I will usurp the privilege of the last words to say two things to you: First of all, the help that’s been given this time by Potsdam, by the Minister President, simply and yet mostly, the team of the young men and women who helped this year are to be thanked. I would also like to thank our team in London, above all, the chief executives Sasha Havliceck and Hella Pick, and Karsten Vogel and his band of brothers and sisters. They did a wonderful job. Now, there is another thing I like to say about this conference: It would be a foolish thing so say that circumstances made it so very interesting and successful, but the fact it that is was possible for us to review an extremely serious situation and review it with a great deal of passion, but also with restraint.
And I think that the important thing we should remember is this: We have not, perhaps, heard sufficiently about one thing, it was said by many of us here, that the media and indeed the governors of our countries are too little concerned with a sense of history. That history is so much a key to attain to the understanding of things. I might add to this that it is equally important to have also to endeavor to look into the future, because I think, it is very important that we have a sense of future. The danger of ‘short-termism’ that media and governments, who look to the next opinion poll or election, is inadequate to dealing with the enormous problems before us. It should look far, far further into the 21st century.
It so happens that exactly fifty years ago a young Harvard lecturer visited Europe, visited also London, to recruit friends and finance for a summit called “Friends annual conference for the leaders of the future”. His name was Henry Kissinger and he visited me and I asked a routine question, any publisher asks having read a book: Are you writing another book? And he said rather wistfully: I have here a manuscript in my knapsack that has been rejected by eleven American publishers. I read the book overnight and was fascinated, it was called “A world restored” and dealt with the Congress of Vienna 1815 and his thesis being that for a 100 years thanks to foresighted, farsighted statesmanship and the feeling, almost mechanistic feeling, there has to be an equipoise of forces in politics and among the nations and powers, peace was preserved.
I do believe what we now need, because the alternatives are too awful to be hold, is a serious and continued dialogue between America, Europe and Russia, between NATO, Europe and Russia, because if we really looked in the future, in a sober way, we have so much to gain by friendly relations. Look at the empty rooms in the children wards of Europe, you see, that there will be a demographic problem by the middle of this century. There will be many other problems and yet at the same time there are so many wonderful things that could be achieved, if America, Europe and Russia worked together. To achieve that won’t be easy. Present moods perhaps seemingly impossible but of course, what we should do is not making things worse, but create situations, which might be well ideal.
Now, the idea of, possibly, having a sort of prelude to such a conference from these countries, here next year or in the near future would be a very, very challenging and very interesting theme, but would also of course mean that many of you would be invited again and we will have to benefit of your propositions. Thank you very much indeed for all you have done, to make this a very, very successful conference.