Franklin D. Roosevelt
First Inaugural Address
Saturday, March 4, 1933

I AM certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into 
the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which 
the present situation of our Nation impels. This is preeminently the 
time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need 
we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This 
great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will 
prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only 
thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, 
unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat 
into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of 
frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the 
people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that 
you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common 
difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values 
have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay 
has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of 
income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the 
withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers 
find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in 
thousands of families are gone.

More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of 
existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a 
foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by 
no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers 
conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much 
to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts 
have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it 
languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because 
the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through 
their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their 
failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers 
stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts 
and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern 
of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed 
only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which 
to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have 
resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. 
They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no 
vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our 
civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The 
measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social 
values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy 
of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral 
stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of 
evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if 
they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to 
minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of 
success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that 
public office and high political position are to be valued only by the 
standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an 
end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given 
to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small 
wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on 
honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on 
unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This 
Nation asks for action, and action now.

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no 
unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be 
accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, 
treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the 
same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed 
projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.

Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of 
population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national 
scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land 
for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite 
efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the 
power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by 
preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through 
foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by 
insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith 
on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped 
by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, 
uneconomical, and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for 
and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications 
and other utilities which have a definitely public character. There are 
many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely 
by talking about it. We must act and act quickly.

Finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two 
safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must 
be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; 
there must be an end to speculation with other people's money, and 
there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.

There are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge upon a new 
Congress in special session detailed measures for their fulfillment, 
and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the several States.

Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own 
national house in order and making income balance outgo. Our 
international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of 
time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national 
economy. I favor as a practical policy the putting of first things 
first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international 
economic readjustment, but the emergency at home cannot wait on that 
accomplishment.

The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery 
is not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first 
consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in all 
parts of the United States - a recognition of the old and permanently 
important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer. It is 
the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest 
assurance that the recovery will endure.

In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy 
of the good neighbor - the neighbor who resolutely respects himself 
and, because he does so, respects the rights of others - the neighbor 
who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his 
agreements in and with a world of neighbors.

If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have 
never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can 
not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, 
we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the 
good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no 
progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, 
ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, 
because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. 
This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind 
upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked 
only in time of armed strife.

With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this 
great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our 
common problems.

Action in this image and to this end is feasible under the form of 
government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution 
is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet 
extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss 
of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved 
itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world 
has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, 
of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.

It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative 
authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before 
us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed 
action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of 
public procedure.

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures 
that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. 
These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of 
its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional 
authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two 
courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still 
critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then 
confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument 
to meet the crisis - broad Executive power to wage a war against the 
emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were 
in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion 
that befit the time. I can do no less.

We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of the 
national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and 
precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the 
stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the 
assurance of a rounded and permanent national life.

We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the 
United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a 
mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for 
discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the 
present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.

In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May 
He protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to 
come.

Franklin D. Roosevelt
Second Inaugural Address
Wednesday, January 20, 1937

WHEN four years ago we met to inaugurate a President, the Republic, 
single-minded in anxiety, stood in spirit here. We dedicated ourselves 
to the fulfillment of a vision - to speed the time when there would be 
for all the people that security and peace essential to the pursuit of 
happiness. We of the Republic pledged ourselves to drive from the 
temple of our ancient faith those who had profaned it; to end by 
action, tireless and unafraid, the stagnation and despair of that day. 
We did those first things first.

Our covenant with ourselves did not stop there. Instinctively we 
recognized a deeper need - the need to find through government the 
instrument of our united purpose to solve for the individual the 
ever-rising problems of a complex civilization. Repeated attempts at 
their solution without the aid of government had left us baffled and 
bewildered. For, without that aid, we had been unable to create those 
moral controls over the services of science which are necessary to make 
science a useful servant instead of a ruthless master of mankind. To do 
this we knew that we must find practical controls over blind economic 
forces and blindly selfish men.

We of the Republic sensed the truth that democratic government has 
innate capacity to protect its people against disasters once considered 
inevitable, to solve problems once considered unsolvable. We would not 
admit that we could not find a way to master economic epidemics just 
as, after centuries of fatalistic suffering, we had found a way to 
master epidemics of disease. We refused to leave the problems of our 
common welfare to be solved by the winds of chance and the hurricanes 
of disaster.

In this we Americans were discovering no wholly new truth; we were 
writing a new chapter in our book of self-government.

This year marks the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the 
Constitutional Convention which made us a nation. At that Convention 
our forefathers found the way out of the chaos which followed the 
Revolutionary War; they created a strong government with powers of 
united action sufficient then and now to solve problems utterly beyond 
individual or local solution. A century and a half ago they established 
the Federal Government in order to promote the general welfare and 
secure the blessings of liberty to the American people.

Today we invoke those same powers of government to achieve the same 
objectives.

Four years of new experience have not belied our historic instinct. 
They hold out the clear hope that government within communities, 
government within the separate States, and government of the United 
States can do the things the times require, without yielding its 
democracy. Our tasks in the last four years did not force democracy to 
take a holiday.

Nearly all of us recognize that as intricacies of human relationships 
increase, so power to govern them also must increase - power to stop 
evil; power to do good. The essential democracy of our Nation and the 
safety of our people depend not upon the absence of power, but upon 
lodging it with those whom the people can change or continue at stated 
intervals through an honest and free system of elections. The 
Constitution of 1787 did not make our democracy impotent.

In fact, in these last four years, we have made the exercise of all 
power more democratic; for we have begun to bring private autocratic 
powers into their proper subordination to the public's government. The 
legend that they were invincible - above and beyond the processes of a 
democracy - has been shattered. They have been challenged and beaten.

Our progress out of the depression is obvious. But that is not all that 
you and I mean by the new order of things. Our pledge was not merely to 
do a patchwork job with secondhand materials. By using the new 
materials of social justice we have undertaken to erect on the old 
foundations a more enduring structure for the better use of future 
generations.

In that purpose we have been helped by achievements of mind and spirit. 
Old truths have been relearned; untruths have been unlearned. We have 
always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now 
that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose 
builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the 
long run economic morality pays. We are beginning to wipe out the line 
that divides the practical from the ideal; and in so doing we are 
fashioning an instrument of unimagined power for the establishment of a 
morally better world.

This new understanding undermines the old admiration of worldly success 
as such. We are beginning to abandon our tolerance of the abuse of 
power by those who betray for profit the elementary decencies of life.

In this process evil things formerly accepted will not be so easily 
condoned. Hard-headedness will not so easily excuse hardheartedness. We 
are moving toward an era of good feeling. But we realize that there can 
be no era of good feeling save among men of good will.

For these reasons I am justified in believing that the greatest change 
we have witnessed has been the change in the moral climate of America.

Among men of good will, science and democracy together offer an 
ever-richer life and ever-larger satisfaction to the individual. With 
this change in our moral climate and our rediscovered ability to 
improve our economic order, we have set our feet upon the road of 
enduring progress.

Shall we pause now and turn our back upon the road that lies ahead? 
Shall we call this the promised land? Or, shall we continue on our way? 
For "each age is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth."

Many voices are heard as we face a great decision. Comfort says, "Tarry 
a while." Opportunism says, "This is a good spot." Timidity asks, "How 
difficult is the road ahead?"

True, we have come far from the days of stagnation and despair. 
Vitality has been preserved. Courage and confidence have been restored. 
Mental and moral horizons have been extended.

But our present gains were won under the pressure of more than ordinary 
circumstances. Advance became imperative under the goad of fear and 
suffering. The times were on the side of progress.

To hold to progress today, however, is more difficult. Dulled 
conscience, irresponsibility, and ruthless self-interest already 
reappear. Such symptoms of prosperity may become portents of disaster! 
Prosperity already tests the persistence of our progressive purpose.

Let us ask again: Have we reached the goal of our vision of that fourth 
day of March 1933? Have we found our happy valley?

I see a great nation, upon a great continent, blessed with a great 
wealth of natural resources. Its hundred and thirty million people are 
at peace among themselves; they are making their country a good 
neighbor among the nations. I see a United States which can demonstrate 
that, under democratic methods of government, national wealth can be 
translated into a spreading volume of human comforts hitherto unknown, 
and the lowest standard of living can be raised far above the level of 
mere subsistence.

But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens 
of millions of its citizens - a substantial part of its whole 
population - who at this very moment are denied the greater part of 
what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.

I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the 
pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.

I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under 
conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a 
century ago.

I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to 
better their lot and the lot of their children.

I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and 
factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many 
other millions.

I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

It is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you 
in hope - because the Nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in 
it, proposes to paint it out. We are determined to make every American 
citizen the subject of his country's interest and concern; and we will 
never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as 
superfluous. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the 
abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for 
those who have too little.

If I know aught of the spirit and purpose of our Nation, we will not 
listen to Comfort, Opportunism, and Timidity. We will carry on.

Overwhelmingly, we of the Republic are men and women of good will; men 
and women who have more than warm hearts of dedication; men and women 
who have cool heads and willing hands of practical purpose as well. 
They will insist that every agency of popular government use effective 
instruments to carry out their will.

Government is competent when all who compose it work as trustees for 
the whole people. It can make constant progress when it keeps abreast 
of all the facts. It can obtain justified support and legitimate 
criticism when the people receive true information of all that 
government does.

If I know aught of the will of our people, they will demand that these 
conditions of effective government shall be created and maintained. 
They will demand a nation uncorrupted by cancers of injustice and, 
therefore, strong among the nations in its example of the will to peace.

Today we reconsecrate our country to long-cherished ideals in a 
suddenly changed civilization. In every land there are always at work 
forces that drive men apart and forces that draw men together. In our 
personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for 
economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up, or else we 
all go down, as one people.

To maintain a democracy of effort requires a vast amount of patience in 
dealing with differing methods, a vast amount of humility. But out of 
the confusion of many voices rises an understanding of dominant public 
need. Then political leadership can voice common ideals, and aid in 
their realization.

In taking again the oath of office as President of the United States, I 
assume the solemn obligation of leading the American people forward 
along the road over which they have chosen to advance.

While this duty rests upon me I shall do my utmost to speak their 
purpose and to do their will, seeking Divine guidance to help us each 
and every one to give light to them that sit in darkness and to guide 
our feet into the way of peace.

Franklin D. Roosevelt
Third Inaugural Address
Monday, January 20, 1941

ON each national day of inauguration since 1789, the people have 
renewed their sense of dedication to the United States.

In Washington's day the task of the people was to create and weld 
together a nation.

In Lincoln's day the task of the people was to preserve that Nation 
from disruption from within.

In this day the task of the people is to save that Nation and its 
institutions from disruption from without.

To us there has come a time, in the midst of swift happenings, to pause 
for a moment and take stock - to recall what our place in history has 
been, and to rediscover what we are and what we may be. If we do not, 
we risk the real peril of inaction.

Lives of nations are determined not by the count of years, but by the 
lifetime of the human spirit. The life of a man is three-score years 
and ten: a little more, a little less. The life of a nation is the 
fullness of the measure of its will to live.

There are men who doubt this. There are men who believe that democracy, 
as a form of Government and a frame of life, is limited or measured by 
a kind of mystical and artificial fate that, for some unexplained 
reason, tyranny and slavery have become the surging wave of the future 
- and that freedom is an ebbing tide.

But we Americans know that this is not true.

Eight years ago, when the life of this Republic seemed frozen by a 
fatalistic terror, we proved that this is not true. We were in the 
midst of shock - but we acted. We acted quickly, boldly, decisively.

These later years have been living years - fruitful years for the 
people of this democracy. For they have brought to us greater security 
and, I hope, a better understanding that life's ideals are to be 
measured in other than material things.

Most vital to our present and our future is this experience of a 
democracy which successfully survived crisis at home; put away many 
evil things; built new structures on enduring lines; and, through it 
all, maintained the fact of its democracy.

For action has been taken within the three-way framework of the 
Constitution of the United States. The coordinate branches of the 
Government continue freely to function. The Bill of Rights remains 
inviolate. The freedom of elections is wholly maintained. Prophets of 
the downfall of American democracy have seen their dire predictions 
come to naught.

Democracy is not dying.

We know it because we have seen it revive - and grow.

We know it cannot die - because it is built on the unhampered 
initiative of individual men and women joined together in a common 
enterprise - an enterprise undertaken and carried through by the free 
expression of a free majority.

We know it because democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists 
the full force of men's enlightened will.

We know it because democracy alone has constructed an unlimited 
civilization capable of infinite progress in the improvement of human 
life.

We know it because, if we look below the surface, we sense it still 
spreading on every continent - for it is the most humane, the most 
advanced, and in the end the most unconquerable of all forms of human 
society.

A nation, like a person, has a body - a body that must be fed and 
clothed and housed, invigorated and rested, in a manner that measures 
up to the objectives of our time.

A nation, like a person, has a mind - a mind that must be kept informed 
and alert, that must know itself, that understands the hopes and the 
needs of its neighbors - all the other nations that live within the 
narrowing circle of the world.

And a nation, like a person, has something deeper, something more 
permanent, something larger than the sum of all its parts. It is that 
something which matters most to its future - which calls forth the most 
sacred guarding of its present.

It is a thing for which we find it difficult - even impossible - to hit 
upon a single, simple word.

And yet we all understand what it is - the spirit - the faith of 
America. It is the product of centuries. It was born in the multitudes 
of those who came from many lands - some of high degree, but mostly 
plain people, who sought here, early and late, to find freedom more 
freely.

The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history. It 
is human history. It permeated the ancient life of early peoples. It 
blazed anew in the middle ages. It was written in Magna Charta.

In the Americas its impact has been irresistible. America has been the 
New World in all tongues, to all peoples, not because this continent 
was a new-found land, but because all those who came here believed they 
could create upon this continent a new life - a life that should be new 
in freedom.

Its vitality was written into our own Mayflower Compact, into the 
Declaration of Independence, into the Constitution of the United 
States, into the Gettysburg Address.

Those who first came here to carry out the longings of their spirit, 
and the millions who followed, and the stock that sprang from them - 
all have moved forward constantly and consistently toward an ideal 
which in itself has gained stature and clarity with each generation.

The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved 
poverty or self-serving wealth.

We know that we still have far to go; that we must more greatly build 
the security and the opportunity and the knowledge of every citizen, in 
the measure justified by the resources and the capacity of the land.

But it is not enough to achieve these purposes alone. It is not enough 
to clothe and feed the body of this Nation, and instruct and inform its 
mind. For there is also the spirit. And of the three, the greatest is 
the spirit.

Without the body and the mind, as all men know, the Nation could not 
live.

But if the spirit of America were killed, even though the Nation's body 
and mind, constricted in an alien world, lived on, the America we know 
would have perished.

That spirit - that faith - speaks to us in our daily lives in ways 
often unnoticed, because they seem so obvious. It speaks to us here in 
the Capital of the Nation. It speaks to us through the processes of 
governing in the sovereignties of 48 States. It speaks to us in our 
counties, in our cities, in our towns, and in our villages. It speaks 
to us from the other nations of the hemisphere, and from those across 
the seas - the enslaved, as well as the free. Sometimes we fail to hear 
or heed these voices of freedom because to us the privilege of our 
freedom is such an old, old story.

The destiny of America was proclaimed in words of prophecy spoken by 
our first President in his first inaugural in 1789 - words almost 
directed, it would seem, to this year of 1941: "The preservation of the 
sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of 
government are justly considered ... deeply,... finally, staked on the 
experiment intrusted to the hands of the American people."

If we lose that sacred fire - if we let it be smothered with doubt and 
fear - then we shall reject the destiny which Washington strove so 
valiantly and so triumphantly to establish. The preservation of the 
spirit and faith of the Nation does, and will, furnish the highest 
justification for every sacrifice that we may make in the cause of 
national defense.

In the face of great perils never before encountered, our strong 
purpose is to protect and to perpetuate the integrity of democracy.

For this we muster the spirit of America, and the faith of America.

We do not retreat. We are not content to stand still. As Americans, we 
go forward, in the service of our country, by the will of God.

Franklin D. Roosevelt
Fourth Inaugural Address
Saturday, January 20, 1945

MR. Chief Justice, Mr. Vice President, my friends, you will understand 
and, I believe, agree with my wish that the form of this inauguration 
be simple and its words brief.

We Americans of today, together with our allies, are passing through a 
period of supreme test. It is a test of our courage - of our resolve - 
of our wisdom - our essential democracy.

If we meet that test - successfully and honorably - we shall perform a 
service of historic importance which men and women and children will 
honor throughout all time.

As I stand here today, having taken the solemn oath of office in the 
presence of my fellow countrymen - in the presence of our God - I know 
that it is America's purpose that we shall not fail.

In the days and in the years that are to come we shall work for a just 
and honorable peace, a durable peace, as today we work and fight for 
total victory in war.

We can and we will achieve such a peace.

We shall strive for perfection. We shall not achieve it immediately - 
but we still shall strive. We may make mistakes - but they must never 
be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of 
moral principle.

I remember that my old schoolmaster, Dr. Peabody, said, in days that 
seemed to us then to be secure and untroubled: "Things in life will not 
always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising toward the heights - 
then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact 
to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward; 
that a line drawn through the middle of the peaks and the valleys of 
the centuries always has an upward trend."

Our Constitution of 1787 was not a perfect instrument; it is not 
perfect yet. But it provided a firm base upon which all manner of men, 
of all races and colors and creeds, could build our solid structure of 
democracy.

And so today, in this year of war, 1945, we have learned lessons - at a 
fearful cost - and we shall profit by them.

We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own 
well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations far away. We 
have learned that we must live as men, not as ostriches, nor as dogs in 
the manger.

We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human 
community.

We have learned the simple truth, as Emerson said, that "The only way 
to have a friend is to be one."

We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion and 
mistrust or with fear. We can gain it only if we proceed with the 
understanding, the confidence, and the courage which flow from 
conviction.

The Almighty God has blessed our land in many ways. He has given our 
people stout hearts and strong arms with which to strike mighty blows 
for freedom and truth. He has given to our country a faith which has 
become the hope of all peoples in an anguished world.

So we pray to Him now for the vision to see our way clearly - to see 
the way that leads to a better life for ourselves and for all our 
fellow men - to the achievement of His will to peace on earth.

