July 10, 1961 - President Kennedy asked all Americans today to support his long-range foreign aid program as "vital in the fight for our own security and in the fight for peace." Without effective assistance from the United States, he warned, many newly independent nations must inevitably be dragged behind the Iron Curtain. "I would much rather have us do it this way than have to send American boys to have to do it," he said. Mr. Kennedy used former President Eisenhower as his authority for saying that "other countries must inevitably fall" if America did not meet its responsibilities. "We cannot live in an isolated world," the President said.
