shall enjoy telling my friends that my younger son and I received our
degrees in the same year.

Commencement ceremonies throughout the United States have be-
come traditional occasions for great happiness and inspiration not only
for the graduates but also for their families. This is one week in your
lives, perhaps above all others, when you have the right to enjoy your-
selves. The future is brave and bright in this, the most fruitful and
happy of all the lands of the earth.

I am sure that each one of you has his own plans and dreams for the
years to come. Some of you will be thinking of more education, the
professions, a business enterprise, or a government career. Probably all
of you are thinking of a home of your own, of marriage, and a family.

The major threat to all those plans comes from abroad. Because that
threat is so real, it requires continuous examination and the best efforts
of all of us to repel it. If we fail, all our dreams will fail, too. The free
world and the slave world are locked in a death struggle. The Com-
munist world now numbers nine hundred million people. Their armed
masses outnumber us five to one. If we are going to prevent a Soviet
conquest we must understand the nature of the animal, its strength
and its weakness. This is everybody’s business today.

The cold war began the day World War II ended. It has waxed and
waned, grown hotter and colder, and is being fought every hour of
every day, on every continent, between the forces of slavery and the
forces of freedom. The end is not in sight. In fact, an early end to the
cold war could come about only through the unthinkable but always
possible explosion of a hot war. Thanks to the calm and eflective
leadership of our government, the imminence of a hot war has been
reduced.

That means, of course, that we are confronted with the prospect of a
long cold war that will probably last throughout our lives. It is a less
dramatic prospect than a hot war but it is just as decisive in determin-
ing our way of life and our continued existence. Obviously victory in a
longer cold war is preferable to victory in the planetary shambles of a
nuclear war. It is possible, during the cold war, with some inconven-
ience, for you to go from here and begin the pursuit of what you want
in life—more education, careers in business or the professions, marriage
and a family.

So the question we are going to live with for many years is: Are we
winning the cold warP—Well, so far the greatest strategic victory in the
cold war has been ours. That has been the circumstance by which the
free world forced the Soviets to change—~at least temporarilwarom

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