A third place to build the Great Society is in the classrooms of America. There your children's lives will be shaped. Our society will not be great u… - Lyndon B. Johnson

The second area of increasing strength is our ability to fight less than all-out war. In the past 3 years we have raised the number of combat ready divisions 45 percent. They can he moved swiftly around the world by an airlift capacity which has increased 75 percent. Supporting tactical aircraft have been increased over 30 percent and the number of tactical nuclear warheads in Europe has been raised 60 percent. We, and our NATO allies, now have 5 million men under arms. In addition, we are now ready to mobilize large reserves in the event of conflict. Six divisions, with all supporting units, can be moved into action in a few weeks. And we are continuing to build our forces. In a few years our airlift capacity will be five times what it was in 1961. Advanced weapons and equipment are flowing to our armies. Our fleet is being modernized through a decade-long shipbuilding program. And new tactical aircraft are being built.

For many years we have been engaged in a struggle in Southeast Asia to stop the onrushing tide of Communist aggression. We faced it when the Greek Communists were a few miles out of Athens a few years ago. We faced it when we had to fly zero weather into Berlin to feed the people when that city was beleaguered and cut off. We faced it on the Pusan Peninsula when our men were fighting for the hills of Korea and everybody said, "They are not worth it." We fight Communist aggression the same today in Southeast Asia. This tide threatens to engulf that part of the world, and to affect the safety of every American home. It threatens our own security and it threatens the security of every nation allied with us. The blood of our young men this hour is being shed on that soil. They know why they are there. I read 100 letters from them every week. They do not have the doubts that some at home preach. They have seen the enemy's determination. They have felt his thrust trying to conquer those who want to be left alone to determine their government for themselves, but whom the aggressor has marched over to try to envelop. Our fighting men know, from the evidence in their eyes, that we face a ruthless enemy. You make a serious mistake if you underestimate that enemy, his cause, and the effect of his conquest. They know from the carnage of the enemy's treacherous assaults that he has no feelings about deliberate murder of innocent women and children in the villages and the cities of South Vietnam. They are not misled by propaganda or by the effort to gloss over the actions of an enemy who, I remind each of you, has broken every truce, and who makes no secret whatever of his intention and his determination to conquer by force and by aggression his neighbors to the south. At the same time, during these past 4 years, we have made remarkable strides here at home. We have opened the doors of freedom, full citizenship, and opportunity, to 30 million minority people, and we have sustained the highest level of prosperity for the longest period of time ever known. But the time has come this morning when your President has come here to ask you people, and all the other people of this Nation, to join us in a total national effort to win the war, to win the peace, and to complete the job that must be done here at home. I ask all of you to join in a program of national austerity to insure that our economy will prosper and that our fiscal position will be sound.

We will win this election. But we will know that the voters of this country have not written a blank check; that there are differences which remain, and those differences must be honored. And they will be honored. But these things have been made clear: We have been settling for too little in this country. We are going to raise our sights. We are going to see that every American child has an equal chance at the fullest education that child can use. We have been educating most of our children. Now we are going to educate those who need it most. We have declared war on poverty, and we mean all-out war. Abraham Lincoln, a product of Illinois, abolished slavery 100 years ago. And now the Democratic Party adopts as its program the abolishment of poverty in this land. Prosperity for four out of five is not enough.