Williams. On the road with the cspan bus. Last tuesday president barack obama delivered his farewell address in chicago. Next on American History tv, we look back at president dit eisenhowers farewell address in the white house. The president warned about the influence of what he called the military industrial complex. Dwight eisenhower served two terms as president from 1953 to 1961. This is about 15 minutes. Good evening, my fellow americans. First i should like to express my gratitude to the radio and Television Networks for the opportunities they have given me over the years to bring reports and messages to the nation. My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening. Three days from now, after half a century in the service of my country, i shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremonies, the authority of the presidency is vested in my successor. This evening ive come to you with a message of leavetaking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen. Like every other citizen, i wish the new president and all who will labor with him godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all. Our people expect their president and the congress to find a central agreement on issues of great momentum. The wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation. My own relations with the congress which began on a remote and tenuous basis long ago when the member of the Senate Appointed me to west point was during the war, and immediate postwar period, and finally to the mutually interdependent during the past eight years. In this final relationship, the congress and the administration have the most vital issues have cooperated as well. To serve the nation good, rather than mere partisanship. And so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward. So my official relationship with the Congress Ends on my part with gratitude that weve been able to do so much together. We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts, america is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this preeminence we yet realize that americas leadership and prestige depend not merely upon our riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment. Throughout americas adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace, to foster progress in human achievements, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among peoples and among nations, to strive for less would be unworthy of a free people. Any failure, traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension, or readiness to sacrifice, would inflict upon us grievous hurt, both at home and abroad. Progress toward these noble goals is consistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very being. We face a hostile ideology, global in scope, and insid wous in method. There is a danger it poses of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is call for not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to Carry Forward steadily surely and without complaint a burdens of a long and complex goal with liberty the stake. Only thus should we remain despite every provocation on our charted course toward Permanent Peace and human betterment. Crises will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel some spectacular and costly action could become a miraculous conclusion to all difficulty. A huge increase in newer elements of our defenses. Development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture. A dramatic expansion in basic and applied research. These and many other possibilities, each possibly promising itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel. But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration. The need to maintain balance in and among national programs. Balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the costs and hopedfor advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a nation, and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual. Balance in the National Welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress. Lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration. The record of many decades stands as proof our people have of the government, understood these truths, and have responded to them well in the face of threats and stress. But threats to any degree constantly arise. Of these i mention two only. A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. Our military Organization Today bears little relation to that known of any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of world war ii or korea. Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plow shares could, with time, as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armistice industry of vast proportions. To do this, 3. 5 million men and women are directly engaged in the defense of the establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations. Now, this conjunction of an immense military establishment and arms industry is new in the american experience. The total influence, economic, political, even spiritual, is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society. In the counsels of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals. So that security and liberty may prosper together. Akin to and widely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial military posture has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central. It also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of the federal government. Today the solitary inventor timpgerring in his shop has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists. In laboratories and testing fields, in the same fashion the Free University historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery has experienced a revolution and conduct of research partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nations scholars by federal employment, to project allocations and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet in holding Scientific Research and discovery in respect, as we should, we should also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that Public Policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite. Its the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system. Ever aimi ining toward our goal a free society. Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element, as we peer into societys future, we, you and i, and our government, must avoid the impulse to live only for today. Hungering for our own convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come. Not to become the insolvent memory of tomorrow. During 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 competence 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 competence is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences 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. Happily i can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, i shall never cease to do what little i can to help the world advance along that road. So, in this, my last good night to you as your president , i thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for Public Service in war and in peace. Ive trusted in that, in that service, i hope you find some things worthy. As for the rest of it, i know you will find ways to improve performance in the future. You and i, my fellow citizens, need to be strong in our faith, that all nations under god will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principles, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of our nations peace. We pray that peoples of all faiths, all nations, may have their needs satisfied, that no one shall be denied opportunity, that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings, those who have freedom will understand also its heavy responsibility. That all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity, and that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made disappear from the earth. That in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a