The great battleground for the defense and expansion of freedom today is the whole southern half of the globe... the lands of the rising peoples. Their revolution is the greatest in human history. They seek an end to injustice, tyranny and exploitation. More than an end, they seek a beginning.

Knowledge of the oceans is more than a matter of curiosity. Our very survival may hinge upon it.

One-third of the world, it has been said, may be free- -but one-third is the victim of cruel repression--and the other one- third is rocked by the pangs of poverty, hunger and envy. More energy is released by the awakening of these new nations than by the fission of the atom itself.

The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century... unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today.

A Canadian newspaperman said yesterday that this is the President's "Easter egghead roll on the White House lawn." I want to deny that!

We must formulate, with both imagination and restraint, a new approach to the Middle East - not pressing our case so hard that the Arabs feel their neutrality and nationalism are threatened ... while at the same time trying to hasten the inevitable Arab acceptance of the permanence of Israel ... We must ... seek a permanent settlement among Arabs and Israelis based not on an armed truce but on mutual self-interest.

If more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live.