AP WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT

TERENCE HUNT

WASHINGTON (AP)—President Clinton, a college-age foe of the Vietnam War, saluted American veterans Thursday and said the United States must never shrink from what’s necessary ‘‘to keep our nation secure and our people prosperous.’‘

Beginning with a breakfast for leaders of veterans’ groups in the East Room and ending with a visit to a veterans’ hospital in West Virginia, Clinton devoted the day to paying homage to those who served in the military.

‘‘A grateful nation remembers,’‘ the president said at Arlington National Cemetery after placing a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

He called attention to the presence of 17 Army Rangers who took part in the fire fight in Somalia in which 18 Americans were killed Oct. 3. Praising their ‘‘great ability, success and unbelievable valor,’‘ Clinton said, ‘‘We are proud of them.’‘ The audience stood and applauded.

Clinton later visited the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Martinsburg, W. Va., and said America can pay part of its debt to veterans by assuring them comprehensive health care under his national plan.

‘‘We know we have a moral obligation to protect their security,’‘ Clinton said. ‘‘I wanted to come here to this hospital today to drive that point home.’‘

Clinton’s relations with the military, strained by his avoidance of the draft as a young man, were aggravated by his efforts to lift the ban on homosexuals. With the end of the Cold War, he also has had to oversee a shrinking of military forces and cutbacks in military spending.

He used the occasion of Veterans Day to sign a bill increasing the cost-of-living allowance for the nation’s 2.5 million disabled veterans. He also said he had fulfilled his pledge to declassify virtually all documents related to Americans missing in action or held as prisoner in Vietnam.

At the White House and later at Arlington, Clinton warned that the United States must not turn inward now that the Cold War is over.

‘‘Our generation is being asked now to decide whether we will preserve freedom’s gains and learn freedom’s lessons,’‘ the president said.

‘‘We are being asked to decide whether we will maintain the high state of readiness that stood behind our victory, or fritter away the seed corn of our security,’‘ he said.

He also said the nation is being ‘‘asked whether we will swell the global tide of freedom by promoting democracy and open world markets,’‘ a timely reference as the House nears a hard-fought vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement.

‘‘To honor those who served in Europe and Korea and Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, in scores of posts at home and abroad, let us today resolve we will not shrink from the responsibilities necessary to keep our nation secure and our people prosperous,’‘ the president said.

Veterans Day marked the 75th anniversary of the end of World War I, and Clinton presented a commemorative medal to Stanley Coolbaugh, representing 30,000 surviving veterans of that war. He also gave medals to four vets at the hospital in West Virginia.

Clinton, at breakfast in the East Room, said the United States at times is faced with a pivotal question: ‘‘To what extent must America engage with the rest of the world; to what extent can we just stay home and mind our own business?

‘‘Sometimes that answer is easy, as it was when we were attacked at Pearl Harbor and entered the second World War,’‘ Clinton said. Likewise, he said, it was clear after the war ‘‘we had to try to contain the expansion of communism and engage in the Cold War.’‘

He cited the collapse of the Soviet empire as ‘‘the greatest peacetime victory in the world’‘ and said, ‘‘Now today we have to ask some of the hard questions again—about how much we should engage and whether we can withdraw.’‘

Putting in a plug for the free-trade agreement, Clinton said that in recent days many senior military officers ‘‘had spontaneously come up to me and said that they favored this treaty.’‘

He also thanked the American Legion for endorsing the agreement.

In a park across from the White House, about 40 Vietnam veterans and family members demonstrated against Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, calling for his resignation and a new investigation of allegations he accepted $700,000 to help lift the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam. Brown has denied the allegations, which were made by a Vietnamese-American businessman.