SUMMARY OF REMARKS BY ALLEN W. DULLES DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE TO THE PRINTING WEEK DINNER, NEW YORK EMPLOYING PRINTERS ASSOCIATION 16 JANUARY 1961, 9:00 P.M. EST HOTEL COMMODORE, NEW YORK CITY 'THE POWER OF IDEAS'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84-00161R000100170004-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 30, 2002
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: January 16, 1961
• Content Type: SUMMARY

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SUMMARY OF REMARKS BY
This docu:r - t has bc.e ALLEN W. DULLES
approved for release throng Director of Central Intelligence
Ile HISTORICAL REVIEW PROGRAM
the Central Intelligence Agen To The Printing Week Dinner,
Z NEW YORK EMPLOYING PRINTERS ASSOCIATION
Date 3b 16 January 1961, 9:00 P.M. EST
Hotel Commodore, New York City
W7
W
"THE POWER OF IDEAS"
I am deeply moved by the honor you have paid me tonight in awarding
me the Franklin Medal for Distinguished Service and by the citation accom-
panying it. It is most satisfying to me to know that you feel that I have
been able to accomplish something toward the protection of our freedoms in
a turbulent world where, as you say, freedom left unguarded is freedom'
destroyed.
Almost 250 years ago, Benjamin Franklin, printer, started out with
,_ the enthusiasm of youth to improve the means of communication. He began
do
tV
by printing the ideas of others. Soon he became himself one of the great
pioneering Americans, both in voicing new ideas of his own and in developing
novel means whereby knowledge could be communicated widely. In Franklin's
time, the dissemination of information was limited to.a chosen few who could
afford it. He believed that knowledge should belong to the many.
Even so, Ben Franklin's audience was small. --Now,.the peoples of the
world are the audience you must seek to reach.
Franklin lived in an age of revolutions. So do we.
We. have the revolution of population explosion. It was not until 1835
that the world's population reached one billion. It took only a century to
.add the next billion; only a generation to add the third, and shortly we may
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be adding a billion souls every fifteen years. Unfortunately order and
discipline have not always kept pace with this quick and uneven crowding
of the earth.
The revolution in means of communication goes on apace. Ideas and
events that once would have caused no ripple outside the immediate area of
their origin now have world-wide impact.' Men's minds are being exposed to
bright new images. At the same time, in the wrong hands, these techniques
can serve evil ends.
We have a continuing revolution in the scale and raeans of production.
The industrial revolution is reaching the farthest corners of the earth. A
scientific revolution is accompanying it, as we cross the threshold of the
nuclear age.
People who have not yet benefited from industrial and technological
advances are restless when they see what others have achieved in supplying
themselves with this world's goods and the leisure to enjoy them.
These and other forces for change tend to merge in great areas of the
world into what can be called the revolution of rising and unsatisfied
expectations. That is the revolution we are facing in the world today.
Even the most remote and the most backward peoples are beginning to
know that a better life exists elsewhere and they are stretching out to see
how they can share in it.
Along with these revolutions goes a powerful nationalistic urge.
National independence is viewed as an end in itself, even for small geographi-
cal groupings of people. For example, the word went around in the Congo just
before independence day last July that as soon as they got independence each
family would promptly receive a new motor car as part of that independence.
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Unfortunately that has not yet come to them.
This revolution of rising expectations is quite unreasoning by any
ordinary standards of logic and of common sense. Often, by its haste, it
prejudices the very objectives it seeks. But today it brooks no argument.
It chafes at delays or at counsels for patience, or suggestions that only
hard work and discipline can improve the lot of man.
These revolutionary developments alone would mark our age as one of
turmoil, of uncertainty, and of potentialities for good or for evil beyond
what we had ever conceived.
But in these times we also have to face the conspiracy of international
communism.
And we have the great question: Which of the two forces in the world
today -- free democracy or Communist dictatorship -- is to take over and
direct our revolutionary era?
The Communist leaders feel that they can use the restless peoples 'today
to put the world in a strait jacket tomorrow. They propose to exploit revolu-
tionary forces to destroy free governments everywhere.
The Communists operate on the premise that human beings, if left free,
are-incompetent to manage their political and economic affairs or wisely to
choose their leaders. The Soviet and Chinese people are rigidly controlled
by dictatorships which believe they have an historical destiny to determine
and guide the fate of all mankind in this'present age of revolution.
It is vital that we should better understand the true nature of Communism
and its program.
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The Communist regimes of the Soviet Union. and Red China have each
built a barrier around their own heartland and their adjacent satellites.
Having once established their dictatorships, they seek to protect their
position from alien influence just as they guard their own territory
against alien arms.
They preach revolution and change for others as zealously as they keep
these ideas from their own people.
It was only a few weeks ago that representatives from 81 out of the 87
countries which have Communist-party organizations met together in Moscow
to debate their own ideological differences and to plot their various cam-
paigns to hasten Communist victories in each of their respective homelands.
Their lengthy and turgid manifesto called for the destruction of colonialism,
imperialism, and capitalism. It was clear that their primary and eventual
target is the United States-of America.
Khrushchev himself has often boasted that just as capitalism replaced
feudalism,, so Communism will replace capitalism. He preaches the "peaceful"
triumph of Communism and explains that, when he speaks of "burying us," it
is to be a process that we shall be forced to accept because Communism is
the wave of the future.
While he does not give us all of the details by which he expects that
this transformation will be brought about, we have learned more about this
than he suspects. For one thing, it is clear that he means to take advantage
of the nationalist revolutionary surges which are sweeping great areas of
the world today.
We also know that he will work through the mechanism of the hard-core
Communist Party organizations that exist in practically every country of
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of the world, even here. He will use his great propaganda machine together
with his large stable of subversive organizations. He will use economic
aid and a large corps of technicians and experts which he is now sending to
various countries of Asia and Africa, and also to this hemisphere, particularly
to Cuba.
As long as we maintain our over all military strength and our capacity
to move vigorously and to retaliate effectively, Khrushchev certainly will
prefer to promote his aims by all these means of subversion I have just men-
tioned,.rather than by risking all-out nuclear war. He will use the Lumumbas
and the Castros and their ilk as.his guided missiles of Communism rather than
atomic bombs.
With these means, and on the battlefield which the Communists call
co-existence, the struggle for the minds of men will be fought out in the
next decade.
We will be greatly underrating the strength of our antagonist if we
ignore the strong pull which the material progress of the Soviet and the
Chinese Communist regimes have exercised upon the newly emerging leaders of
the world, or its effect upon the peoples in these newly emerging countries
who feel they have not had their fair share of opportunity or of this world's
goods.
There are a number of reasons for this. First of all, many of these
people are quite ignorant of the true implications of the Marxist-Leninist
philosophy and of the Communist system of government. They do remember,
however, that Russia, following World War I, was disorganized, defeated in
battle, and economically and militarily prostrate. Now they see that over
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the'last four decades it has established a strong central authority, and
built up its economy and industry to a point where it is the second greatest
power in the world. Communism has projected this image on the giant screen
of the world theater which depicts Russia as overtaking the United States.
The unfavorable parts of this film are blanked out.
The peoples of Asia and Africa and many in this hemisphere do not
reckon the cost in human. values of Communist rule, They think they see
here various things which they want -- strong central authority, quick
industrialization, broad opportunities for education, national power, and
and international prestige.
Many of them recognize that our society in the West, particularly here
in America, enjoys a better living standard and has many advantages which
they do not find in the Soviet Union. Yet they fear that with their limited
resources they cannot aspire to anything as high as our standards.
Some feel that the Soviet Union could better advise them than we on an
economic development program which would be within the scope of their more
modest and limited resources.
Over the next few years many countries will be making their choice.
Too many will feel that they can opt for the Communist system in building
their economy without its affecting their political way of life, and this
is a very dangerous judgment to reach.
Our success or failure in exposing the true Communist image to the
uncommitted world should be of particular interest to you. It falls, in
part, within your special field of competence, namely, the ability to
communicate our real image to the world and to give a more convincing
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debunking of the defects of the Communist system.
Let's look at some other examples of the Communist image.
If Communism were as attractive as its spokesmen say, one might expect
a flood of persons,seeking to live in their promised Paradise-on earth.
What do we find? Where there is the opportunity to escape from Com-
munism, people desert the Communist orbit. We have the tragic case of
Hungary; 187,000 persons escaped to the West following the uprising against
Communist oppression four years ago.
We have the case of East Germany. Since September 1919 nearly two and
one-half million Germans have fled from Communist rule, often abandoning
their jobs, their homes, and sometimes their families to become refugees in
a Free World. And the flow is steady and continuous.
Take Hong Kong. Of 3,000,000 people in this Far Eastern neighbor of
Red China, about one-third, one million, are refugees from,Communist terror.
These people were'not pushed out by the Communists. They have fought
their way out against tightly imposed security controls.
Let us take another example closer home -- Cuba. Since Castro came
to power in 1959, more than 100,000 visas have been given for travel to the
United States; many more have come out secretly; and many, many visas were
pending when we were forced to close our embassy a few weeks ago.
The Communists have long said that they had the answer to the agricul-
tural problem. Here is another claim without substance.
Communist doctrine and practices in the field of agriculture have been
a dismal failure. That has been true both in the Soviet Union and in
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For example, in the USSR, the country which has the longest experience
in trying to apply Marxism to agriculture, we find that with more than five
times as many people as we have on the farms and in agriculture, they are
producing substantially less food than we do here in the United States.
Farming is a special avocation of Khrushchev himself. He is still jockeying
farm managers, funds, undeveloped lands, and the peasants. The results are
still bad, and even in these last few days he has been forced to admit it.
Today Communist China is exaggerating acts of God, such as floods and
droughts, to excuse to their own people the failure of their planned and
highly advertised agricultural program to keep pace with the rapidly growing
population.
The communes in China, the most drastic reorganization of human society
ever attempted, have almost dropped from sight in Communist propaganda. This
project is foundering on the hard facts of human needs and desires.
The Soviets have sought to convey the impression that Moscow was to be
the coming intellectual and educational center for students from all over
the world, and particularly from the newly developing areas. From the very
beginning, however, there have been rumblings of discontent in the foreign
student area in Moscow.
Students from Africa and Asia have complained openly that they were
being discriminated against by the Soviet students.
Finally, in February 1960, in what was a major propaganda gesture,
but really in order to meet this situation, the Soviet Union established
the Peoples' Friendship University.
This is a separate university. It is in effect a segregation of stu-
dents so as to keep the foreign students and the Russian students separated
from each other.
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The decade of the Sixties will be a time for several score of the
newly developing countries with which we have so much to do these days.
How they decide will be greatly influenced by the image they gain of
this country, and whether we or\the Soviets can best help them to fulfill
their aspirations in this age of revolution.
We know that Communist propagandists and Communist Front Organizations
have done a vicious job in misrepresenting our purposes and accomplishments
while concealing their own shortcomings -- their Hungary's and Tibet's,
their aggressive policies .abroad and their repressive and secretive policies
at home.
The issue is joined between us, in this revolutionary and explosive
age. It will probably remain in an arena short of war, but with the Com-
munists using all the techniques and all the tools they have developed in
the forty years of their conspiratorial history.
We must put the picture of Communism into proper focus by tallying an
accurate balance sheet of their weaknesses and strengths.
But this is only half the job. We can also state our own case more
effectively. We can do that, and I think we should do it, as has been
suggested here tonight, with realism and with humor.
We can improve our performance, and we must do it, as we put into
practice-around the world the great ideals for which this country stands.
At the same time we must improve our roans of communication. Like nuclear
weapons, ideas need an effective delivery system.
You who are engaged in the field of 'communications, in the publication
and presentation of ideas, as well as those of us who are working on these
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great projects in the government, have a special responsibility these days.
We must make certain that the case of freedom, the case for our system of
life and for our ideals, is more effectively presented to the world. In
this way, as stated in the citation which I have received with so much
appreciation and humility tonight, we can defend and extend the frontiers
of freedom.
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