Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or
domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that
some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution
to all current difficulties. 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 in 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 cost and hoped
for 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 between actions
of the moment and 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 that our people and their
Government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well,
in the face of threat and stress.
But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. Of these, I mention two only.