Lift Up Your Eyes

After the State Department got through putting its own words and cautions into President Eisenhower's last foreign policy speech (before the American Society of Newspaper Editors in April), it turned out flat, ineffective and not really what Ike wanted to say. He wanted to speak his own mind in a way that was beyond both calculated diplomacy and the question-and-answer limitations of his press conferences. In spare moments he began drafting a new speech.

Last week the President took the speech he wanted to make to the kind of youthful audience he sought: Baylor University's commencement for 665 graduates, where Ike was to receive a doctorate of laws.* Before a crowd of 11,500 jam-packed into Waco's Heart o' Texas Coliseum, he spoke for half an hour, produced few headlines for 1956 but laid down the broad principles "for a better world in 1966, 1976 and 1996."

The Peril of Independence. Three truths must underlie all U.S. thinking on foreign relations, said Ike. "The destiny of man is freedom and justice; human liberty and free government are powerful sources of human energy . . . mightier than armaments ; third . . . people are what count--a sympathetic understanding of other peoples." The responsibility for this lofty approach cannot be met by paper work in a government bureau but requires that "every American . . . daily breathes into it the life of his own practice."

Surveying today's world, he called Communism "a gigantic failure," noted the rising tide of nationalism in the free world. "We have helped many small nations to independence [and] will continue to do so." But he saw that growing nationalism creates political and economic barriers, impeding trade and prosperity "as each new nation steps forward to an independent place in the international family. The emotional urge for a completely independent existence may conflict with an equal desire for higher living standards."

What to do about the paradox? The solution, for the nations of Western Europe: European union, "one of the greatest dreams of Western man . . . Without such unification . . . Europe could go on in dreary repetition, possibly to the ultimate destruction of all the values these people themselves hold most dear." Moreover the whole "community of freedom" would be more independent, prosperous and secure with the fostering of mutual trade, the advancement of "legitimate political and economic aspirations," a mutual understanding of cultural traditions, and a promise of assistance to weaker nations by the stronger.

Universities for Peace. "Many nations, though their cultures are ancient and rich, do not possess the resources to spread the needed education throughout their populations. But they can wisely use help that respects their traditions and ways." Proposed Ike: universities for peace, to be set up by U.S. universities and philanthropic foundations to help each nation "develop its human and natural resources. [But] in no respect should the purpose of these institutions be to transplant into new areas the attitudes, the forms, the procedures of America.

"Continue your study and critical analysis of the great international questions of our day . . . detect and pursue the ways [to] stability and solidarity," the President told the students. "Lift the eyes of men and women above the drab and desolate horizon of hate and fear and hopelessness . . . You believe in the brotherhood of man ... So believing and so united, you constitute the mightiest temporal force for good on this globe of ours."

*His 38th honorary degree. As a rule the President accepts at least two honorary degrees each year, carefully choosing the schools to achieve a cross section of geography, size, and religious or secular orientation.

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