"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense,
a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
What can the world, or any nation in it, hope for if no turning is found
on this dread road?
The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.
The worst is atomic war.
The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden
of arms draining the wealthand the labor of all peoples; a wasting of
strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any
system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this
earth.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms in not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists,
the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in
more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000
population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more
than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the
world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of
threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point the hope that
come with this spring of 1953.
This is one of those times in the affairs of nations when the gravest
choices must be made, if there is to be a turning toward a just and
lasting peace.
It is a moment that calls upon the governments of the world to speak
their intentions with simplicity and with honest.
It calls upon them to answer the questions that stirs the hearts of all
sane men: is there no other way the world may live?"
President Dwight Eisenhower
