I Like Ike: 2

Excerpt from President Dwight David Eisenhower's Farewell Address " Down 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 difference, 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. " Can we have any glimpse of the ideals which motivated such men as recently as 50 years ago? Have the heroes all disappeared, leaving us with the Trimalchios of self-engorgement, the Alcibiades of self-interest, the Jay Goulds of pagan greed, the Chryses of those blinded by their wealth? Has our keen sense of morality turned us into Reverends James Andrews of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, so dear to us the wealth coming from part of humanity held in our thrall?