Members of the General Assembly. When Secretary General Hammarskjold’s
invitation to address this General Assembly reached me in Bermuda, I was
just beginning a series of conferences with the Prime Ministers and Foreign
Ministers of Great Britain and of France. Our subject was some of the
problems that beset our world. During the remainder of the Bermuda
conference, I had constantly in mind that ahead of me lay a great honor.
That honor is mine today, as I stand here, privileged to address the
General Assembly of the United Nations. At the same time that I appreciate
the distinction of addressing you, I have a sense of exhilaration as I look
upon this assembly. Never before in history has so much hope for so many
people been gathered together in a single organization. Your deliberations
and decisions during these somber years have already realized part of those
hopes.
The great test and the great accomplishments still lie ahead. In the
confident expectation of those accomplishments, I would use the office,
which for the time being I hold, to assure you that the government of the
United States will remain steadfast in its support of this body. This we
shall do in the conviction that you will provide a great share of the
wisdom, of the courage, and the faith which can bring to this world lasting
peace for all nations, and happiness and well-being for all men.
Clearly, it would not be fitting for me to take this occasion to present to
you a unilateral American report on Bermuda. Nevertheless, I assure you
that in our deliberations on that lovely island, we sought to invoke those
same great concepts of universal peace and human dignity, which are so
cleanly etched in your charter. Neither would it be a measure of this great
opportunity, merely to recite, however hopefully, pious platitudes. I,
therefore, decided that this occasion warranted my saying to you some of
the things that have been on the minds and the hearts of my legislative and
executive associates, and on mine for a great many months.
Thoughts I had originally planned to say primarily to the American People.
I know that the American people share my deep belief that if a danger
exists in the world, it is a danger shared by all. Equally, that if hope
exists in the mind of one nation, that hope should be shared by all.
Finally, if there is to be advanced any proposal, designed to ease, even by
the smallest measure, the tensions of today’s world, what more appropriate
audience could there be than the members of the General Assembly of the
United Nations? I feel impelled to speak today in a language that, in a
sense, is new.
One, which I, who have spent so much of my life in the military profession,
would have preferred never to use. That new language is the language of
atomic warfare. The atomic age has moved forward at such a pace that every
citizen of the world should have some comprehension, at least in
comparative terms, of the extent of this development, of the utmost
significance to every one of us.
Clearly, if the peoples of the world are to conduct an intelligent search
for peace, they must be armed with the significant facts of today’s
existence. My recital of atomic danger and power is necessarily stated in
United States terms. For these are the only incontrovertible facts that I
know. I need hardly point out to this assembly, however, that this subject
is global, not merely national in character. On July 16th, 1945, the United
States set off the world’s first atomic explosion.
