Today we celebrate the fifty-seventh anniversary of the March First Independence Movement. Compelled by the aspirations of our people that resounded throughout the world on that day in 1919 and moved by the patriotic spirit of our forefathers, we take this occasion to make a solemn and patriotic declaration, both at home and abroad, concerning democracy.

The division of Korea at the end of World War II shattered the hopes that had filled the hearts of our people at the time of Liberation from Japanese rule. This tragic division once more cast a dark shadow over the future of our nation. Yet to the end our people refused to give up their cherished hope. They rose up out of the ashes of the Korean War, they crushed the dictatorship of Syngman Rhee through the Righteous Uprising of April 19, and they reestablished in every heart the hope for realization of a free and democratic society.

A small Roman Catholic girl called Mary, from one of the ghetto areas of Belfast, was playing with a friend near the seaside on a sunny day in spring, far away from the troubled streets near her home.

“I know what's wrong with Northern Ireland,” said Mary in that matter-of-fact tone all children use when they believe they have discovered one of the great secrets of life. “My mother told me what was the matter in Ulster. It's all the Protestants' fault.” There was a long silence. Her friend Betty finally spoke up. “ Well.. .I'm a Protestant.” There was another silence. Mary hesitated, and then said slowly. “You are not a ‘Protestant’ at Corrymeela. You're a nice person, and I like you.”

Aleksandr Isaech, when Mr. Brezhnev and the Politburo took the decision to exile you abroad rather than send you once more to a concentration camp, they must have believed that you would do less damage to the Communist state outside the Soviet Union than inside it. So I wonder if you believe time will prove that judgment to be correct?

In the way you put that question there is a certain false assumption. If one puts the question in this way, we assume that the Politburo is all-powerful and independent in the decisions it makes, that it was free to decide one way or another.

A new tone of optimism is being sounded in some recent reports on Christian-Jewish relationships. For instance, we have been hearing about a “decade of progress” in Jewish-Roman Catholic dialogue ever since 1975, when a Vatican commission issued “Guidelines and Suggestions” to implement the 1965 Vatican Council declaration Nostra Aetate. The new initiatives in Jewish-Evangelical conversations have been hailed as exceedingly heartening. Many and varied forms of dialogue between Christians and Jews are taking place on the local scene all across the land. Finally, the Fifth Assembly of the World Council of Churches, held in Nairobi, avoided adopting a statement on the Middle East so offensive to the Jewish community as to cause the breakdown of conversations.

For years now Ecaterina and Serban Chelariu, my wife's mother and brother, have tried to leave Rumania, and we have tried various means to help them. When we moved from Switzerland to America, my homeland, we thought the free emigration provision of the 1974 Trade Act might be a source of leverage to influence Rumanian authorities. In line with the Trade Act the U.S.-Rumanian Trade Agreement of 1975 committed Rumania to freer emigration practices and to the principle of family reunification. It committed the United States Congress either to assure compliance with the emigration provision or to cancel Rumania's "Most Favored Nation" trade status.