Hand-edited typed draft, headed "Speech for United Nations Day," two pages, 8.5 x 14, dated in pencil in another hand, "for October 24, 1952," signed and inscribed at the conclusion in fountain pen, "To: Frank Weil, Dwight D. Eisenhower." The speech features several handwritten additions (shown in italics) and deletions (shown in brackets) in Eisenhower's hand. In full: "In the bright dawn of peace, just [six] seven years ago, the leaders of the free world constructed for their mutual security a new organization—the United Nations. It was inspired by faith in freedom’s future and dedicated to the proposition that all nations enjoy equal and inviolable right to peace and independence. Our day of peace has quickly darkened. We are now engaged in a difficult and dangerous world struggle with new foes of freedom. It is a struggle testing whether this organization [or any organization so conceived and so dedicated] can prevail against the use of force—and threats of force—by men of wicked will.
Upon the eventual outcome of this test depends our whole tomorrow. Upon our wisdom and our fortitude in facing this test depends our whole worth as the heirs of those who died fighting other aggressors. Upon us depends the [whole] hope of freedom and of world peace. The United Nations Organization is both the symbol and the guardian of that hope. Like any symbol, it is an imperfect image of the ideal. At times it seems to all of us to be divided in its counsels, confused in its performance, at times a rather bewildering babble. Yet—in all of this—it merely reflects faithfully the confusions and anxieties of all free peoples—as they struggle to stay free.
As a guardian of our hopes, it is not a mightily armed sentry. It is the watchman that never lets our conscience sleep. It is the abiding reminder that every free nation [is his brother nation’s keeper] must be a supporter of freedom everywhere. It is the voice that warns free men [everywhere] whenever a free people is in peril. It is the voice that summons free men who are strong to the aid of free men who are weak. This is a great and solemn commission, and on the whole it has been bravely discharged. When the armies of Communist tyranny thought quickly to smother the freedom of the people of the little nation of Korea, the United Nations needed less than two days to call the arms of the free to the aid of the attacked. Neither them not at any other time of trial could the United Nations be asked to do more than this: to remind lovers of freedom to be ready to [fight for freedom] defend it.
It is therefore [altogether] fitting that we set aside this day to honor the United Nations. It is yet more fitting that we, the American people, in every small hamlet or great city, today reaffirm our devotion to the peaceful hopes of free men everywhere. It is most fitting that—as a proud member of the United Nations—we pledge again our strength, our fortune and our sacred honor, to the end that no free nation shall ever again be destroyed upon this earth.” In fine condition. An excellent, eloquent speech on the importance of the United Nations and the American ideal of freedom.
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