The American people want peace. They have long since ceased to talk of a hard or a soft peace for Germany.

Offering hope to the German people, I said that freedom from militarism would give them the opportunity, if they would but seize it, "to apply their great energies and abilities to the works of peace — and in time to take an honorable place among the members of the United Nations.

Friendship without self-interest is one of the rare and beautiful things of life.

Provision was also made for the distribution of Germany's foreign assets among the Allies.

It is not in the interest of the German people or in the interest of world peace that Germany should become a pawn or a partner in a military struggle for power between the East and the West.

That was the principle of reparations to which President Truman agreed at Potsdam. And the United States will not agree to the taking from Germany of greater reparations than was provided by the Potsdam Agreement.

The conditions which now exist in Germany make it impossible for industrial production to reach the levels which the occupying powers agreed were essential for a minimum German peacetime economy.