 On the 2nd of June, Prime Minister Wilson of Great Britain was welcomed to the White House. The visit had been arranged some weeks earlier to discuss the urgent problems common to both governments. However, a crisis, one that developed with dramatic and startling suddenness, would be given priority. The recent impasse in the historically explosive Middle East situation. We come here today, in another time of trouble, when peace and justice are again in the balance. And it is on occasions like this, that the Council of an old and trusted friend is most welcome. Israel, facing yet another climactic point in our 19-year struggle for survival, saw not only the threat of maritime blockade, but to some dire profits, the threat of extinction. With the United Nations peacekeeping force withdrawn, with all attempts at private negotiations failing, solutions through diplomacy and United Nations intervention seemed increasingly remote. The time for talk was over. Together, Great Britain and the United States drafted a maritime declaration to be circulated among the world's seagoing nations. Its principles were simple and basic. The Gulf of Acaba was an international waterway. All nations have the right of free and innocent passage. With the maritime powers uniting in a common front, they hoped to challenge the Egyptian blockade of the Strait of Tehran. All in all, it was a gamble against time. And time, Prime Minister Wilson declared, is not on our side. The President received the first word of the fighting at four o'clock in the morning, the fifth of June. In the situation room of the White House, the all-too-familiar maps of Southeast Asia had been replaced with those of the Eastern Mediterranean. The President had been every effort for two weeks to avert hostilities. And now that diplomacy had given way to war, his one compelling task was to contain it, to tamp it out. The team had been assembled, men for whom foreign affairs have long since become a way of life, and as one columnist observed, for whom foreign crises have become the coin of daily living. As the war progressed, false charges would be made, attempting to brand the United States and Great Britain as active participants. The unspoken peril lurking behind each embassy report, each cable, was the ever-present threat of direct confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. And now, with fighting in progress, it was imperative to avoid miscalculation, misunderstanding. At eight o'clock, the Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin and the President of the United States exchanged direct teletype messages, advising that their respective governments would not intervene with armed force. That one exchange said more than weeks of diplomatic effort. At that moment, the world was apprised of the fact that the two powers could, with restraint and reason, prevent conflict from spreading, and ultimately engulfing others. Directly following their initial conference in the situation room, he asked Secretary Rusk and Secretary McNamara to brief both Senate and House leaders. The President returned to the Oval Office to monitor the initial exchange of statements on the floor of the United Nations Security Council. The Council had been called into urgent session upon the outbreak of hostilities. It was through this forum that the United States would now concentrate all its energies to bring about an immediate ceasefire. As the day developed, the major obstacle to agreement on a ceasefire lay in the question of troop withdrawal. Under the leadership of the Security Council President Hans Tabor, a draft resolution agreeable to the competing interests would be drawn up on the following day. As in the agreement to contain and limit the conflict, the key to the unconditional ceasefire lay in the joint and parallel action of the United States and the Soviet Union. The news flashes clarified the situation. It soon became apparent that the Middle East power patterns of a decade were being changed in a matter of hours. Military analysts called it a lightning war. Although the fighting would continue for six days, the verdict of the battlefield had been rendered during the opening round. The road to a permanent peace in the Middle East would be a long one. Far more issues were raised by the fighting than were so. To coordinate American policy on the problems the government would face in the aftermath of the conflict, President Johnson established a special committee of the National Security Council. He asked McGeorge Bundy to serve as its executive secretary. The war on the deserts of the Sinai involved far more than governmental concern. Blood ties, national origins, and deep-seated sympathies made themselves felt virtually to the doorstep of the White House. By the 8th of June, only the Arab state of Jordan had agreed to accept the ceasefire resolution. At the very moment that President Johnson was drafting a statement on the current situation to Senator Mike Mansfield, word was passed to the White House and the nation alike that Egypt too had agreed to the ceasefire. By the 10th of June, Syria, the last Arab holdout, agreed to a ceasefire. The fighting was now stopped. At his 100-second news conference, the President advised that the best action for the moment was to let things clear up and let the people of the area and the world realize just what had happened. The tensions that had built during the first 10 days in June were dissolved in a welcome round of old-fashioned partisan politics. Returning to Austin, Texas, the hub of his old congressional district, Lyndon Johnson was greeted by incumbent Congressman Jake Pickle. It was a good time to meet a whole new generation of constituents, including at least one who seemed a little unsure of his political convictions. However, a little persuasion from the number one party leader was all that was needed to bring him into the fold. The main event of the evening was a Southwest Democratic dinner with loyal fundraisers from five states attending. Also sharing in the festivities, daughter Lucy, soon to be visited by the stork. The tab for the evening was $1,000 per plate, but on the menu besides crab meat cocktail and Kansas City strip sirloins was a Democratic Party approaching solvency. And for the President, it was a chance to relax in a down-home atmosphere. After three weeks of wrestling with the Middle East, it's a real pleasure to come home tonight to the peace and quiet of Texas politics. In case there should be an evidence tonight, any differences of opinion, I want to make my own position abundantly clear in the beginning. I am for peace, territorial integrity, political independence, and the unrestricted navigation in the Houston Ship Channel. The President returned to the White House for the mid-month round of duties, and among them, some rewarding moments of office. He had often remarked that one of a Chief Executive's most important jobs is attracting able and talented public servants to Washington. The month of June would see two major appointments, first Alexander Trowbridge as Secretary of Commerce, and Thurgood Marshall as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. The President introduced Mr. Marshall to a group of 121 teenagers, the Presidential Scholars. Each had demonstrated outstanding academic achievement, and each was awarded a special medallion in a White House ceremony. Lyndon Johnson, perhaps more than any other President, is at his best when challenging the youth of the nation, and he does it at every opportunity. If you're looking for energy and you're looking for enthusiasm and you're looking for courage and fearlessness, you can find it with our young people. I've seen it among the White House fellows, and I've seen it in the Washington summer interns, several thousand we've brought here. I've seen it in the Peace Corps, and the VISTA, and the Teachers Corps. To a graduation class of capital pages, for the world that you enter very much needs your help today. Our nation is called upon not just to maintain the blessings that we now enjoy, but to multiply those blessings, to improve the world for all people, and to prove it for generations yet to come. Your lifetime, the days ahead of you, you're going to have to completely rebuild this country. You're going to have to clean up the get-goes. You're going to have to tear out the slum. You're going to have to rebuild the cities and the factories. Lyndon Johnson was not the only national figure stumping for youth on the South lawn that afternoon. Making an impromptu appearance was a Johnson favorite, Dr. Billy Graham. The well-known evangelist reminded the group that as they took inspiration from the president, he in turn needed their strength. Billy Graham asked everyone, whatever their religious background, to pray that God would give the president strength and wisdom at this hour in the history of the world. On June the 14th, the Middle East was again the focal point of White House deliberations. The newly appointed crisis committee convened late in the evening. A Soviet resolution calling for a censure of Israel had been rejected by the United Nations Security Council. The Russians in a surprise move called for an emergency session of the General Assembly. The delegation due to arrive in three days would be headed by none less than the Soviet Premier Alexei Kosigin. On the day the Russian Premier arrived in New York, President Johnson made a short hop to Dulles Airport to greet Prime Minister Holt of Australia. The Prime Minister was en route from Expo 67 to Los Angeles. He had made a red carpet visit to the White House earlier in the month, and now he would be the president's guest for a quiet weekend at Camp David. With the informal atmosphere of the presidential retreat a backdrop for unhurried discussion, they covered the whole spectrum of Middle East problems. The almost insoluble question of the refugees, Israel's territorial gains, the Arab refusal to accept Israel as an independent nation. But as far as the press was concerned, there was only one question. Would there be a meeting between the big two? As the president made it clear he would be happy to see the Premier, Prime Minister Holt showed as American host why Australia has, over the years, dominated the court. Following a quiet service in the Harriet Episcopal Church, the President reminded the daughter of the commandant that it was Father's Day, and undoubtedly sensed momentary anticipation at the thought that he himself soon would be a grandfather. On the following day, at a foreign policy conference at the State Department, the President offered his formula for lasting peace in the Middle East. The Middle East is rich in history, rich in its people and its resources. It has no need to live in permanent civil war. It has the power to build its own life as one of the prosperous regions of the world in which we live. And if the nations of the Middle East will turn toward the works of peace, they can count with confidence upon the friendship and the help of all the people of the United States of America. Our country is committed, and we here reiterate that commitment today to a peace that is based on five principles. First, the recognized right of national life. Second, justice for the refugees. Third, innocent maritime passage. Fourth, limits on the wasteful and destructive arms race. And fifth, political independence and territorial integrity for all. On June 22nd, the President invited four distinguished guests to the White House. Britain's Foreign Secretary George Brown, Premier Otto Craig of Denmark, and from Italy, Premier Aldo Moro, and his Foreign Minister Fanfani. All four had been attending the emergency session at the United Nations, and each in private conferences during the day informed the President of the views held by the various delegations. The President discussed with each guest the five-point peace proposal he had made the day before, and reviewed developments in the Middle East since the ceasefire. He brought each up to date on arms shipments to the troubled region, again expressing the hope that arms shipments should be recorded and publicly disclosed. As the President conferred with his guests, Secretary of State Dean Rusk was finalizing arrangements for a summit meeting. At 6.34 p.m. on the 22nd of June, a modest stone house in Glassboro, New Jersey suddenly became a permanent part of the world's history books. The White House announced that President Johnson had invited Chairman Kosigan to meet with him at 11 o'clock the next day at the home of the President of Glassboro State College. Chairman Kosigan had accepted. It was no Yalta nor Geneva, but a simple 19th-century home near an early American farming settlement, yet in its own way a uniquely appropriate setting for the two statesmen who would meet there. Both possessed unimaginable power, yet both were unpretentious, straightforward. Both had sat in the company of kings, yet both understood the language of the farmer and the factory worker. In this simple arena, they would face each other for nearly 10 hours. Both becoming, for a brief moment in history, the focal point of a troubled world's hopes and prayers. I had to meet with Chairman Kosigan this morning to talk throughout the day quietly and straightforwardly with him. And I'm glad to say to you that I've found that he came to our meeting in the same spirit. We talked about the problems of the Middle East in detail, and we shall continue to talk about them. We talked about the problems of Southeast Asia. We've talked about the arms race and about the need for new agreements there. We talked about the need for common action on constructive initiatives for peace. We reached no new agreements, almost but not quite, but new agreements are not always reached in a single conversation. So we're going to eat lunch and spend Sunday together again at Holly Bush. The first day of the summit talks was over, but for the president there was still much work to do. After assuring the thousands of enthusiastic onlookers that the meeting had been a very good and useful one, he bid a momentary goodbye to his historic guest. This was the 25-hour day. He had been on the go since 4.30 in the morning, and he had 5,000 miles and 12 more hours to burn before there would be any rest. It would be difficult to pinpoint any moment in Lyndon Johnson's political career, as satisfying as this 23rd day of June 1967. He had fired the imagination of the public with the sudden bold moves that led to the face-to-face encounter at Glassboro. At a $500 plate dinner for the President's Club of Los Angeles, he was able to announce that financially the Democratic Party was over the top, the $4 million debt had been paid. And if that wasn't enough good news for one day, he could relish the report he had received only 18 hours earlier. He was a grandfather. It was now Saturday, the 24th of June, in a small room in Austin, Texas. I would like to help make a world for young Patrick Muget and his contemporaries in every land that will be safer and will be more prosperous and more hopeful and certainly more peaceful by far than the world that I have inhabited. So working together and reasoning together and planning together and being patient and understanding together, I believe that we can achieve such a world. On Sunday, the 25th of June, the President returned to Glassboro. This time he brought the family. On hand to welcome them back were New Jersey's Governor Richard Hughes and Mrs. Hughes, who had been instrumental in making Holly Bush available. Some differences between the two statesmen still remain, but nothing could dampen the spirit nor the ardor of the day. The Premier was accompanied by his daughter, Ludmilla, and for the rest of the day, she would be the special guest of Mrs. Johnson and Linda. As the second day of talks continued, heavy rainstorms lashed the campus, but the thousands who had come to witness history stood their ground. They had talked for more than four hours, delving even deeper into the many questions that separated their two countries. At 6.20 in the evening, they had finished. We have made further progress in an effort to improve our understanding of each other's thinking on a number of questions. I believe more strongly than ever that these have been very good and very useful talks. Premier Kosigan had been visibly touched by the warmth and enthusiasm exhibited by the people of Glassboro. He personally thanked them and saluted friendship between the Soviet and American peoples. These meetings just have not ended our troubles and our dangers, and I cannot promise you that that will not happen again. The world remains very small and very dangerous, and all nations, even the greatest of them, have very hard and very painful choices ahead of them. What I can tell you, and I have no doubt about it at all, is that it does help a lot to sit down and look a man in the eye all day long and try to reason with him, particularly if he is trying to reason with you. And that's why we went to Holly Bush this morning, and reasoning together there today was the spirit of Holly Bush. On the 27th of June, after a week of exhaustive effort within the framework of foreign affairs, President Johnson turned his energies towards his domestic programs. At the Junior Chamber of Commerce annual convention, he spoke out for the things that were right with the country. He praised the doers, the builders, but to the doubters and the cussers, the draft card burners and protesters. You say to them that it's not absolutely essential. It's not a prerequisite. It's not required that you tear our country down and our flag down in order to lift them up. The month of June was virtually over. On what one staffer called a good news trip, the President saw partial fruition of his greatest ambition, the continual strengthening of his own people. In Philadelphia, in the heart of an impoverished area, the President visited the Opportunities Industrialization Center. He had heard about the Center for Months, a community-built school where unemployable residents, instead of resorting to protest and despair, were picking themselves up by their bootstraps and learning a trade. I saw human beings that had cried in their eyes instead of fear. Their shoulders spraped and high and their chin up. The federal government did not do this. The federal government did not build this center. What built this center is the spirit that's in the breath of every human that's a part of it. The spirit that wants to say yes to life itself, that wants to affirm the dignity of man, whatever his origins, whatever his race, whatever his religion. So if I had to sum up my feelings in a single phrase this morning, I would say to all of you, I believe we're going to make it.