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Address by the President of the Republic at the dinner in honour of His Royal Highness Prince of Wales on November 5, 2001, at Restaurant Gloria in Tallinn05.11.2001
Your Royal Highness,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am sincerely glad to welcome the 21st Prince of Wales on his first visit to Estonia in the first year of the XXI century. This event is full of exciting symbols, among which the most important one is surely the fact that during its long and rich history, Europe has never before been as united as it is today. Its current unity is based on new architectonics, the main and most essential principle in the structure of which is democracy. The idea of the great British statesman Winston Churchill that democracy is difficult and troublesome, but there is no alternative to it has found confirmation.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has had an outstanding role in the history of Europe and has shaped the face of Europe significantly. Thanks to the centuries-old tradition of education, in Estonia we have shared in the culture and languages of Europe, including those of the UK. In the current world, where the speed of obtaining and exchanging information is becoming a determining factor, we increasingly realise every day the importance of the sign system with the help of which we communicate and the structural principles of that sign system.
Your mother tongue, Your Royal Highness, is one of the globally functioning sign systems, which enables Estonians to make themselves understandable to other peoples, contemporaneously mediating the message born in the Estonian language and mind. But like the British, we, Estonians have also appreciated language as an objective apart from the language as a means. Therefore, while treasuring the language of Shakespeare, Byron and other great English minds, we are also proud of our own language, which has been spoken for thousands of years and has become great in the writings of Lydia Koidula, Anton Hansen Tammsaare, Jaan Kross and others.
The keener attention to and care for tradition and its immediate carriers also arise from the inter relation between the language and the culture. Your Royal Highness, in your versatile social activities you have paid great attention also to that aspect determining social existence. As I have been related to the organisation of rural life in Estonia for most of my life, your care for the preservation of the English rural culture and that of other British peoples is quite understandable to me. In the rapidly developing and globalising cultural environment, we need our ethnic cultures as home ports where we can replenish our food and water supplies to go sailing again to the oceans in full sail. Ethnic cultures have mainly fed upon peasant culture, the carriers of which would perhaps deserve even more attention nowadays, as they help to keep local and ethnic identity alive side by side to the European identity.
Your Royal Highness, our current knowledge of the surrounding world enable us also to understand the role of cultures in shaping our environment. It has found the most direct dedication in the activities of Your Royal Highness for your state and people. Your outstanding knowledge of architecture enables you to feel even more deeply the structure of our living environment and the opportunities for shaping it for the purpose of securing its preservation also in the most distant future.
Indeed, the permanence of life is not created by a subordinating or blindly consuming attitude to the surrounding world, but rather by its preservation and dedicated serving of it. Your Royal Highness, you are following with honour your motto "I serve - Ich Dien" on your coat of arms.
Your Royal Highness, on behalf of everybody present, the Estonian people and myself and my spouse I would like to wish you sincerely happiness and success in carrying out your royal mission, and hope that your first visit to Estonia will be like finding another path that will inspire to search for and discover the permanent values uniting our peoples, Europe and the whole world.
I raise the glass to welcome Your Royal Highness Prince of Wales.
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