My dear fellow countrymen!

Looking at the Estonian national coat of arms here behind my back I thought, how much time it must have taken to make it. And then I started thinking generally about how you came here as refugees and exiles: all these books and songs were not in your suitcases, but mostly in your memory. And this great work of Artur Võõbus is a memorial of your work.

I saw before my eyes all the Estonian Houses where I had been, in Stockholm, New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, Bradford… and now here. But I should add another Estonian House, which bore another name and was established in Helsinki at the time when the Finnish government was still a little afraid of Russia. It was named after Friedebert Tuglas. In all these houses, people came together to think about Estonia and talk about Estonia.

I have sometimes envied this feeling of unity that has united us the more strongly the greater our troubles and misfortunes have been. I was thinking of the man who got just a piece of wood and drew the Estonian coat of arms on it.

In a foreign country, everything had to be started from scratch. Estonians at home often forget this. They see how far behind Estonia is lagging - what fifty years behind the iron curtain have meant for Estonia. And the world has gone on. Especially ten years ago there was envy in the hearts of the Estonians at home, as it was hard to imagine for young people how everything had to be started from zero in 1944, if you were fortunate enough to get out of Estonia. Those who did not succeed to escape were taken eastward, and only very few managed to return from there.

You compared Estonia to Israel. And you are right. There are not many states in the world that have lost a quarter of their citizens. Imagine that happening in England, France, Spain or Germany! In this respect, the comparison with Israel is justified.

No other scythe has cut into our flesh that deep. And it is the more admirable that you have had the strength and the will also at the times when it was necessary to gather donations from the citizens of the Republic of Estonia to establish this Estonian home here. With our coat of arms and our flag. With our love and our loyalty. This way, we can set an example to many nations and states. We have to thank you for this: the work of the Estonian exiles in England, in Sweden, in Canada and elsewhere helped to preserve Estonia on the political map of the world at the time when the Russian administration had wiped it off from the geographical map of the world. This is how you supported our diplomats in preserving the continuity of the Republic of Estonia.

Continuity is the cornerstone upon which we have founded our state. Today, violence no longer gives the occupying powers the right to govern the conquered country and people. Proceeding from continuity, we have restored the Republic of Estonia, and proceeding from this, we gathered under our flag again in 1990-1991, and restored the democratic state and elected the Riigikogu. This is not a new Estonia, it is continuity of the state that was founded on February 24, 1918. It is a continuity of the same legal system, the same language, the same schools, the same classes of chemistry and history. We wish also our children and grandchildren to continue with the same Estonian State. Today, Juhan Jaik has been read to us - and indeed it seems that there are other places in the world where we can build our homes, it need not be on the edge of a volcano. Sometimes I have wished that we had Canada for a neighbour, but this is not the case.

We are struggling in the name of Estonia's present, and especially Estonia's future. We take into account all the mistakes that have been made in Estonia, and draw our conclusions: Estonia can only be secure when it is a member of the European Union. We must be prepared that many decisions will be made in Brussels. But when we need to choose between two evils, we should rather decide ten times for Brussels than once for Moscow.

Our second goal is NATO. This is a difficult task. As the army of the Republic of Estonia, the army that Estonia formed promptly in the War of Liberty, no longer exists. There are no officers. There are just books and memories that we were able to gather 100,000 men under the Estonian flag, who defeated the Red Army in the War of Liberty. Today, it is glad to see the Defence League, where there are still men who remember the resistance of 1944 and the times of the Forest Brothers that followed. We also have a small group of Estonian officers who have been educated in many NATO countries, the USA, Denmark, Sweden or Finland.

This is the means that we try to use for building up a wealthy, happy and self-assured Estonia, so that these songs, and the words of Juhan Jaik - so that our language and our work would last forever in that little country. And this is it.

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