When countries speak of sending volunteers into other lands, let them be sent to the real battlefields the battlefields of poverty, ignorance, disease, and suffering. Let them come bearing hope and not arms. INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA The President's Remarks at a Luncheon With Indiana Business, Labor, and Professional Leaders. July 23, 1966 We have been working to relieve that plight and taking steps to do so. Our goal is to break down the ghettoes, to create jobs, to improve education, to provide better homes. We are appropriating this year for health and education in our national budget $10 billion more for health and education than we were spending when I became President less than 3 years ago. That is why we are pouring our skills and resources into these programs: manpower training, Medicare, better housing, education, and the like. That is why we are trying to gain approval for our rent supplement and our Demonstration Cities Program. That is why we need your help in making these advances forward to meet the problems of the 20th Century that have accumulated throughout this great Nation. DEMONSTRATION CITIES BILL Statement by the President Following Approval of Bill by the Senate Housing Subcommittee. July 27, 1966 I applaud the action of the Senate Housing Subcommittee today in reporting out the Demonstration Cities Bill. This bill offers new and exciting opportunities for our citizens in cities across the country, large and small. The action of the Senate Subcommittee is good news for the future of our cities and the millions of Americans who live in cities. The bill is the first step towards new schools, new job opportunities; adequate health and community facilities; and rapid and economical transportation. It is the first step on the road in which city dwellers can live with hope and dignity, without fear, and with a pride not only in their home and in their neighborhood, but in their entire city. I hope that the full Committee and the Senate will act promptly on this measure. NATIONAL SCHOOL LUNCH WEEK, 1966 Proclamation 3734. Dated July 29, 1966. Released July 30, 1966 By the President of the United States of America a Proclamation For twenty years the national school lunch program has convincingly demonstrated the vital role of good nutrition in the total educational process of the Nation's children. The program is an outstanding example of a Federal-State-local partnership to make effective use of our food abundance and to protect the health and well-being of all our children, regardless of their race or ability to pay. This year, under this program, some 19 million children in over 71,000 public and nonprofit private schools will enjoy nutritious, appetizing lunches. Increased Federal, State, and local efforts will help additional thousands of children from low income families to obtain lunches that will strengthen their vitality and their ability to obtain maximum benefits from the learning process. In recognition of the value and achievements of the school lunch program, the Congress by a joint resolution of October 9, 1962 (76 Stat. 779), has designated the seven-day period beginning on the second Sunday of October in each year as National School Lunch Week, and has requested the President to issue annually a proclamation calling for the observance of that week: Now, THEREFORE, I, LYNDON B. JOHNSON, President of the United States of America, call upon the people of the United States to observe the week beginning October 9, 1966, as National School Lunch Week, with ceremonies and activities designed to increase public understanding and awareness of the significance of the national school lunch program to the child, to the home, to the farm, to industry, and to the Nation. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States of America to be affixed. DONE at the City of Washington this 29th day of July in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-first. [SEAL] By the President: LYNDON B. JOHNSON. BOOKS FOR THE HANDICAPPED DEAN RUSK, Secretary of State. Statement by the President Upon Signing Bill To Extend Library Services for Physically Handicapped Persons. August 1, 1966 For 35 years, the Library of Congress has provided books in braille and on recorded discs to the blind. Fifty-four State agencies for the blind and 32 major libraries cooperate with the Federal Government in this program, which serves nearly a half million blind Ameri cans. Until recently, however, nearly 1,600,000 other physically handicapped persons have been without library services: older citizens who are bedridden or too weak to read; children and adults who are not legally blind, but whose vision is so limited that normal print is blurred. Now we have been given an opportunity to correct this deficiency in our program as simple justice requires. I have signed into law S. 3093, a bill sponsored by Senator Jordan, of North Carolina, which amends existing statutes to make it possible to serve this forgotten legion of handicapped Americans. I am happy to sign this bill. I consider it not only an act of humane concern for our fellow citizens, but a major contribution to our Nation's educational development. INTERNATIONAL EDUCATIONAL AND CULTURAL EXCHANGE PROGRAM The President's Message to the Congress Transmitting Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1965. August 11, 1966. To the Congress of the United States: Pursuant to the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961, I am transmitting the annual report on the International Educational and Cultural Exchange Program for Fiscal Year 1965. Transmitted with this report is the United States Grantee Directory for Fiscal Year 1965. The educational and cultural programs of our Government are conducted in a world so interdependent that it constitutes, in a sense, single environment. In this global community, education must be international in focus if the cause of understanding and peace among peoples is to be served. Education for world responsibility is no longer an option. It is rather a necessity. In addition to fostering an informed and responsible attitude toward the world among students, the program surveyed in this report has encouraged the flow of ideas among the leaders and thinkers of different nations and cultures. But full heads and empty hearts breed disunity rather than unity. Therefore, the international educational and cultural exchange program, by bringing people of diverse nationalities together in common endeavors of learning, teaching, truth seeking has cultivated the humane virtues of sympathy, sensitivity, and tolerance. In an age when men feel particularly threatened by impersonal forces and alienated from their fellows, this program unobtrusively reminds us that the mind and heart of man know no physical barriers. I commend this report to the thoughtful scrutiny of the Congress. THE WHITE HOUSE, August 11, 1966. LYNDON B. JOHNSON. FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS The President's Remarks at a Ceremony in the Pan American Health Organization Building. August 17, 1966 All of us know that education is primarily a national task to be done with local resources. But there are endeavors where more is needed and where the Alliance must help: school construction, teacher training, and improved administration. The challenge of vocational and modern higher education is wide open-for management, technical, and administrative skills in government and in private business. The Alliance so far has only scratched a thin mark on the great mass of illiteracy, although Latin America is the only continent in the developing world where the number and percentage of illiterates is decreasing each year. Education, then, must become the passion of all of us. Let us approach this challenge completely dissatisfied with our traditional methods. Let us adapt the modern miracles of science, radio, and television, and audio-visual techniques, let us adapt these to the needs of our children and indeed, to the needs of our adults. The time has also come to develop multinational institutions for advanced training in science and technology. For without these Latin America will suffer the continued "brain drain" of some of its ablest youth. WHITE HOUSE SEMINAR PROGRAM The President's Remarks to the Summer Interns at the Sylvan Theater on the Washington Monument Grounds. August 18, 1966 * We know that the freshest ideas often come from the freshest minds on the job. For this reason, we have established the White House Fellows program, which this year will bring from all corners of the Nation 18 of the Nation's brightest young leaders to serve in Washington-at the side of White House officials and Cabinet members. I hope that before long some of you will apply for these fellowships, and that your next trip to Washington will be to begin your year to start contributing your efforts to this bold and this exciting adventure. I am announcing today the beginning of this year's search for the best for next year's White House Fellows. It is not enough for our student generation to inherit America on some future day. They must help shape it-and shape it today. Next year I plan to recommend to Congress a program to assist all those who want to train for public service. Because I am determined that my term in office will mean a greater role for young people. But I warn you-it will also mean greater responsibility for young people. FOREIGN EXCHANGE TEACHERS The President's Remarks to Foreign Teachers Who Will Be Teaching in the United States in the Coming Year. August 25, 1966 Commissioner Howe: my fellow teachers from around the world, ladies and gentlemen: Welcoming you to the White House this morning is the first item on my schedule for this very busy day-and rightly so, I think. This house and this Nation could really have no more important visitors come here. I could have no more important duty, in my judgment, today than to have this opportunity and obligation to speak to you— and to the brilliant young Central American musicians who are also with us today about our common purpose, which is to overcome discord and hate; to make this world a little richer in understanding; to make our people a little better. Fifty or a hundred years ago, distance and strangeness would have made a meeting such as this one impossible. But today, Austria and India, and Australia and New Zealand, Sweden, and the other countries that you represent happen to be just a few hours away. The jet has made near neighbors of the world's nations; the supersonic transport in a few years will pull us even closer together. But it will do little good for nations to be only hours apart geographically, if they should remain light-years apart in understanding. That is why you are here bringing to 10,126 the number of persons we have exchanged under this program in the past two decades. That is why our Nation has begun the largest experiment in history in international education. Almost a year ago at the Smithsonian Institution I called for major new efforts in educational cooperation. I hope that they will be able to give some of you a copy of that statement, if they have not already done so. Since then: -we have requested from Congress an increase of more than 50 percent in education programs for the developing countries; -we have instructed our diplomats and AID officials around the world that educational cooperation is number one top-priority; -we have called on Congress to establish an Exchange Peace Corps, and a new Center for Educational Cooperation in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The first thing I did this morning was to talk to a lady about building a model high school to serve as an experiment and a model for this Nation, and for all the nations of the world, in how to help deaf people get a high school education. I just finished talking to one of the experienced reporters, a friend of mine, about my 58th birthday the day after tomorrow. I don't know how they snooped around and found out I was that old, but they have. He asked me what I was going to get for my birthday present. I told him I already had my birthday present. I will have a most wonderful birthday because we have had the birthday of the elementary, secondary, and higher education acts; that we had passed more than 20 health bills; that we had a beautification program; a conservation program; a poverty program; and that our foreign policy was our domestic policy. Domestically we are dealing with the enemies of man. What are those enemies? Disease. It is tragic the toll that old man Disease takes. And ignorance and poverty. A few nights ago I dedicated hospital number 6,600 that we had built up at Ellenville, New York. That morning I had been in Buffalo where we are putting our pollution reorganization into effect and our pollution legislation into effect. We went down to Syracuse. We talked about what we were going to do with our demonstration cities program and what we are going to do with our urban renewal; what we are going to do with our new housing legislation and with our supplemental rents. So I have had education, health, housing, and poverty programs already given to me as a birthday present, because we are applying those programs all over this land in the last 22 years. This Congress has passed more legislation in those fields than all the Congresses in history put together. What better birthday present could you have than the satisfaction of knowing that the instrument of government is being used to guide and to lead and to lift all of our |