This is a sad time for all people. We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed. For me, it is a deep, personal tragedy. I know the world shares th… - Lyndon B. Johnson

As President, I ordered a cutback of unnecessary nuclear production, and this year we submitted several major new proposals to the disarmament conference in Geneva. I will pursue with vigor all of those proposals. These are only first steps. But they point the way toward the ultimate elimination of ultimate destruction. So long as I am your President, I intend to follow that course with all the patience at my command. In these ways, for 19 dangerous years, my 3 predecessors have acted to insure the survival of the Nation, to insure survival of our freedom, and to insure survival of our race. That will always be my policy and this is the wish of the people of the United States.

We think that we are making progress on getting them to decide. They think they are making progress on getting us to decide to give up and pull out. But I think they will find out in the days ahead that we are reasonable people, that we are fair people, that we are not folks who want to conquer the world. We don't seek one acre of anybody else's soil. We love nothing more than peace, but we hate nothing more than surrender and cowardice. We don't ask anybody else to surrender. We just ask them to sit down and talk, meet at a family table and try to work out our differences. But we don't plan to surrender, either; we don't plan to pull out, either; we don't plan to let people influence us, pressure us, and force us to divide our Nation in a time of national peril. The hour is here. This Government has the best diplomats. This Government has the best generals. This Government has the best admirals. This Government has the best resources in every corner of the globe. Although I have had more Secretaries of State than any President in modern times, or more would-be Secretaries of State, I still think this Government has one of the most able and patriotic men I have ever known sitting in that chair, and I think his policy is sound. So as we go back to our homes, let's go back dedicated to achieving peace in the world, trying to get a fair balance here at home, trying to make things easier and better for our children than we had them, but, above all, trying to preserve this American system, which is first in the world today. I want it to stay first, but it cannot be first if we pull out and tuck our tail and violate our commitments.

In 1965 alone we had 300 private talks for peace in Vietnam, with friends and adversaries throughout the world. Since Christmas your government has labored again, with imagination and endurance, to remove any barrier to peaceful settlement. For 20 days now we and our Vietnamese allies have dropped no bombs in North Vietnam. Able and experienced spokesmen have visited, in behalf of America, more than 40 countries. We have talked to more than a hundred governments, all 113 that we have relations with, and some that we don't. We have talked to the United Nations and we have called upon all of its members to make any contribution that they can toward helping obtain peace. In public statements and in private communications, to adversaries and to friends, in Rome and Warsaw, in Paris and Tokyo, in Africa and throughout this hemisphere, America has made her position abundantly clear. We seek neither territory nor bases, economic domination or military alliance in Vietnam. We fight for the principle of self-determination—that the people of South Vietnam should be able to choose their own course, choose it in free elections without violence, without terror, and without fear. The people of all Vietnam should make a free decision on the great question of reunification. This is all we want for South Vietnam. It is all the people of South Vietnam want. And if there is a single nation on this earth that desires less than this for its own people, then let its voice be heard. We have also made it clear—from Hanoi to New York—that there are no arbitrary limits to our search for peace. We stand by the Geneva Agreements of 1954 and 1962. We will meet at any conference table, we will discuss any proposals—four points or 14 or 40—and we will consider the views of any group. We will work for a cease-fire now or once discussions have begun. We will respond if others reduce their use of force, and we will withdraw our soldiers once South Vietnam is securely guaranteed the right to shape its own future. We have said all this, and we have asked—and hoped—and we have waited for a response. So far we have received no response to prove either success or failure.