US Presidency
1965

The 8 million textbooks that we have supplied to Vietnamese children will rise to more than 15 million by 1967. Agriculture is the foundation. Health, education, and housing are the urgent human needs. But industrial development is the great pathway to their future. When Viet-Nam was divided, most of the industry was in the North. The South was barren of manufacturing and the foundations for industry. But today, more than 700 new or rehabilitated factories textile mills and cement plants, electronics and plastics are changing the entire face of that nation. New roads and communications, railroad equipment and electric generators, are a spreading base on which this new industry can, and is, growing. All this progress goes on, and it is going to continue to go on, under circumstances of staggering adversity. Communist terrorists have made AID programs that we administer a very special target of their attack. They fear them. They know they must fear them because agricultural stations are being destroyed and medical centers are being burned. More than 100 Vietnamese malaria fighters are dead.