乐

经典生活美好享受

找乐	健身	电影	听歌	聊天	讲演
泡吧	旅游	DV	电游	恋爱	台球

乐（FUN）-找乐

您的位置：首页-乐-讲演-本页

27.Dwight D. Eisenhower: Farewell Address

Good evening, my fellow Americans.

First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television
networks for the opportunities they have given me over the years to bring
reports and messages to our nation. My special thanks go to them for the
opportunity of addressing you this evening.
Three days from now, after a half century in the service of our country, I
shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and
solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my
successor.
This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell,
and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen. Like every
other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him,
Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and
prosperity for all.
Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential
agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will
better shape the future of the nation. My own relations with the Congress,
which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the
Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate
during the war and immediate post-war period, and finally to the mutually
interdependent during these past eight years.?In this final relationship,
the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated
well, to serve the nation good, rather than mere partisanship, and so have
assured that the business of the nation should go forward. So, my official
relationship with Congress ends in a feeling -- on my part -- of gratitude
that we have been able to do so much together.
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed
four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own
country. Despite these holocausts, America is today the strongest, the
most influential, and most productive nation in the world. Understandably
proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and
prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches
and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of
world peace and human betterment.
Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have
been to keep the peace, to foster progress in human achievement, and to
enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among peoples and among nations. To
strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any
failure traceable to arrogance or our lack of comprehension or readiness
to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt, both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the
conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs
our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in
character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily, the
danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it
successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and
transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry
forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged
and complex struggle with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain,
despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace
and human betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or
domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that
some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to
all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our
defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in
agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these
and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be
suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.
But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration:
the need to maintain balance in and among national programs, balance
between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and
hoped for advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the
comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a
nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual, balance
between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good
judgment seeks balance and progress. Lack of it eventually finds imbalance
and frustration. The record of many decades stands as proof that our
people and their Government have, in the main, understood these truths and
have responded to them well, in the face of threat and stress.

But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. Of these, I mention
two only.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our
arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential
aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.?Our military
organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my
predecessors in peacetime, or, indeed, by the fighting men of World War II
or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no
armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as
required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency
improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a
permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and
a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense
establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the
net income of all United States corporations.
Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms
industry is new in the American experience. The total influence --
economic, political, even spiritual --is felt in every city, every
Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the
imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend
its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all
involved. So is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of
this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should
take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can
compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of
defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty
may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our
industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during
recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central, it also
becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share
is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed
by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the
same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free
ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the
conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a
government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual
curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new
electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars
by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever
present -- and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we
should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public
policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological
elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate
these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our
democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free
society.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we
peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must
avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and
convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the
material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of
their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for
all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
During the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that
this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community
of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of
mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must be one of equals. The
weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do
we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength.
That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned
for the certain agony of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.
Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with
intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent,
I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with
a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror
and the lingering sadness of war, as one who knows that another war could
utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully
built over thousands of years, I wish I could say tonight that a lasting
peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our
ultimate goal has been made. But so much remains to be done. As a private
citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world
advance along that road.
So, in this my last good night to you as your President, I thank you for
the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and in
peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy. As for
the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the
future.
You and I, my fellow citizens, need to be strong in our faith that all
nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be
ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power,
diligent in pursuit of the Nations' great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's
prayerful and continuing aspiration: We pray that peoples of all faiths,
all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that
those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all
who yearn for freedom may experience its few spiritual blessings. Those
who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that
all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; and
that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to
disappear from the earth; and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples
will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of
mutual respect and love.

Now, on Friday noon, I am to become a private citizen. I am proud to do
so. I look forward to it.

Thank you, and good night.

　