US Presidency
1961

If there is a crisis ' it is because an existing peace is under threat, because an existing island of free people is under pressure, because solemn agreements are being treated with indifference. Established international rights are being threatened with unilateral usurpation. Peaceful circulation has been interrupted by barbed wire and concrete blocks. One recalls the order of the Czar in Pushkin's Boris Godunov : Take steps at this very hour that our frontiers be fenced in by barriers... That not a single soul pass o'er the border, that not a hare be able to run or a crow to fly. It is absurd to allege that we are threatening a war merely to prevent the Soviet Union and East Germany from signing a so-called treaty of peace. The Western Allies are not concerned with any paper arrangement the Soviets may wish to make with a regime of their own creation, on territory occupied by their own troops and governed by their own agents. No such action can affect either our rights or our responsibilities.