Resolution of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) on the occasion of its Forty-fourth Annual Meeting in Plzen, Czech Republic, June 28, 2002

THE CZECHOSLOVAK SOCIETY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Holding its Twenty-first World Congress in the year 2002 in the ancient City of Plzen, in the land that far too long had been closed to freedom and now once again belongs to free men and women, is open to them, and welcomes them -

Reaffirming its founding principles, articulated almost half-a-century ago in times so dark for many, and reiterated anew in its Resolution of the year 2000 at the time of its historic Twentieth World Congress in Washington, DC -

Mindful of its obligation - the unceasing obligation of all free people everywhere - to safeguard, foster and cultivate those cultural and ethical values that make life worth living, among them, and above them all, the value of human tolerance, for without tolerance culture is warped, civil society becomes uncivilized, and democracy itself decays -

Cognizant of the fact that this Society itself with its friends is but one in the gamut of social, cultural and human forces seeking, in unison and in their daily deeds, to drive the third millennium along the path of humaneness and decency -

RESOLVES:

To continue meeting the challenges of these disquieting times around the globe by finding and perfecting peaceful means of human communication across all boundaries, ideological, racial, and religious -

To accept that in this rapidly changing world, of which we are but a part undergoing its own evolutionary transformations, our own contribution to the betterment of global life may be very modest indeed yet absolutely essential, since every great good consists of many small good deeds

Never to forget: that ties of friendship between men and nations are also strengthened by mutual readiness to offer a helping hand in times of need --- that the United States and other countries have done so when our peoples were in bondage in their own lands and some of us abroad in need of a haven, and that they are with us still --- and above all, that we too have hands capable of helping others -

To forge ever new bonds, social, cultural, human, between those of us in the homelands and those of us in new homes far away, for the distances between people are to be measured not in miles but in the values they share and cherish -

To strive, so as to convert words into deeds, toward better understanding of our own human failings in tolerance and compassion for without that understanding we shall fail ever more.

Approved by SVU General Assembly on June 28, 2002

Frank Safertal Miloslav Rechcigl Secretary-General SVU President

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