1400 years ago, one of the first Bulgarian kings - Khan Kubrat - lay on his deathbed. He had built an empire and wanted his two sons to inherit it and keep it strong. He called his first son, and told him: bring me a stick. And so the son did. Now break it, asked the king. The son broke the stick without much effort. He called his second son, and told him: bring me a bunch of sticks. And so he did. Now break it, asked the king. No matter how hard he tried, the second son couldn't break the bunch of sticks. The king then said to his sons: my children, you are like these sticks. United, you will stand. divided, you will fall.

Fellow Toastmasters and guests.. Only 65 years ago, after the end of that orgy of blood and misery and death that was WWII, people from over fifty countries, tired of our neverending history of violence, decided to apply that advice and proclaimed

"We, the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind ... have resolved to combine our efforts to live together in peace and tolerance with one another , and to promote the economic and social advancement of all peoples."

And yet... A generation after that... What has changed? Almost everything remains the same as it was... Except in one region ... Europe.

Imagine for a second what it means to lose a son, or a daughter, or a brother, or a sister. Evenmore, imagine what it means to lose it to a murderer, to someone who enters your home with the support.... no, with the cheering of his family and his neighbourhood. What would YOU do? What would YOU do if several years later, you had the chance to turn the tables around? Would YOU seek revenge? Or Would you seek reconciliation?

It takes an incredible amount of courage for a country that has lost half a million people to an aggressor to stand up and less than five years later, procclaim that a real peace, a lasting peace, does not stand a chance but within the framework of a union and reconciliation with the former foe, a former enemy.

And yet this is exactly what the country that brought us the principles of Liberé, Egalité and Fraternité did sixty years ago. On the 9th of May, 1950, Robert Shuman - the french foreign minister, stood before the Quai d'Orsay [ke dawr-'se] and procclaimed : "We have acted primarily for peace and to give peace a chance. For this, it is necessary that Europe should exist. Five years after the unconditional surrender of Germany, France is accomplishing the first decisive act for European Construction, and is associating Germany with this".

In times of crisis such as ours today, it's easy to be overcome by discouragement, by disappointment, even by rage and to look to those "abroad" as scapegoats for our maladies, our problems. And it's easy to fall prey to those too keen, too eager to cast our neighbours as the source of all evil.

My friends, we know better... We have been there already....

Six thousand years of European history have taught us that it's all too easy to rally the people of one nation against another. As Herman Goering said durng the Nuremberg Trials, "Of course people do not want to go to war... But it's enough to tell them that they are under attack, that there is some remote agressor, and they'll happily follow their leaders .... to death"

This generation in Europe, our generation, has had the luxury of living in peace. And I say luxury, because if we look back, every single generation before ours, stretching as far as to the first crusade and even further on in the mists of the past, has lived through decimating wars .

We don't need to be the same. We don't need speak the same language, or write the same script. We don't need to look alike and we don't need to think alike. We don't even need to believe in the same God.

But nevertheless we are one. We are one because of our heritage, of thousands of years of shared history, and pain, and suffering, of the rivers of blood that have soaked this land, but also thousands of years of achievements, of art, of science.

We are one because of our common ideals and values : the ideals of solidarity, peace, our low tolerance towards violence, multiculturalism, cooperation and multilateralism.

We are one because of our common dream, in which individuals find security,peace and happiness not through the individual accumulation of wealth, but through connectivity, sustainable development and respect for human rights.

And if we persist in the pursuit of our shared dream, one day will come, and I'm sure it will, as inevitable as the sunrise is, when our children will look back at what we did in this time, and thank us. They will stand up and say, we belong to Europe, one nation. not only with liberty and justice, but also with respect and tolerance, with confidence and pride, with forgiveness and compassion for all.

They will stand up, and proudly say, "We belong to Europe, and we stand united in our diversity".