 My Lord Mayor, Prime Minister, Your Excellencies, my Lords, Alderman sheriffs, ladies and gentlemen, pray silence for the President of the United States of America. Thank you all very much. My Lord Mayor, Prime Minister, Your Excellencies, my Lords, Alderman sheriffs, ladies and gentlemen, I wonder if you can imagine what it is for an American to stand in this place. Back in the States, we're terribly proud of anything more than a few hundred years old. Some even see my election to the presidency as America's attempt to show our European cousins that we too have a regard for antiquity. Guildhall has been here since the 15th century, and while it is comforting at my age to be near anything that much older than myself, the venerable age of this institution is hardly all that impresses. Who can come here and not think upon the moments these walls have seen? The many times the people of this city and nation have gathered here in national crisis or national triumph. In the darkest hours of the last world war, when the tense drama of Edward R. Murrow's opening, this is London, was enough to impress on millions of Americans the metal of the British people. How many times in those days did proceedings continue here, a testimony to the cause of civilization for which you stood? From the Marne to El Alamein to Arnhem to the Falklands, you have in this century so often remained steadfast for what is right and against what is wrong. You are a brave people, and this land truly is, as your majestic moving hymn proclaims, a land of hope and glory. And it's why Nancy and I, in the closing days of this historic trip, are glad to be in England once again. After a long journey, we feel among friends and with all our hearts, we thank you for having us here. Such feelings are, of course, especially appropriate to this occasion. I have come from Moscow to report to you, for truly the relationship between the United States and Great Britain has been critical to NATO's success and the cause of freedom. This hardly means that we've always had a perfect understanding. When I first visited Mrs. Thatcher at the British Embassy in 1981, she mischievously reminded me that the huge portrait dominating the Grand Staircase was none other than that of George III. Though she did graciously concede that today, most of her countrymen would agree with Jefferson that little rebellion now and then is a good thing. So there has always been, as there should be among friends, an element of fun about our differences. But let me assure you, it is how much we have in common and the depth of our friendship that truly matters. I have often mentioned this in the States, but I've never had an opportunity to tell a British audience how, during my first visit here 40 years ago, I was, like most Americans, anxious to see some of the sights and those 400-year-old ins, I've been told, abound in this country. But a driver took me and a couple of other people to an old inn, a pub, really, and what in America we would call a mom and pop place. This quite elderly lady was waiting on us and finally hearing his talk to one another. She said, you're Americans, aren't you? And we said, we were. Oh, she said, there were a lot of your chaps stationed down the road during the war. And she added, they used to come in here in the evening and they'd have a song fest. They called me mom and they called the old man pop. And then our mood changed and she said, it was Christmas Eve and you know, we were all alone and feeling a bit down. And suddenly, they burst through the door and they had presents for me and pop. And by this time, she wasn't looking at us anymore. She was looking off into the distance, into memory. And there were tears in her eyes. And then she said, big, strapping lads, they was from a place called Iowa. Well, from a place called Iowa and Oregon, California, Texas, New Jersey, Georgia, here with other young men from Lancaster, Hampshire, Glasgow, and Dorset, all of them caught up in the terrible paradoxes of that time, that young men must wage war to end war and die for freedom so that freedom itself might live. And it is those same two causes for which they fought and died, the cause of peace, the cause of freedom for all humanity that still brings us British and American together. For these causes, the people of Great Britain, the United States and other allied nations have, for 44 years, made enormous sacrifices to keep our alliance strong and our military ready. For them, we embarked in this decade on a new post-war strategy, a forward strategy of freedom, a strategy of public candor about the moral and fundamental differences between statism and democracy, but also a strategy of vigorous diplomatic engagement, a policy that rejects both the inevitability of war or the permanence of totalitarian rule, a policy based on realism that seeks not just treaties for treaty's sake, but the recognition and resolution of fundamental differences with our adversaries. The pursuit of this policy has just now taken me to Moscow. And let me say, I believe this policy is bearing fruit. Quite possibly, we're beginning to take down the barriers of the post-war era. Quite possibly, we're entering a new era in history, a time of lasting change in the Soviet Union. We will have to see. But if so, it's because of the steadfastness of the allies, the democracies, for more than 40 years, and especially in this decade. The history of our time will undoubtedly include a footnote about how, during this decade and the last, the voices of retreat and hopelessness reached a crescendo in the West, insisting the only way to peace was unilateral disarmament, proposing nuclear freezes, opposing deployment of counterbalancing weapons such as intermediate range missiles, or the more recent concept of strategic defense systems. These same voices ridicule the notion of going beyond arms control, the hope of doing something more than merely establishing artificial limits within which arms build-ups could continue, all but unabated. Arms reduction would never work, they said. And when the Soviets left the negotiating table in Geneva for 15 months, they proclaimed disaster. And yet, it was our double-zero option, much maligned when first proposed, that provided the basis for the INF Treaty, the first treaty ever that did not just control offensive weapons, but reduced them, and yes, actually eliminated an entire class of US and Soviet nuclear missiles. This treaty, last month's development in Afghanistan, the changes we see in the Soviet Union, these are momentous events, not conclusive, but momentous. And that's why, although history will duly note that we too heard voices of denial and doubt, it is those who spoke with hope and strength who will be best remembered. And here I want to say that through all the troubles of the last decade, one such firm, eloquent voice, a voice that proclaimed proudly the cause of the Western Alliance in human freedom, has been heard. A voice that never sacrificed its anti-communist credentials or its realistic appraisal of change in the Soviet Union. And because it came from the longest-serving leader in the alliance, it did become one of the first to suggest that we could do business with Mr. Gorbachev. So let me discharge my first official duty here today. Prime Minister, the achievements of the Moscow summit, as well as the Geneva and Washington summits, say much about your valor and strength, and by virtue of the office you hold, that of the British people. So let me say simply at this hour in history, Prime Minister, the entire world salutes you and your gallant people and gallant nation. And while your leadership and the vision of the British people have been an inspiration, not just to my own people, but to all of those who love freedom and urine for peace, I know you join me in a deep sense of gratitude toward the leaders and peoples of all the democratic allies, whether deploying crucial weapons of deterrence, standing fast in the Persian Gulf, combating terrorism and aggression by outlaw regimes, or helping freedom fighters around the globe, rarely in history has any alliance of free nations acted with such firmness and dispatch and on so many fronts. In a process reaching back as far as the founding of NATO and the Common Market, the House of Western Europe, together with the United States, Canada, Japan, and others, this House of Democracy engaged in an active diplomacy while sparking a startling growth of democratic institutions and free markets all across the globe. In short, an expansion of the frontiers of freedom and a lessening of the chances of war. And so it is within this context that I report now on events in Moscow. On Wednesday at 08.20, Greenwich time, Mr. Gorbachev and I exchanged the instruments of ratification of the INF Treaty. So, too, we made tangible progress toward the Stark Treaty on strategic weapons. Such a treaty with all its implications, as I believe, now within our grasp. But part of the realism in Canada we were determined to bring to negotiations with the Soviets meant refusing to put all the weight of these negotiations and our bilateral relationship on the single issue of arms control. As I never tire of saying, nations do not distrust each other because they are armed. They are armed because they distrust each other. So equally important items on the agenda dealt with critical issues like regional conflicts, human rights, and bilateral exchanges. With regard to regional conflicts, here, too, we are now in the third week of the pullout of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. The importance of this step should not be underestimated. Our third area of discussion was bilateral contacts between our peoples and expanding program of student exchanges in the opening of cultural centers, progress toward a broader understanding of each other. And finally, on the issue of human rights, granting people the right to speak, write, travel, and worship freely. There are signs of greater individual freedom. Now, originally, I was going to give you just an accounting on these items. But you know, on my first day in Moscow, Mr. Gorbachev used a Russian saying, better to see something once than to hear about it 100 times. So if I might go beyond our four-part agenda today and offer just a moment or two of personal reflection on the country I saw for the first time, in all aspects of Soviet life, the talk is of progress toward democratic reform, in the economy and political institutions, in religious, social, and artistic life. It is called glasnost, openness. It is perestroika, restructuring. Mr. Gorbachev and I discussed his upcoming party conference where many of these reforms will be debated and perhaps adopted, such things as official accountability, limitations on length of service in office, and independent judiciary, revisions of the criminal law and lowering taxes on cooperatives. In short, giving individuals more freedom to run their own affairs, to control their own destinies. To those of us familiar with the post-war era, all of this is cause for shaking the head in wonder. Imagine the President of the United States and the General Secretary of the Soviet Union walking together in Red Square, talking about a growing personal friendship and meeting together average citizens, realizing how much our people have in common. It was a special moment, in a week of special moments. My personal impression of Mr. Gorbachev is that he is a serious man seeking serious reform. I pray that the hand of the Lord will be on the Soviet people, the people whose faces Nancy and I saw everywhere we went. Believe me, there was one thing about those faces that we will never forget. They were the faces of hope, the hope of a new era in human history and, hopefully, an era of peace and freedom for all. And yet, while the Moscow summit showed great promise and the response of the Soviet people was heartening, let me interject here a note of caution and, I hope, prudence. It has never been disputes between the free peoples and the peoples of the Soviet Union that had been at the heart of post-war tensions and conflicts. No disputes among governments over the pursuit of statism and expansionism have been the central point in our difficulties. Now that the Allies are strong and expansionism is receding around the world and in the Soviet Union, there is hope. And we look to this trend to continue. We must do all we can to assist it. And this means openly acknowledging positive change and crediting it. But let us also remember the strategy that we have adopted is one that provides for setbacks along the way as well as progress. Let us embrace honest change when it occurs. But let us also be wary. Let us stay strong. And let us be confident, too. Prime Minister, perhaps you remember that, upon accepting your gracious invitation to address the members of the parliament in 1982, I suggested then that the world could well be at a turning point when the two great threats to life in this century, nuclear war and totalitarian rule, might now be overcome. In an accounting of what might lie ahead for the Western Alliance, I suggested that the hard evidence of the totalitarian experiment was now in and that this evidence had led to an uprising of the intellect and will, one that reaffirmed the dignity of the individual in the face of the modern state. I suggested, too, that in a way Marx was right when he said the political order would come into conflict with the economic order. Only he was wrong in predicting which part of the world this would occur in. For the crisis came not in the capitalist West, but in the communist East. Noting the economic difficulties, reaching the critical stage in the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, I said that at other times in history, the ruling elites had faced such situations. And when they encountered resolve and determination from free nations, decided to loosen their grip, it was then I suggested that the tides of history were running in the cause of liberty. But only if we, as free men and women, joined together in a worldwide movement toward democracy, a crusade for freedom, a crusade that would be not so much a struggle of armed might, not so much a test of bombs and rockets, but as a test of faith and will. Well, that crusade for freedom, that crusade for peace, is well underway. We have found the will. We have held fast to the faith. And whatever happens, whatever triumphs or disappointments ahead, we must keep to this strategy of strength and candor, this strategy of hope, hope in the eventual triumph of freedom. But as we move forward, let us not fail to note the lessons we've learned along the way in developing our strategy. We have learned the first objective of the adversaries of freedom is to make free nations question their own faith in freedom. To make us think that adhering to our principles and speaking out against human rights abuses for foreign aggression is somehow an act of belligerence. But over the long run, such inhibitions make free peoples silent and ultimately half-hearted about their cause. This is the first and most important defeat free nations can ever suffer. For when free peoples cease telling the truth about and to their adversaries, they cease telling the truth to themselves. In matters of state, unless the truth be spoken, it ceases to exist. It is in this sense that the best indicator of how much we care about freedom is what we say about freedom. It is in this sense that words truly are actions. And there is one added in quite extraordinary benefit to this sort of realism and public candor. This is also the best way to avoid war or conflict. Too often in the past, the adversaries of freedom forgot the reserves of strength and resolve among free peoples. Too often they interpreted conciliatory words as weakness. And too often they miscalculated and underestimated the willingness of free men and women to resist to the end. Words of freedom remind them otherwise. This is the lesson we've learned, the lesson of the last war, and yes, the lesson of Munich. But it is also the lesson taught us by Sir Winston, by London in the Blitz, by the enduring pride and faith of the British people. Just a few years ago, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and I stood at the Normandy beaches to commemorate the selflessness that comes from such pride and faith. It is well we recall the lessons of our alliance. And I wonder if you might permit me to recall one other this morning, Operation Market Garden. It was called three months after Overlord in the Rescue of Europe began. A plan to suddenly drop British and American airborne divisions on the Netherlands and open up a drive into the heart of Germany. A battalion of British paratroopers was given the great task of seizing the bridge deep in enemy territory at Arnhem. For a terrible 10 days, they held out. Some years ago, a reunion of those magnificent veterans, British Americans and others of our allies, was held in New York City. From the dispatch by the New York Times, reporter Maurice Carroll, there was this paragraph. Look at him, said Henry Knap, an Amsterdam newspaper man who headed the Dutch Underground's Intelligence Operation in Arnhem. He gestured toward General John Frost, a bluff Britain who had committed the battalion that held the bridge. Look at him, still with that black mustache. If you put him at the end of a bridge even today and said, keep it, he'd keep it. The story mentioned the wife of Cornelius Ryan, the American writer who immortalized Market Garden in his book, A Bridge Too Far, who told the reporter that just as Mr. Ryan was finishing his book, writing the final paragraphs about General Frost's valiant stand at Arnhem, that about how in his eyes his men would always be undefeated. Her husband burst into tears. That was quite unlike him. And Mrs. Ryan alarmed rush to him. The writer could only look up and say of General Frost honestly what that man went through. A few days ago, seated there in Sposal House with Soviet dissidents, I had that same thought and asked myself, what won't men suffer for freedom? The dispatch about the Arnhem veteran concluded with this quote from General Frost about his visits to that bridge. We've been going back ever since. Every year we have a, what's the word, reunion? Yes, pilgrimage, General Frost said. As those veterans of Arnhem view their time so too, we must view ours. Ours is also a pilgrimage. A pilgrimage toward those things we honor and love. Human dignity, the hope of freedom for all peoples and for all nations. And I've always cherished the belief that all of history is such a pilgrimage and that our maker, while never denying us free will, does over time guide us with a wise and provident hand, giving direction to history and slowly bringing good from evil. Leading us ever so slowly, but ever so relentlessly and lovingly to a moment when the will of man and God are as one again. I cherish too the hope that what we have done together throughout this decade and in Moscow this week has helped bring mankind along the road of that pilgrimage. If this be so, prayerful recognition of what we are about as a civilization and a people has played its part. I mean, of course, the great civilized ideas that comprise so much of your heritage, the development of law embodied by your constitutional tradition, the idea of restraint on centralized power and individual rights as established in your Magna Carta, the idea of representative government as embodied by the mother of all parliaments. But we go beyond even this. Your own evil and wall who reminded us that civilization, and by this I do not mean talking cinemas and tinned food or even surgery and hygienic houses, but the whole moral and artistic organization of Europe has not in itself the power of survival. It came into being, he said, through the Judeo-Christian tradition and without it has no significance or power to command allegiance. It is no longer possible. He wrote, to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis on which it rests. And so it is first things we must consider. And here it is a story, one last story, that can remind us best of what we're about. It's a story that a few years ago came in the guise of that art form for which I have an understandable affection, the cinema. It's a story about the 1920 Olympics and two British athletes, Harold Abraham's, a young Jew whose victory as his immigrant era battalion coach put it, was a triumph for all those who have come from distant lands and found freedom and refuge here in England. And Eric Liddell, a young Scotsman who would not sacrifice religious conviction for fame. In one unforgettable scene, Eric Liddell reads the words of Isaiah. He giveth power to the faint and to them that have no might, he increased their strength. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. Here, then, is our formula for completing our crusade for freedom. Here is the strength of our civilization and our belief in the rights of humanity. Our faith is in a higher law. Yes, we believe in prayer and its power. And like the founding fathers of both our lands, we hold that humanity was meant not to be dishonored by the all-powerful state, but to live in the image and likeness of him who made us. More than five decades ago, an American president told his generation that they had a rendezvous with destiny. At almost the same moment, a prime minister asked the British people for their finest hour. This rendezvous, this finest hour, is still upon us. Let us seek to do his will in all things, to stand for freedom, to speak for humanity. Come, my friends, as it was said of old by Tennyson, it is not too late to seek a newer world. Thank you. Mr. President, your excellencies, my lords, alderman, sheriffs, ladies and gentlemen, pray silence for the prime minister. My Lord Mayor, Mr. President, your excellencies, my lords, alderman, sheriffs, ladies and gentlemen, we've been privileged, Mr. President, to hear you deliver this first report of your historic summit meeting with General Secretary Gorbachev in Moscow. It's both an honour for us and fitting that you choose to do so here in London, in the station Guildhall. An honour for us because of our friendship with the United States of America, a friendship which is indissoluble, and fitting because this city of London and all that it stands for are part of your heritage as well as ours. We warmly congratulate you and General Secretary Gorbachev on a very successful summit, one which will influence the course of history for years to come. It is the result of months, indeed, years of hard work by you, by Secretary Schultz, and countless others. And we should like to say thank you to Mrs. Reagan, too, for the splendid support which she always gives. The summit has brought us closer to the more stable and peaceful relations between East and West that we all want to see. Indeed, I believe there is now more hope between East and West than ever before in the lifetime of most of us here. It was so characteristic of you, Mr. President, not to flinch from taking the fight for fundamental human rights to the very heart of the Soviet Union. Your words in Moscow will have shone like a beacon of hope for all those wherever they are who are denied their basic freedoms. But as I listened to you, Mr. President, I couldn't help thinking of your achievements as President, achievements over nearly eight years which have made possible this summit and so much else besides. Your leadership has made America strong and confident again, and we in Britain should like to say thank you for being such a staunch and loyal ally to this country and to Europe. I recall what Winston Churchill once wrote, where we are able to stand together and work together for righteous causes. We shall always be thankful, and the world will always be free. You, Mr. President, have successfully negotiated the first reductions in nuclear weapons. You've changed attitudes and perceptions about what is possible, the most difficult thing of all in politics. And you've done it not by bowing to the wishes and whims of others, but by standing firm in your own beliefs as we heard once again today. It's as if you had said at the beginning of your life in politics, this I believe, this I act upon, this I will always believe, this I will always act upon, and thank goodness you have. From that strong fortress of convictions, you've set out to enlarge freedom the world over. Your personal courage, your gentle humour, and your spirit of optimism are all part of the special quality which you have brought to the presidency. Above all, and in this you have done the greatest possible service, not only to your own people, but to free people everywhere. You have restored faith in the American dream, a dream of boundless opportunity, built on enterprise, individual effort, and personal generosity. When we compare the mood of confidence and optimism in the West today, with the mood when you took office in 1980, we know that a greater change has taken place than ever we could have imagined. Mr. President, you spoke of seeking a newer world. You are doing so with all the qualities of which Tennyson spoke in that verse. Strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. My Lord Mayor, I believe everyone present in this Guildhall will join me in saying thank you, Mr. President. Thank you for the summit. Thank you for your presidency. Thank you for your testament of belief. And God bless America.