48
PRAGUE
brain structure from us. In everything we do we shall have to
subordillate emotion to reason. Intellectual capacity is probably the
one sphere in which the inhabitants of this country are superior
to those who came here and to those who sent them. It would be
a sad thing if university students were to stoop to reactions that
are beneath their dignity.
This nation has once again been accused of heresy and a crusade
has been launched against it in the name of the true faith. Per–
haps the crusaders were momentarily deterred by the solidarity
they encountered, but that unity can only be temporary; very soon
it will begin to crack. Therefore, every force will be important
which will have an effect not only on leading personalities but also
on the public at large. . . .
The students are not isolated in their views. Besides young workers,
they are supported as well by journalists and writers with whom they
have been in close contact since last spring. The writers themselves in
their declaration of October 31, 1968, addressed their leaders:
The nation will not cease to be grateful to the politicians who
represented it in the August days and did everything possible to
prevent bloodshed. But they must not forget the nation whose
fantastic discipline and support created the conditions enabling
them to negotiate at all. The nation has the right to demand that
its politicians lead it forward, that in their efforts to lighten the
present for themselves and the nation they should not lose the
future....
Therefore, we turn to the leaders of the country and the Party
with an urgent appeal that they should again rely on national
unity which despite calumnies, thanks to our traditions, personifies
the most progressive ideas of modern humanity in the given Czecho–
slovak situation, for it is also a unity of convinced socialists....
We turn to our leaders trusting that they will overcome fatigue,
skepticism and anxiety, to which as human beings they are prone,
that they will avert the isolation that threatens them, that they will
derive strength from our unity and will not allow the year of great
hopes to become a year of lasting shame.... We writers are resolved
to do everything ... for the further development of what we call
socialism with a human face. We are not and never will be ready
to admit
to
crimes we have not committed or to give thanks for
help which is nothing but an injury. We are not and never will be
willing to call a lie the truth and injustice necessity. Power can
annihilate people but not their ideas. In this century alone we in
Bohemia have witnessed three times the break up of a monolithic
system so that truth might again ring out. ...
