with his old friend and fellow Texan, the late Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburnspoke for the Congress, as the voice of the Congress, in a way that was perhaps unique in our national experienc~: Ip domestic affairs, Mr. Johnson urged the passage of legislation identified with the Democratic Party policy. He was tir~less in working for thosl? causespublic power, public ho,lising, uneIllployment relief, 'old,;age pensioris--':'which earlier" he had helped advance' under the leadership of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman. In world affairs, however, Mr. Johnson has from boyhood been steeped in the American tradition that our domestic politics and home disputes "stop at the water's edge." Repeatedly he refused to use his great Congressional power to harass or embarrass President Eisenhower in the conduct of foreign relations. Repeatedly, he said to his Democratic colleagues: "So far as the world is concerned, this country can have only one President, one voice at a time. I will not tolerate small biting assaults upon this or any other President of the United States, be he of'the other party or of our own, when our' national honour and free world security are at stake." Accordingly, he supported wholeheartedly a Republican Administration in the continuation of the policies of foreign aid, mutual security, and support of the United Nations which had been created after World War II. The association between Eisenhower and Johnson in these high affairs was striking proof of the capacity of the American system to submerge our domestic divisions in national unity when the
problems of a vast world, and not simply of a vast country, are involved. But Johnson's relationship with his dead chief, President Kennedy, was even more than this. It was also a moving proof. For in the Eisenhower years Johnson was in fact, though not in form, second only in influence and authority to the President with whom he was dealing. As President Kennedy's Vice President, however, he was clearly subordinate to the man who had been his junior colleague when both served in the Senate. The old leader in the Senate days, Johnson, had been Kennedy's chief rival for the top place on the Democratic ticket in 1960.In the Democratic Convention he lost a free, full and fair fight for the Presidential nomination. He paused only a moment to pick himself up from the dust and then he accepted Kennedy's headship and his own junior role without regret or bitterness. He had stepped down and not up in accepting the Vice Presidency, for in our system the Vice Presidency is infinitely lower, in terms of real power, than is the leadership of the Senate. This man who had been First Man in the legislative life of his country now became Second Man to his old rival. As I wrote in an article which was a part of the Kennedy-Johnson inaugural programme, the struggle at the Democratic Convention had never been a bitter or nasty one. But it had been a tough and candid one: "For neither of these contestants was made of sugar candy; and neither was without those weapons of skill and power which flash so gleamingly in the hands of that artist in public affairs, the truly professional politician." "But, of course," -so ran the article of inauguration day in 1961-"somebody had to lose. The man who had won (Kennedy) was big enough to turn at once to his fallen, antagonist (Johnson), to permit him to keep his sword, and to enlist that sword in what was now to be common cause again between the two. And the man who had lost was big enough to accept. The old Senior had become the new Junior; and both had reason to be glad." This was, I think, reasonably prophetic. For as the three brief years of Kennedy's tenure unfolded, Johnson was always loyally and quietly at his side. He served his President as no other Vice President had ever done; his President, on his part,
extended a generosity towards his Vice President which no other President had ever given. No significant foreign-or domestic -policy was ever undertaken during the Kennedy Administration without the advance concurrence and full knowledge of Lyndon Johnson. Mr. Kennedy did not send Mr. Johnson on his many world missions simply as a messenger; he sent a vital member of his Administration who had both the power and the wit to make decisions, on the spot if necessary, for that Administration. Mr. Johnson's unique mastery of the legislative art was invariably at the service of Mr. Kennedy. It was not and could not be used, in the new circumstances, to its full power. For at this point Johnson was no longer officially a part of the legislative process but was instead a member of the executive branch of the Government. Open intrusion by him in the business of Congress would have been resented; he had to walk softly and decorously. Even so, avoiding always any impression that he was seeking to usurp Presidential prerogatives on the one side or Congressional prerogatives on the other side, he did what he could, always, for the Kennedy legislative programme. The new President's whole record in the legislative field is a shining reflection of the man. It was, for illustration, Johnson as leader of the Senate who at length brought about the condemnation by the Senate of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy and his unsupported assaults upon the patriotism of many Americans. It was an act, as I personally can recall,
which brought special satisfaction to Lyndon Johnson. A lifetime beforehand, his father, State Representative Sam Johnson, had taken the lead in having the legislature of Texas move against the Ku Klux Klan, so that Texas became, in fact, the first state in the Union to bring that evil organization lawfully to its knees. "My Daddy," Lyndon Johnson told me, when the Senate at last spoke in thunder against McCarthyism, "would have been here with me today if he were still alive. Anyhow, he was here with me-in spirit." Public use of the phrase "my Daddy" would have moved some American sophisticates to wonder and perhaps to ridicule. It is a simple, country phrase of a kind Johnson uses as President just as he did long ago as a young public school-teacher. Though long involved in the greatest public issues of his time, and though long on a basis of intimate understanding with some of the world's most powerful men, he has never abandoned and will never abandon the simplicities of his early background. This background is far removed from current impressions of Texas as a state largely populated by oil multi-millionaires and noisy political extremists. Like nearly all stereotypes, this one is wrong. The real Texas is still the Texas which, as its first act when it won its independence from Mexico nearly a century and a half ago, set aside most of its assets for the establishment of "a university of the first rank." President Johnson's wealth is neither from oil nor his own-his wife is comfortably but not fabulously rich.
He himself grew up on a poverty-stricken ranch in one of the poorest parts of a very large and variegated state. Johnson's part of Texas did not share the Confederate sympathies of the rest of the state in the American Civil War of 1861-65, nor was it ever slave-holding. Johnson himself has all his life been an advocate of programmes to end all trace of racial discrimination. It was he who, as leader of the Senate, drove through to enactment in 1957 the first substantial civil rights bill within a span of eighty years. This he accomplished by using that tactic of tireless persuasion which is his most formidable political skill. He has often been called a "compromiser," and this is true in the sense that the American system, resting on the full consent of the governed, inherently and always requires some accommodation of conflicting attitudes and interests so that at last a national consensus can be ob¡ tained. "Compromiser" is the wrong term, however, to the degree that it implies the surrender of conviction or vital interest. "Mediation" or "conciliation" are more truly descriptive terms. This small portrait will not be completed rightly unless the subject is shown as he really is, warts and all-imperfections and shortcomings. I have had the good fortune to be Lyndon Johnson's friend for thirty years and, as a political writer, I have criticized him when I chose and will again. Because he is a very big man, physically and in his mind and purposes, he is impatient of slower minds or smaller purposes than his own-and Continued on next page
never hesitates to say so. Tact is not his longest suit; like any public man, he suffers under criticism. He is not, however, intolerant of criticism, from anyone, any time, so long as it is not petty or mean in motive. He is quick to act and quietly relentless in action when action must be taken to defend what he believes to be the national interests. Because he is a man of action, he is sometimes presented as not "intellectual," not interested in the life of the mind. The truth is that he is deeply interested, but as a leader of men for most of his adult life he has had to be primarily a "doing" man as opposed to a man of introspection and withdrawal. Thus, he likes men of action around him-but he has also a deep, and sometimes, it seems to me, even inordinate, respect for all those who only think and write and plan. For one of the many human paradoxes about him is that he is at once emotionally outgoing and deeply reserved. Affable and ostensibly extroverted, as a practising politician is more or less compelled to be, he has a sharp sense of personal privacy and of personal, as distinguished from public, reticence. He detests explaining himself and never apologizes for himself nor willingly hears others apologize for themselves, whenever the issue involved may be only a personal one. He has never attacked another politician personally; though in his time he has relentlessly attacked a thousand politicians for their public acts or failures to act. Having enormous capacity to promote i~sues, he is totally lacking in the talent to promote himself. His sense of humour is underplayed; his wit is on the wry side. His sense of decorum is old-fashioned and almost hopelessly out of date in an American society where nearly everybody gets immediately on a first-name basis with nearly everybody else. An intimate friend and counsellor in their Senate days, he called the late President "Jack" or "01' Jack." But the moment Mr. Kennedy was elected President of the United States, Mr. Johnson called him "Mister President." Thereafter, even in conversation with friends, he never referred to "Jack," or "Kennedy," but invariably only to "the President." This, in sum, is a powerful, combative, passionate, cool and brilliant man, at once deliberately colloquial and deeply sophisticated, easily simple and profoundly complicated, a man to whom hate is foreign and a man casually forthcoming with forgiveness. "A practical idealist," his wife once called him; and though wives are not notable for fully objective analyses of husbands, she was not, I think, very wide of the mark. •
NO JOB WAS TOO SMALL, NO ASPIRATION TOO GREAT
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IN TEXAS,bred in Texas, deeply proud of Texas, Lyndon Baines Johnson has never shaken from his system the spirit of the vast Texas plains and prairies. A big man-more than six feet tall-he is in full measure a determined descendant of the pioneers who bequeathed him a land carved from the wilderness. His father and grandfather before him were both members of the Texas State Legislature. When he was born on August 27, 1908, his grandfather is reported to have said, "That boy will grow up to be a U.S. Senator," a proud prophecy not often proved to be an understatement. Brought up on a modest farm, Johnson spent his boyhood hours after school earning money. He shined shoes, herded goats, worked on a newspaper, bent his back in manual labour. After working his way west to California, he turned home again to enter college. Taking one year out to teach, he was graduated in 1930 and went back to teaching, which had also been a profession of his father's. But once politics in Washington beckoned to him (he started in 1932 as secretary to a Congressman from Texas), the course of his life was set. ORN
Both as a family man and a rancher, he loves to spend time at Texas home with, left to right, daughters Lucy and Lynda and wife nicknamed Lady Bird. .
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As Texas boy, above, LBJ wore a cowboy hat which later became trademark, left.
His father, Sam Ealy Johnson, Jr., was a school-teacher, farmer and legislator.
Johnson was first member of Congress to join armed forces during World War II.
As Congressional leader, Lyndon Johnson won respect of both Republican and Democratic Presidents.
As young administrator Johnson impressed President Roosevelt, top, became Congressional leader under President Truman, left. Programmes of Republican President Eisenhower were piloted through Senate by Democrat Johnson, right.
As majority leader in the Senate, Johnson, above, always played a prominent role and was a driving force in American politics. He joined John Kennedy, left, to wage a vigorous Presidential campaign that placed them in the nation's top executive jobs.
NEW ROLE
FOR AN OLD H.AND EW PHYSICAL or political events have shocked the conscience of the world more than the building by the communists of the wall which divides Berlin. Suddenly and unexpectedly on August 13, 1961, there sprang up this stone-and-mortar barrier which cut across the life of the city, separating families and friends and blocking normal contacts and communications. Deeply shocked, President Kennedy feared the construction of the wall might lead to war. He decided to test communist intentions and ordered a U.S. battle group to move from West Germany, through East Germany, into West Berlin. And he sent Vice President Lyndon Johnson to Berlin with a personal message: Access from West Germany will be maintained; the freedom of residents will be maintained; the right to station U.S. troops there will be maintained. On the afternoon of August 20, one week after the wall was thrown up, Vice President Johnson greeted 1,500 U.S. troops as they arrived in Berlin from West Germany. There were no incidents. The Vice President completed his mission and returned to Washington. This was only one of his many missions round the world. Travelling far and wide in a sleek Air Force jet, he carried the word of America's intentions and concern on problems affecting every comer of the globe, every society. Although thrust to the forefront of international affairs, he never lost the informality and spontaneous friendliness which characterized his days in Congress. In three years, visiting the Middle East, Europe, Mrica, Asia, South Asia, and Scandinavia, he travelled 150,000 miles. Back at his Washington desk, the Vice President measured his domestic mileage in often unacclaimed accomplishments. Besides being a member of the National Security Council, Mr. Johnson-as chairmanvitalized both the National Aeronautics and Space Council and the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. But above all, he was a loyal assistant and trusted adviser to the younger man he always addressed as "Mr. President."
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Johnson greets West Berliners during 1961 visit, a week after communist wall went up.
For his qualities of leadership and capacity for friendship he was admired abroad and praised at home.
In one of his world missions as President Kennedy's representative, right, he was greeted by a group of Indian villagers near Agra. Known for unqualified support of racial freedom, Vice President Johnson headed Equal Employment Opportunity Committee, below.
As John Kennedy's Vice President) Lyndon Johnson was a regular contributor to the shaping of American defence programmes and foreign policy) served on the nation's highest councils for nearly three years.
¡ . .IN THIS
MOMENT
OF NEW RESOLVE,
I WOULD
SAY ...
LET US CONTINUE P
23 hours after an assassin's bullets felled his predecessor, the 36th President of the United States strode to the rostrum of the U.S. Congress and rededicated the nation to the tasks ahead. Lyndon B. Johnson called upon the Congress and the people "not to hesitate, not to pause, not to turn about and linger over this evil moment. ... " In both acts and words, from that moment on a Dallas street when he had automatically fallen heir to the powers and responsibilities of the Presidency, Johnson had set a vigorous, confident example. Firmly taking up the reins of government, he led the country through a OUR DAYS AND
week-end of sorrow into a future of complexity. The country's unfinished business was matched only by the energy and devotion of its new Chief Executive. In rapid succession, to leaders at home and representatives from abroad, President Johnson reaffirmed the ideals and aspirations of the United States. Pausing only once in his resolute avowal of purpose, he told Congress, "All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today." But then, moving on, he outlined what he termed "our challenge . . . to continue on our course so that we may fulfil the destiny that history has set for us."
"Time has come for Americans of all races and creeds and political beliefs to understand and respect each other."
In conference with Negro leader Martin Luther King, above, and before the world, the new President, Lyndon B. Johnson, reaffirmed "above all, the dream of equal rights for all Americans." There could be "no greater source of strength to the nation," he said, than fulfilment of this dream.
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"We will carryon the fight against poverty and misery, ignorance and disease, in other lands and in our own."
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The "re-enforcement of our programmes of mutual assistance and co-operation in Asia and Africa" was another goal set publicly by the President, reaffirmed in talks with India's Ambassador B. K. Nehru, below, and vigorously exemplified by Peace Corps worker, above.
"Those who test our courage will find it strong and those who seek our friendship will find it honourable."
For "the dream of partnership across the Atlantic and across the Pacific as well," President Johnson began to act at once. Meeting allied leaders gathered {or the funeral, he pledged, as to President de Gaulle of France, above, a continuity of the commitments symbolized by the Statue of Liberty, a gift made by the people of France to the United States in 1884.
"We will be unceasing in the search for peace, resourceful in our pursuit of areas of agreement even with those with whom we differ."
President Johnson also said: "This nation has demonstrated that it has the courage to seek peace." Soviet leadership represented at the funeral by Anastas Mikoyan, above, could be sure this courage, cherished by a powerful but peaceful land, would not falter.
"We must be prepared at one and the same time for both the confrontation of power and the limitation of power."
The President, seen above with Secretary of State Rusk, has rededicated the American Government to the task of maintaining its military might, symbolized by nuclear submarine, right, while endeavouring for peaceful solutions.
President Lyndon Johnson consults with Madame Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. leader of Indian delegation to U.N. General Assembly.
"If there is one commitment more than any other that I would leave with you today, it is my unswerving commitment to the keeping and strengthening of peace."