Thank you, Mr. President, for your very kind remarks about my first year here in Paris. I wish to assure you, and all of your distinguished companions here in the Sons of the American Revolution, that I have found this to be a very rewarding experience. I am particularly happy to have been here from the point in time, when our two countries began to enjoy better and more productive relations. The highlight, so far, of course, was the visit of President Nixon, and I think we can all agree this visit was an unqualified success. I personally have been extremely happy at the great improvement in our relations, and I want to assure you I and my colleagues at the Embassy are doing our best to see that we continue to move ahead.
Perhaps the one thing that has struck me most during the year that I have been Ambassador to France is how much France and the United States have in common -- how much we have shared and continue to share a common destiny and to what a great degree we have the same problems, common problems of course a long time ago, at a time when the existence of the United States was at stake, and I’ve walked in the fields near Yorktown where French soldiers under Rochambeau, Lafayette and Saint-Simon shed their blood for an American cause. I’ve also stood outside Paris where many years later another Franco-American army fought a common enemy.
I’ve learned since I’ve been in France, however, that this readiness to fight together for something we both think is important is only the most dramatic illustration of how much France and the United States have in common. In many ways, the problems we share in our day-to-day lives are just as impressive an illustration.
For example, last October, I visited a textile mill in the Département du Nord, and I was struck by the fact that this factory could well have been in New Jersey. The men who own this mill and the men who work there face the same future and must resolve the same problems as their counterparts in the United States. Last month, I visited the new Oceanographic center in Brest. Here Frenchmen, like Americans at their own Oceanographic centers in California and elsewhere, are trying to find better ways to use the sea around us for the good of human beings everywhere. I have visited universities -- in Tours and Angers and elsewhere - where the university administrations are seeking to meet the new and puzzling problems that face a university in a changing world just as they face the administrators of our universities in the United States. I’ve talked with American university students studying in France along side French students with whom they share the same questions about their future in our Western European civilization.
It has become very clear to me from these experiences that since French and Americans share many of the same problems, we have a great deal to gain by working together to solve them. For this reason, we have been particularly anxious to promote contacts between French and Americans who will have the responsibility in years to come for meeting the problems of their rapidly changing […].
It is through this sort of exchange and contact that we hope -- with the help of Frenchmen and Americans who understand how much France and the US share common problems for the future -- to reinforce the bonds between our countries that were first tied almost two-hundred years ago near Yorktown.
Let me say how much I enjoyed being with you this year. I look forward to joining you again next year.
