 Well, Mr. President and Mrs. Carstens, Mr. Minister and Mrs. Genscher, honored guests. I said this morning and I would like to say it again how happy and proud that Nancy and I are to welcome you to the United States. Your own ties with our country, including a Master of Laws degree from Yale University, are long-standing and deep. Your life is a monument to the shared values and interests that have long provided our two peoples with a bounty of goodwill. And today, all Americans celebrate our ties and are grateful for our solid friendship with the German people. Three hundred years ago, a small group of hardy pioneers set out from Krefeld in the Rhineland to sail into the unknown. In America, they found the religious freedom they sought, but hard work was the price they paid for their newfound freedom. And those 13 German families brought with them courage and industry to build new lives. Their talents and those of their descendants helped create the great city of Philadelphia and the great state of Pennsylvania, both of which share our honor in welcoming you. This year, we commemorate the remarkable odyssey of the Krefelders and of the millions of others who followed them. The virtues of courage, industry, and belief in freedom which they brought helped build our country, contributing to what is best about the United States. The contributions of German Americans have been invaluable at the development of our great country. The people of the Federal Republic of Germany have proven that they still possess those traits that helped build America. From the rubble of the Second World War, the industrious German people constructed a strong, healthy, and free democracy. We stand firmly together in the search for peace and freedom. Anniversary celebrations tend to look back, but we should not limit our commemoration to reminiscences of the past. A strength of both of our peoples is that we also look to the future. The true meaning of this anniversary week is an enduring partnership that will lead to a more secure peace in the decades ahead. Many colorful events have been organized throughout the United States to celebrate our ties. I congratulate the sponsors of these undertakings and of the numerous initiatives which have sprung up during this tricentennial year. The tricentennial reinvigorates the culture, historical, and political ties between our two peoples. It symbolizes something real, tangible, and enduring. German American friendship. Mr. President, we're grateful for your visit. We thank you for all that you've personally done in your distinguished career to support close ties between our two nations. And I want to tell you, knowing your background here in America, when I was a boy, I read about Frank Marowell at Yale. I didn't read Brown of Harvard. We raise our glasses to you, Mr. President, President Carstens, and to the friendship that your visit represents. To visit the United States and to strengthen the bonds of friendship with your great country. I look forward with eager expectation to the days in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Dallas, Seattle, Madison, New York, and New Haven. Let us Germans and Americans bear in mind our common history, and let us take strings from our common ideals and our common goals. On this visit, personal memories shall be accompanying me. I have been to the United States on numerous occasions in an official capacity. However, my thoughts go back above all to the time immediately after the Second World War, when I obtained a scholarship from Yale University in 1948. The year which I spent there added a new dimension to my life. The goodwill and the cordiality which I encountered are firmly engraved in my memory. At Yale, I studied American constitutional law, and I later qualified as a university professor in Germany with a study on this subject. This aroused my interest in public affairs and in politics. I felt more and more called upon to work for the common good. And it also became clear to me at Yale as to what constitutes the real strength of the American nation, namely the conviction of its citizens that there are basic values which precede every and any governmental system. Among these values rank the dignity of man, justice and freedom, and also something which you, Mr. President, have repeatedly stressed, namely trust in God. This has been true from the beginning, and the tricentennial of the first German immigration into North America marks an appropriate moment for recalling it. Proclaim freedom throughout the land for all its citizens. These words from the book of Leviticus are inscribed on the freedom bell in Philadelphia. In the first place, they refer to religious freedom, but they also include it the other human rights, the unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as the Declaration of Independence expresses them. In these ideals and in the earnest endeavors to realize them lay the great attraction of the United States from the very beginning. Students of Germans felt this attraction and went to America, and they included many of our nation's best sons and daughters, freedom-loving, industrious, adventurous men and women who found a new home here. They became pioneers in building your country, and they tied the cordial bonds of attachment between America and Germany, which have proved their constancy despite several setbacks. Germans played, as you have mentioned, Mr. President, a role in the advance of American civilization and the natural science, the social sciences, the fine arts and music, a civilization which has entered upon an unparalleled, victorious march through the whole world in our epoch and which has profoundly influenced the lifestyle of almost all countries, including ours. But the United States did not only lay a new foundation for the social life within their own country, but also towards other countries. Observe good faith and justice towards all nations, declared George Washington in his farewell address. Cultivate peace and harmony with all, to give to mankind the magnanimous and two-novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence." Currently it is difficult always to comply with such a high claim. However, benevolence and magnanimity remained guiding principles for American policy. And we Germans also experienced this, the charitable assistance of the Americans after the Second World War, the granting of economic aid in the shape of the Marshall Plan, furnishing samples of this, as does the airlift to Berlin, a city which owes so much to America and which you visited last June or June of last year, Mr. President. Safeguarding freedom in Europe, that is the purpose of the North Atlantic Alliance, in which our two countries are partners. This alliance is a defence community and I need not stress that it only serves to defend. It is an alliance between free peoples who have joined together because they share the same values, including freedom, which they wish to preserve. This alliance has granted our security and peace over three decades. During this time, about nine million American citizens served as soldiers in Germany. Together with our young Germans conscripts and troops from other member countries of the alliance, they ensured that we can live in the manner desired by the overwhelming majority of our citizens, namely in a free democracy governed by the rule of law. Germany is a divided country, yet we Germans adhere to the unity of our people. The policy pursued by the Federal Republic of Germany is directed towards a state of peace in Europe in which the German people will regain their unity through free self-determination. We thank America for always supporting this goal of ours. As I said, for about 30 years the United States and Germany are members of the alliance. And if the alliance endeavors to obtain a military equilibrium at as low a level as possible, this will guarantee not only freedom, but also peace. Both of these, freedom and peace would be endangered, I think, if the other side were to acquire military superiority. The fate of Afghanistan provides a sad example. We must never tire of pointing out these implications time and again to those among our citizens who champion the course of unilateral disarmament, even though I respect their motives. The Germans shall stand by your side as your allies and partners also in the future. And with this thought in mind, may I now raise my glass to drink to your health and success, Mr. President, to your health, Mrs. Reagan, to a happy future for the United States of America, the leading power of the free nations, and to another three centuries of German American friendship. It's a great pleasure for us to have had Cheryl Millins, one of America's truly distinguished musical talents, to have him here with us. He, back in high school in Illinois, I heard Des Moines, and I was pretty close to old stamping grounds, but also in Illinois. In high school, he won state musical contest in five separate categories. He sings, he plays the tuba, he plays the violin, he plays the piano. And so with all that talent, he pursued a career in medicine. But that didn't last long. It didn't take him long to get back to what he's been doing and what he should be doing. He has been on TV, he has scores of records, he's won numerous awards, and he's thrilled audiences in the great opera houses. He soon became one of America's leading baritones in opera in the great opera houses from New York, San Francisco, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich. And we're just more pleased than we can say to have had you here, and you've been so generous with your talent. And adding to our joy was your accompanist, John Spong. I'll take the liberty of speaking for all these people and thanking you both and thank you very much. Great, great, wonderful.