I think the truth needs to be fought for. I begin with A Prayer for the Truth by Charles Chapek. It is a text published in the People’s Daily in 1938, just before the treacherous Munich. Even if it is an older text, its value by years is rising, showing its timelessness and the great genius and humanity of its author.

Prayer for truth

• author: Karel Čapek
• Published: Lidové noviny, 25. 9. 1938

God, who created nations and breathed in everyone’s desire to live in honor, rid today’s world of the worst: lies. Lies that perpetuate and engineer violence and teach people to hate each other. Lies that poison nations and dig divides between them that may not even be made up for decades.

God, how it will look, how Europe will evolve, beset by so many hateful lies! How can coexistence between people and peoples be possible, so many insults, so much contempt and rage have been hurled between them! Does anyone imagine that this state of mind has and can endure without end? Should a neighbor forever loathe his neighbor and wait only for the opportunity to strike a vengeful and premeditated blow? Even after a war, nations can join hands; they can chivalrously respect and establish relationships of trust. But on the battlefield, a lie will not forever be one of trust or honor; any lie will die, but it will leave hatred and contempt; the body will heal before the soul. God, how badly the soul of this nation is hurt, how this is to be healed or forgiven someday! Will this not threaten the nations, what a hateful, eternally evil and hostile world is thus being built? Should there never be peace, or at least a respite, in a convulsive mortal hatred?

God, give the world back the truth! It will be more than a treaty of peace, it will be more valuable than any alliance. No one, no nation, no state can be sure if human relations can be corrupted at any time by the instruments of lies. There will be no certainty, no treaties, no validity and no security if any nation’s consciousness is distorted by a deliberate lie. Behind every lie comes contrition and violence; every lie is an attack on the safety of the world. No one will live in peace beyond the strongest wall of steel and concrete; a winged lie will mock all your fortresses.

Ridding the world of a lie is more than disarmament. What a strange prescience it was when our Masaryk inscribed the words Truth Wins in our national emblem. He seemed to suspect that one day a lie would make a general attack on our state and nation, and he had already coined the slogan for the match. We can go to war with that slogan; but only with that slogan can the whole world go to peace.  For only without a lie can people and nations communicate, whichever language they speak.
God, give the world back the truth!
I know.

I say: Thank you, Mr. Capek.

T.G.Masaryk a Karel Čapek