where.

Give us, we pray, the power to discern clearly right from wrong, and
allow all our words and actions to be governed thereby, and by the laws
of this land. Especially we pray that our concern shall be for all the
people regardless of station, race, or calling.

May cooperation be permitted and be the mutual aim of those who, under
the concepts of our Constitution, hold to differing political faiths; so
that all may work for the good of our beloved country and Thy glory.
Amen.

My fellow citizens:

The world and we have passed the midway point of a century of continuing
challenge. We sense with all our faculties that forces of good and evil
are massed and armed and opposed as rarely before in history.

This fact defines the meaning of this day. We are summoned by this
honored and historic ceremony to witness more than the act of one
citizen swearing his oath of service, in the presence of God. We are
called as a people to give testimony in the sight of the world to our
faith that the future shall belong to the free.

Since this century's beginning, a time of tempest has seemed to come
upon the continents of the earth. Masses of Asia have awakened to strike
off shackles of the past. Great nations of Europe have fought their
bloodiest wars. Thrones have toppled and their vast empires have
disappeared. New nations have been born.

For our own country, it has been a time of recurring trial. We have
grown in power and in responsibility. We have passed through the
anxieties of depression and of war to a summit unmatched in man's
history. Seeking to secure peace in the world, we have had to fight
through the forests of the Argonne, to the shores of Iwo Jima, and to
the cold mountains of Korea.

In the swift rush of great events, we find ourselves groping to know the
full sense and meaning of these times in which we live. In our quest of
understanding, we beseech God's guidance. We summon all our knowledge of
the past and we scan all signs of the future. We bring all our wit and
all our will to meet the question:

How far have we come in man's long pilgrimage from darkness toward
light? Are we nearing the light--a day of freedom and of peace for all
mankind? Or are the shadows of another night closing in upon us?

Great as are the preoccupations absorbing us at home, concerned as we
are with matters that deeply affect our livelihood today and our vision
of the future, each of these domestic problems is dwarfed