Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
mutual security arrangements we have established. Under these arrangements each nation has responsibilities, commensurate with its capabilities, to participate in the development and maintenance of defensive strength. There is also increasing ability of other free world nations to share the burden of this common defense.
"Obviously, no one nation alone could bear the cost of defending all the free world. Likewise, it would be impossible for many free nations long to survive if forced to act separately and alone. The crumbling of the weaker ones would obviously and increasingly multiply the threats to those remaining free, even the very strongest.
"Collective security is not only sensible--it is essential."
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- U.S. Sends Greetings to Viet-Nam on Anniversary of Independence, White House Press Release dated October 25, 1960, Department of State Bulletin
"The White House on October 25 made public the following message from President Eisenhower to Ngo Dinh Diem, President of the Republic of Viet-Nam.
"OCTOBER 22, 1960
"DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: My countrymen and I are proud to convey our good wishes to you and to the citizens of Viet-Nam on the fifth anniversary of the birth of the Republic of Viet-Nam.
"We have watched the courage and daring with which you and the Vietnamese people attained independence in a situation so perilous that many thought it hopeless. We have admired the rapidity with which chaos yielded to order and progress replaced despair.
"During the years of your independence it has been refreshing for us to observe how clearly the Government and the citizens of Viet-Nam have faced the fact that the greatest danger to their independence was Communism. You and your countrymen have used your strength well in accepting the double challenge of building your country and resisting Communist imperialism. In five short years since the founding of the Republic, the Vietnamese people have developed their country in almost every sector. I was particularly impressed by one example. I am informed that last year over 1,200,000 Vietnamese children were able to go to elementary school; three times as many as were enrolled five years earlier. This is certainly a heartening development for Viet-Nam's future. At the same time Viet-Nam's ability to defend itself from the Communists has grown immeasurably since its successful struggle to become an independent Republic.
