tiers which can provide living room and resources for generations that are yet to come. The eastern slopes of the Andes, the water systems of the Gran Pantanal River Plate, and Orinoco, the barely touched areas of Central America and of Panama-these are just a few of the frontiers which, this morning, beckon to us.

But not every frontier is geographic. My fellow American Presidents and I will be greatly concerned with all the other vistas before us.

For instance, there is education.

The Americas of the seventies and eighties will make large demands for trained men and women-not only for engineers, scientists, and agronomists to guide our paths, not only for electricians, carpenters, and machinists to use our tools, but for poets, artists, and musicians to enrich our lives.

All of us know that education is primarily a national task to be done with local resources. But there are endeavors where more is needed and where the Alliance must help: school construction, teacher training, and improved administration. The challenge of vocational and modern higher education is wide open-for management, technical, and administrative skills in government and in private business.

The Alliance so far has only scratched a thin mark on the great mass of illiteracy, although Latin America is the only continent. in the developing world where the number and percentage of illiterates is decreasing each year.

Education, then, must become the passion. of all of us. Let us approach this challenge completely dissatisfied with our traditional methods. Let us adapt the modern miracles of science, radio, and television, and audiovisual techniques, let us adapt these to the needs of our children and indeed, to the needs of our adults.

The time has also come to develop multinational institutions for advanced training in science and technology. For without these Latin America will suffer the continued "brain drain" of some of its ablest youth.

There is also for us the frontier of agriculture.

For too many years we have acted as if the road to prosperity runs only through the main streets of our large cities. Now we know that national prosperity is closely linked to the land and closely linked to those who cultivate the land.

In most Latin American countries it is in urban areas where poverty and despair catch our eye. But half of the people live in rural Latin America and half of them receive less than a quarter of the national income.

There is no reason why the land of the hemisphere cannot be made to fill the needs. of our homes and our factories. There is no reason why rural population should not be full partners in modern economic life. And, looking beyond our hemisphere, there is no reason why the Americas cannot supply a larger share of the growing world market for food and for fiber.

This, of course, will require better planning of crops to fit the soil and to fit the markets available. It will demand better soil and better fertilizer and better water control. It will need a good extension service to educate farmers in new methods. It will require shared mechanization, better credit and markets, and better distribution.

The resources required for these tasks must not be needlessly spent on arms. Military budgets in Latin America are not exceptionally large by the general world standards, but there is a recurrent tendency to seek expensive weapons with little relevance to the real requirements of security. This tendency is often reinforced by competition among the neighboring countries.

And in these Americas, where by solemn treaty and by established practice our governments are bound to resolve disputes by peaceful means, we just must find a way to avoid the cost of procuring and maintaining unnecessary military equipment that will take clothes off the back and food away from the stomachs and education away from the minds of our children.

Well, these are some of the basic tasks, and only some, which lie before us as we try today to fulfill the promise of the modern world in which we are so privileged to live. These tasks are going to be accomplished by concrete acts and not by rhetoric. We are not interested in the appearance, we are dedicated to the achievement. By specific steps we can strengthen and we can carry forward this great Alliance for Progress that was started 5 years ago.

This will mean democratic stability in which free men can labor without upheavals and without chaos. This will mean monetary stability so that the savings of the people can work effectively to develop all the resources. This will mean fiscal responsibility—that means an efficient public administration, a sensibly managed public debt, realistic exchange rates, and a market that's unhampered by artificial monopolies. This means progressive leadership-a government wise enough to insist on modernizing reforms and the most effective allocation of public resources.

This means, above all, personal freedom and human diginity. For if men are not truly free, if individuals are not protected against economic and political exploitation, then they do turn to violence and to extremism, whose first victim, then, is progressive reform.

So, as we meet here together this morning, we all recognize that change is everywhere throughout this hemisphere. We shall either.

shape it or be misshaped by it. And along with change will come contrast and contradiction. One man will be orbiting the earth while below him, millions of his fellowmen starve. Campesinos will be plowing the ground with oxen while a thousand miles away atomic power works its wonders. That is the kind of world in which we are living and this is the world that we are called upon to deal with.

So, I say to you this morning, let's go back to the original question, the basic question: Can sweeping change be progressive and be peaceful?

My own country knows of this question. We are going through such a change even as I speak. It began in the 1930's and it is continuing today. I lived here during the Great Depression. I remember the tattered soldiers going down Pennsylvania Avenue to Anacostia. I remember the poor who went hungry and formed our souplines and the men and women who searched for work that they could not find.

I remember the loss of confidence and hope, the biting despair and the fear that gripped a whole continent. And if ever, if ever a great nation was tempted to surrender to authoritarian rule, if ever free people were tempted to barter freedom for bread, we were tempted in the United States in the early 1930's.

Instead, by peaceful, although sometimes very controversial means, we rebuilt our society. We shaped laws which preserved the freedom of individuals but protected them against the excesses of extremism. They are all so familiar in my mind. I remember the stock market regulations and the Stock Exchange and Securities Act. I remember the social security that so many people feared was so socialistic, and Federal housing and guaranteed bank deposits, and minimum wages, when we voted for 25 cents

an hour (many predicted our political defeat), when collective bargaining was insured by law, and when we rescued and saved and brought back to life the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Agricultural Extension. Act, and many more.

We gave the lie in those years, and since, to Karl Marx's theory that the rich must get richer, and the poor, poorer.

Through a peaceful and a very progressive adventure, the poor have moved on upward, the middle class has broadened enormously, and prosperity has reached so many that we can afford to be concerned not only about quantity but about quality as well-the quality of our children's education, the quality of the medical care for our parents, the quality of our life in the rural and in the urban areas.

Now I would be the last to indicate that all of our problems are solved. Far, far from it. But with all the world watching us operate in this goldfish bowl, we are continually striving to fulfill our promises, to live up to our expectations.

Throughout the hemisphere this morning I think this same experience is underway. Our chosen instrument is the Alliance for Progress. It is not a recipe for instant utopia, as President Kennedy assured you so many times in his statements about his dreams. Perhaps only our children and theirs will finally know whether the Alliance really wins or not. But we do know this much: we are moving! We do know what must be done and we think we know how to do it.

We do know that social progress and economic change under liberty are the only ac

ceptable roads to national vitality and to individual dignity. We do know that to achieve fulfillment a people must be free. And for people to be free they must be educated. And to learn, they must have bread.

We know that risk and danger are the marks of our time.

We know that what we do now will shape not only this generation, but generations yet unborn.

So I am very proud that you asked me to come here today and I am so glad that I am privileged to be here with you on this

occasion.

A meeting like this, and like the conference of American Presidents that is ahead of us, does not, in itself, change the conditions in which we live. But if it changes us, if it renews our confidence in one another, if it inspires us and gives us strength to carry on and continue the grueling and challenging work that peaceful change requires, it will have served its purpose and met its responsibilities.

Thank you so much for indulging me.

NOTE: The President spoke at 11:10 a.m. in the Conference Hall of the Pan American Health Organization building in Washington. In his opening words he referred to José A. Mora, Secretary General of the Organization, and Hubert H. Humphrey, Vice President of the United States. Later he referred to Dr. Abraham Horwitz, Director of the Pan American Health Organization.

The observance was sponsored by the Organization of American States, the Pan American Health Organization, the Inter-American Committee on the Alliance for Progress, and the Inter-American Development Bank.

The Alliance for Progress was established in August 1961 by the Charter of Punta del Este. The text of the Charter is printed in the Department of State Bulletin (vol. 45, p. 463).

Admiral and Mrs. Raborn, Members of the Cabinet, Members of the Congress, ladies and gentlemen:

We have come here today to recognize the character and the accomplishments of a man who exemplifies the highest traditions of public service.

Your career, Admiral Raborn, has been long and it has been outstanding. You have excelled as a Navy officer in combat. You have distinguished yourself in high command. You have inspired and directed the highest order of technical achievement culminating in the triumph of the Polaris submarine which, under your personal guidance, was built and put into operation well before most of the people thought it could be done.

Then, when you had gone to a well-earned retirement-you had taken up another congenial occupation-I called you back to Washington, once again asking you to undertake for your country what may have been the most formidable task of your career.

You had no particular occasion to become intimately familiar with the work of the Central Intelligence Agency, but you were willing to serve your country again. And you asked only that you might leave when a permanent director had been selected.

In carrying out this assignment, Admiral Raborn, you gave to the Agency the benefit of those qualities and skills in which you are preeminent. Above all, you brought your truly extraordinary capacity for management, for looking to the future, for planning the further creative development of an intricate organization.

And I know that you leave with your associates the impression of a warm and a sympathetic human personality. They came

to hold you in high regard and in esteem.

Your countrymen know of your role in the development of the Polaris, but they cannot know of your accomplishments in the equally crucial business of the Central Intelligence Agency. For it is the lot of those in our intelligence agencies that they should work in silence-sometimes fail in silence, but more often succeed in silence.

Unhappily, also, it is sometimes their lot that they must suffer in silence. For, like all in high public position, they are occasionally subject to criticism which they must

not answer.

Secrecy in this work is essential. Achievements and triumphs can seldom be advertised. Shortcomings and failures often are advertised. The rewards can never come in public acclaim, only in the quiet satisfaction of getting on with the job and trying to do well the work that needs to be done in the interests of your Nation.

The best intelligence is essential to the best policy. So I am delighted that you have undertaken, as far as security permits, to tell the public that it is well served by the Central Intelligence Agency.

I am glad that there are occasions from time to time when I, like my predecessors in this office, can also express my deep confidence in the expert and the dedicated service of the personnel of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Admiral Raborn, for your contribution to this Agency, for your entire career of patriotic duty and high achievement, I give you now the National Security Council Medal and its citation. And I shall read it:

"Summoned back to the councils of Government after his retirement from a brilliant career in the naval service, Admiral William