Eisenhower: ending child hunger crucial for building peace
Today, 400 million children suffer from hunger around the globe. The principles of Ike's speech remain very much relevant in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan and many other countries.
Here is the full text of Eisenhower's speech as well as a Youtube video clip featuring an excerpt:
Just now I must say that I am a bit confused as to why we came here. I thought it was to get out of you, for a worthy cause, all the money that you have got. Instead, we have been listening to words that shine so brightly that they should appropriately appear on my tombstone, if anywhere. I am embarrassed by the generosity of the remarks of our National Chairman and the Chairman of this meeting because I deserve no credit whatsoever for being here. Every individual in the world is the center of the universe; everything that affects him is seen in the light of his own desires, his own ambitions, his own hopes, his own fears. That of necessity must be so.
Therefore, when something of great importance to him is projected he feels an impulse to participate in it. For that he deserves no particular credit. In this movement I see something of transcendent importance to all of us.
I am not here to plead the essential charity and mercy aspects of the movement with which your presence here brings you into participation. I am not going to talk about humanitarianism, I’m going to talk about self-interest. To my mind, this is one of the many fronts upon which the battle of peace must be won, and I am not alone among old soldiers and sailors in believing this, as is evidenced by the fact that the old comrades of mine of World War II are here in the audience. They have seen war, they know what it is, and their ambitions, their ideals, like my own, are devoted toward every worthwhile measure that will keep the scourge of war away from the face of the earth.
That objective cannot be won, ladies and gentlemen, through any narrow approach. The United Nations, as noble as it is in the concept, as deserving as it is of the support of all of us, cannot do it alone. There are many ways, ranging through the whole gamut of activity by which each of us may participate toward this goal and these are the ones we must discover and support.
The children of today are forging each day the mental concepts, the mental prejudices, the emotions, that are going to rule and govern them through their lifetime. Overseas, half of the earth, there is hunger and want. In many countries, children are going in packs up and down alleys, they are searching for a garbage heap in which they find all too little of any kind of sustenance that will keep them alive. Every man here who served with me in Europe has witnessed this with his own eyes. How can we expect children who are reduced almost to an animal life level of existence - who struggle each day for any kind of food that will keep them alive - how can we expect them in the future to be apostles of peace? They are, by the very nature of the struggle they are carrying on, wedded to the philosophy of force. Whatever they get, they get by their own efforts and by fighting each other for the pitiful products of the garbage heap. This cannot go on if we are to have peace.
It isn’t merely a question of money, it is a question of everything you do by your daily lives to advance this idea.
I recall some months ago one of our political leaders mentioned that if America would eat less, most of the world could get what it needs. There was a political outcry about that and yet I stand here today and say that everyone who saves the food that he does not need, is contributing towards the solution of the problem that worries every single one of us present and a hundred and forty million people throughout the United States as well as the rest of the world.
Fundamentally, that worry is what is the future of our way of life, of the freedoms that have been won for us by the blood and sweat and sacrifice and suffering of our ancestors going back to 1215. Those freedoms are threatened on every side. After a great war like this there would be sufficient distress if there was relative peace in the world, but we see a world torn by conflicting ideologies which, on one side, is characterized by aggressive purposes. We cannot operate successfully on a cooperative basis. We are not free to devote ourselves exclusively to the basic human needs of men. We must take measures among the freedom-loving peoples of the world to spend much of our strength to sustain our way of life.
This problem of peace and the problem of sustaining our way of life are identical, and the problem of feeding the children of today is a very essential part of it.
Were we involved with only one section of the world, the problem would probably not be too serious; but it is widespread. There are people present who have traveled in Indonesia, in all of Southeast Asia, in China and Korea, and all of Western Europe, and almost without exception the story is the same. In North Africa it is repeated.
How can we then, if we are serious about saying that we want to travel the road to peace, realizing that there can be no permanent security or assured peace for ourselves unless it is shared by all nations of the globe, how can we attempt to say that we are traveling that road unless we do everything that lies within our power to create conditions in which peace may flourish. We must eliminate starvation - we must see that children are well nourished. Not only must we give our money, we must give our earnest efforts and thought to this thing; we must do it with our hearts, we must save food and we must produce more food.
There is a group today which is attempting to enlist American interest in the saving of our land. They stirred my interest when they told me that if I should stand on the dock at New Orleans that every third minute a ten thousand dollar farm would go past my feet. We must do our part to save those farms if we are to find ourselves and help feed the world.
What I am trying to get over is that we each can do a part, we can help, and there is going to be no peace unless all of us are bound together in a common concept of the fundamentals of the problems and common concept of what we are going to do about them. We are not going merely to await action even by such a great organization as the United Nations. Each of us must be inspired to do his own part.
When we are unified in that sense there is no problem on earth that will not yield to the determined, enthusiastic and united support of a hundred and forty million Americans. That kind of power cannot be resisted and unless we have it, there is no victory.
Every soldier, every sailor who served in this war is a witness to the mighty strength that America can develop when aroused.
I think my own example of that power was found in an incident of destruction. On June 19, 1944, the greatest storm in forty years swept the English Channel and on the beaches of Normandy were piled up hundreds of ships of seagoing capacity. It was the kind of catastrophe that to any other country, or in any other time, would have spelt disaster and defeat. Actually, it occasioned little more than a wrinkle in the smoothly-developed plan that brought about the victory in Europe. That brought home to me, more than anything else, the might of this country, what it can do when aroused, and how much it can absorb on its march to victory.
This job can be done. The only thing that is necessary is that America develop this same unity in the cause of peace as it did in war. This question of overseas aid for children is but one part of the campaign - a vitally important one - and if we will unite behind it in the cause of peace we can certainly win through.
Thank you very much.
(speech courtesy of the Eisenhower memorial commission)
Youtube clip featuring excerpt from Eisenhower's speech