"We Shall Pay Any Price"

Foul weather and a fine speech provided the most memorable moments of a historic week.

It was the week of changeover in the U.S. Government, and for only the fifth time in the 20th century a new President moved into the White House in place of an outgoing President of the opposing political party. A blizzard threatened to turn the whole momentous occasion into a farce--but President John Kennedy, delivering his inaugural address (see box on next page), more than saved the day.

Message of Hope. Kennedy's inauguration speech went beyond mere rhetoric derived from the U.S. past; it had profound meaning for the U.S. future. In lean, lucid phrases the nation's new President pledged the U.S. to remain faithful to its friends, firm against its enemies but always willing to bring an end to the cold war impasse.

The speech set forth few concrete proposals, but its broad, general imperatives stirred the heart. Passages from the speech were compared, as examples of inspired and inspiring eloquence, with the resounding "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" of Franklin Roosevelt's 1933 inaugural. Examples:

P: Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend or oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

P: Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

P: Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.

Reaction to the speech was immediate. From all shades of political outlook, from people who had voted for Kennedy in November and people who had voted against him, came a surge of praise and congratulation. Even so partisan a Republican as Senate Minority Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen described it as "inspiring'' and as "a very compact message of hope." Members of Washington's foreign diplomatic corps were unanimously impressed. And even the criticism seemed mild. Commented the Los Angeles Times: "He is wrong in implying the beginning comes with him, but he is right in suggesting that the perfecting of mankind is tedious and unpredictable."

Sense of History. In his address, John Kennedy told the nation and the world: "I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago." This sense of history, this understanding of the U.S. and its government as continuing institutions, gave strength to the Kennedy speech and underlined the orderly transition that last week characterized the changeover of presidential power.

The transition from Dwight Eisenhower to John Kennedy was unflawed by the personal and political feudism of the Hoover-Roosevelt and Truman-Eisenhower changeovers. During the span between election and inauguration, members of the Eisenhower Administration, at the President's orders, cooperated fully with Kennedy and his appointees. Eisenhower and Kennedy met face to face for three hours in early December. Last week, the day before the inauguration, they conferred again, then met with Cabinet officers of the old and new Administrations in what a joint communique called a "full discussion of the world situation."

Speaking to newsmen afterward, Kennedy thanked the Eisenhower Administration for its cooperation. Said he: "I don't think we have asked for anything that they haven't done."

One Nation. The cooperation brought into focus the underlying fact--blurred by all the talk of New Frontiers--that, while much changed on Inauguration Day 1961, much remained unchanged. If John F. Kennedy intends to head toward a New Frontier, he will have to start out on the old paths. He could not abolish the legacy of the Eisenhower Administration even if he wanted to--any more than Ike could or wanted to undo the New Deal.

The Eisenhower-Kennedy transition could well serve to remind the Communist world that beneath the ofttimes deep confiicts of political parties and viewpoints, the U.S. is one nation, indivisible. Nikita Khrushchev, an old hand at fostering divisions within nations, made a point in recent weeks of attacking Eisenhower, stressing that the inauguration of a new President would bring new hopes for U.S.-Russian accommodations. "A new page in U.S. history begins," proclaimed the Soviet newspaper Trud just before the inauguration. But if the page was new, it was a new page of the same book--the book that began on July 4, 1776.

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