Therefore, I believe that we both have a heavy obligation to seek earnestly the path to peace. It is in response to that obligation that I am writing… - Lyndon B. Johnson

Unworthy as I am of your honor, I deeply appreciate your generosity. The torch of John Kennedy that I picked up when he faltered I shall proudly carry on as long as I have the energy and the life to carry it. I am most grateful to B'nai B'rith and the Anti-Defamation League. They have the gratitude of this Nation. In your half century of fighting discrimination you have never tired, you have never faltered, you have never lost faith in your cause and your cause has given faith to your Nation.

For our ultimate goal is a world without war, a world made safe for diversity, in which all men, goods, and ideas can freely move across every border and every boundary. We must advance toward this goal in 1964 in at least 10 different ways, not as partisans, but as patriots. First, we must maintain--and our reduced defense budget will maintain--that margin of military safety and superiority obtained through 3 years of steadily increasing both the quality and the quantity of our strategic, our conventional, and our antiguerilla forces. In 1964 we will be better prepared than ever before to defend the cause of freedom, whether it is threatened by outright aggression or by the infiltration practiced by those in Hanoi and Havana, who ship arms and men across international borders to foment insurrection. And we must continue to use that strength as John Kennedy used it in the Cuban crisis and for the test ban treaty--to demonstrate both the futility of nuclear war and the possibilities of lasting peace.

This is not always clearly seen. It is true today as when Thomas Jefferson first said it, that people generally have more feeling for canals and the roads than they do for education. But I hold the hope that Jefferson held, that we can advance them with equal pace. In our cities and in our counties, and in all of our country, there is a very great and urgent need for public works. But today more than any time in our history, America's most urgent work is educating its people, educating all the people, all the time, wherever they may have been born or wherever they may have chosen to live.