Dear fellow countrymen!


This morning we consecrated the colours of the Kalev Infantry Battalion and the Sentry Battalion in Tallinn and dispatched the Victory Flame to light Midsummer Night bonfires all over Estonia. Now we have gathered in ancient Tartu, a town altogether older than Tallinn, yet altogether more youthful than Tallinn, to begin a parade of the Defence Forces of the Republic of Estonia.

The Estonian Defence Forces are the youth of the Estonian people, embodying the will of the Estonian people to exist as a sovereign state aware of its international rights and duties.

But in the first place the Estonian Defence Forces are our sons and daughters from all the towns and counties of Estonia. They don't symbolize the capital; by no means do they symbolize, nor must symbolize, the power concentrated in centres during the years of occupation. In view of this I commissioned the Commander of the Defence Forces, Major-General Aleksander Einseln, to arrange our Midsummer eve parades alternately in all Estonian towns and to launch the new democratic and long-lasting tradition in Tartu, the town of Estonian youth and the one-time cradle of our political traditions.

The parade of the Defence Forces of the Republic here in this town, pettingly dubbed the intellectual capital of Estonia, implies two significant grains which I will now dwell upon.

It is characteristic of Estonia, of the Nordic countries, and, in a wider sense, of the whole of Western Europe, that the culture is evenly distributed over towns and counties, in contrast to absolutistic centralization in Russia, and this is the clue to the unusually diverse and vigorous development of the phenomenon of European culture. That path of development used to be followed and will again be followed by the Republic of Estonia. Estonia must not be devided into a giant capital and the humble provinces. Estonia shall never have a Red Square! The strength of the Estonian Defence Forces relies on Estonian spirituality, and Estonian spirituality has to rejuvenate Estonia in the country as well as in town, in counties as well as in Tallinn.

The national parade of the Defence Forces in Athens-on-Emajõgi also implies that the defence forces are not just rifles and tanks: first and formost, they incarnate the agelong will of Estonians to live as an independent and sovereign people. It's not the amount of weapons that sovereignty depends on. First of all, sovereignty lives in the very citizen, in his balanced acceptance of his rights and duties, in his resolve to act as a citizen and in his united resolve to act as a state. The Estonian people have proven that we want to be independent. Now we have to prove through our resolve that we know how to be independent. A small nation is strong only if it acts in unity and with reason, if it inspires confidence among both its next-door neighbours and more distant partners.

Estonia's deed must not dissent from Estonia's word.

That's why we are building our defence forces, which, in this square, embody the will and readiness of the people of Estonia to secure the future of Estonia with deed as well. A united will, devotion, concord and discipline in the defence forces make up the strongest weapon of all weapons and will thus put arms to silence, to allow the country to recuperate and become a happy, smiling and worthy Republic of Estonia.

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