Wikileaks: Greece and the not so inscrutable Chinese

I've been reading some of the Wikileaks documents that Greek daily Ta Nea has been publishing. The extracts below relate to Sino-Greek relations (in view of the 2008 visit to Greece by Chinese leader Hu Jintao) and the COSCO saga – i.e. the agreement for the Chinese shipping and logistics company to operate a terminal at the port of Piraeus. What is revealed – if the US embassy in Greece is to be believed – is how feeble and fatalistic Greece's diplomats are when it comes to defending the country's interests – China abuses and insults Greece, and like a battered wife Greece feels it can do nothing other than accept its punishment –  and how imminent privatisation deals in Greece will likely be done.

The document from Ta Nea continues with another cable on Greece's doomed efforts to reform and liberalise the country's economy, but I've only included the opening remarks by the Americans regarding COSCO developments and the description of the workings of the mafia-type port authority trade unions. If the Greek people were wondering why their economy is a basket case, they would be advised to turn their attentions and ire not only on Goldman Sachs, the IMF and the country's politicians but also on the unbelievable (at least, to those of us exposed to Anglo-Saxon/northern European economies) unsustainable and crooked industrial practices that have developed in Greece since 1974.

Click here for Ta Nea's summary in Greek and within the document click where it says ‘Διαβάστε εδώ τα σχετικά τηλεγραφήματα του Wikileaks’ for full English-language Wikileaks document.

SUBJECT: GREECE/CHINA: GREEKS SEE PRC AS MORE "AGGRESSIVE" DURING PRESIDENT HU'S VISIT

2. (C) People's Republic of China President Hu Jintao paid a state visit to Greece November 24-26.  This was the first visit to Greece by a PRC Head of State since 2000.  Greek President Papoulias had visited China in June; PM Karamanlis last visited China in 2006.  During the Athens visit, Hu met  with Papoulias, Karamanlis, and the heads of the main opposition PASOK party and the Communist Party of Greece (KKE).

THE CHINESE VIEW
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3. (C) In a readout for us of the visit, Chinese Embassy Political Counselor Liu Wei said the Chinese had three goals. The first was to repay Greece for the visit of President Papoulias to China and the support Greece had shown to China with the Olympics.  Wei said it was important to the "Chinese mentality" to show gratitude…

4. (C) The second goal was renewal of Greek-Chinese friendship. Wei said Greece and China were not allies, as Greece and the U.S. were -- China did not make such alliances with foreign governments.  But Greece and China were "comprehensive strategic partners," as established in their 2006 agreement.  Wei defined precisely what that meant: "comprehensive" referred to the fact that China and Greece would agree on issues across the board and not cherry pick when it was convenient.  Their partnership at the same time was "strategic" because it focused on the global context and was long-term, not simply a marriage of convenience for the present.  Wei said Greece was the "most adamant" supporter of the one-China policy in the EU, and China was a strong supporter of the reunification of Cyprus. Such a convergence of views, he argued, made Greece and China "natural partners."  Greece was one of China's strongest advocates in the EU, and the Chinese President promised during the visit that China would never do anything to harm Greece.

5. (C) Expanding "pragmatic cooperation," that is, economic and business interaction, was the third Chinese goal.  Wei indicated China wanted to "go global" but had had problems in securing a foothold in Western countries due to mistrust. Such mistrust did not exist in Greece, according to Wei, and increasing economic ties between China and Greece was an important step for China.  Wei said that half of Chinese exports were carried on Greek-owned vessels, while 60 percent of China's oil imports arrived on Greek ships.

6. (C) During the visit, PM Karamanlis signed an agreement granting the Chinese firm COSCO Pacific Ltd a 35-year concession on the container terminal at the port of Piraeus. Under the agreement, which China was awarded in June and which represented the largest-ever such deal with a foreign power to control such an important aspect of the Greek economy, COSCO would pay 4.3 billion euro over 35 years and would renovate one pier and build another.  Wei admitted that the Chinese saw some difficulties in managing the Piraeus operation, due both to the global economic downturn and to Greek labor unrest. Greek dock workers continued to strike at the prospect of job or salary cuts under Chinese management, though Wei said China intended to have only one Chinese national running the container operation with an otherwise entirely Greek staff.  Additionally, four other minor agreements were signed, including two removing obstacles to Greek agricultural imports to China (Wei said Greek agricultural imports were quite expensive compared to domestic Chinese products but were nevertheless necessary in the production of high-quality goods for export.)  Other agreements covered cooperation between the Hellenic Telecommunications Organization (OTE) and the Chinese microchip supplier HUAWEI, and the sharing of programming between Chinese television CCTV and the Greek State-owned television ERT.

7. (C) Finally, when asked about potential military sales, Wei said there had been no such discussion during the visit. (NOTE: Greece has often helped cement deals or agreements in other areas through military equipment purchases.  For example, at the same time that Greece was sealing the Southstream gas pipeline deal with Russia, it also agreed to purchase more than a billion dollars worth of Russian armored personnel carriers (BMPs).  END NOTE.)  China was "very prudent" in arms sales and did not want to upset the balance between Greece and Turkey.  "Do no harm" was China's first rule in arms sales.

THE GREEK VIEW
--------------

8. (C) The Greek readout, provided by MFA A10 Directorate for Asia and Oceania deputy head Adam Adamidis, while covering the same basic territory as Wei's readout, was less positive and more cynical.  Adamidis said the Chinese had "imposed" the visit on Greece, providing only a month's notice, which forced Greece to cancel or delay some other high-level meetings, such as the visit of the Cypriot President.  This was in contrast to Papoulias' visit to China in June, for which the Chinese had required a year's preparation.  It was not clear why the Chinese had forced their President on the Greeks at short notice, though apparently they wanted to conclude the COSCO port concession agreement as quickly as possible.  Adamidis said the COSCO agreement had been stuck in the Greek bureaucracy for some time, but the visit had forced it out.

9. (C) During the visit, President Papoulias discussed most of the political topics, while PM Karamanlis confined himself to economic matters.  The COSCO concession, Adamidis said, had been Karamanlis' idea.  (NOTE: Press reports early on indicated that the Piraeus port concession was to be done by an open and fair competition, though as it developed politics may have played an increasingly significant role.  END NOTE.)  Adamidis took exception to the Chinese interpretation of the "comprehensive strategic partnership," saying that while Greece and China agreed on many things now, that certainly did not mean they would agree forever or on everything.  At the same time, however, he conceded that Greece was in a "subordinate position," due to its very large trade deficit with China: 12 billion euro, plus Chinese shipyards were building 20 billion euro worth of Greek ships. Greece accordingly generally supported positions of importance to the Chinese. Adamidis noted Greek support for China's receiving Market Economy Status in the world of trade and for lifting the EU arms embargo.  Also, unlike most other EU countries, Greece did not have an office in Taiwan, and Greece kept a low profile on human rights issues in China, for which the PRC was grateful.

10. (C) The Greeks clearly did not believe this show of support for China was reciprocated. Adamidis noted President Papoulias' discussion with Hu on the Macedonia name issue. He said Papoulias had told President Hu, "We support you on Taiwan, Tibet, and Market Economy Status, but we need your support on FYROM."  Papoulias went on to note that Greece had been "furious" at China for being the first member of the UN Security Council to recognize "FYROM" by its constitutional name (1993). The Chinese reply was "We are going to accept any decision by the two parties for a mutually acceptable solution." The Chinese President had also warned Papoulias that if the Dalai Lama were permitted to visit Greece, it would have a "severe impact" on bilateral relations. Adding to this list, Adamidis mentioned with some disfavor as well that in the runup to the Olympics in China, the Chinese had agreed to have Greece help with security at the games but as the event approach, "they dumped us."

11. (C) Summing up, Adamidis said the Chinese had become much more "aggressive" of late.  A few years ago, they treated Greece with more respect, but now they sought to impose their wishes on Greece.

12. (C) COMMENT: Due to its subordinate economic position stemming from its trade deficit and outstanding ship-building contracts with the Chinese, Greece apparently feels compelled to support Chinese positions on a range of international issues.  But Greece evidently is not getting what it thinks it deserves in return, and the Greeks do not appear happy with the relationship. PM Karamanlis may be trying to turn this situation around with the concession to COSCO on the Piraeus container port -- assuming that the MFA report is true that he and not a competitive bidding process was ultimately responsible for the Chinese getting the concession.  As is the case with Russia, the GOG appears willing to make concessions on current business deals to secure a better position later.  But whether such a strategy will work -- either with China or with Russia -- may not be clear for some time.

SPECKHARD

=======================CABLE ENDS===========================

SUBJECT: Greece: Government Manages to Suspend Port Strike, But For
How Long and At What Cost? 

1.  SUMMARY:  Confronting its first major challenge since taking office, Greece's new PASOK government negotiated a temporary suspension to a dockworkers' strike on October 17.  Latching onto PM Papandreou's pre-election promises to re-examine privatization agreements, dockworker unions at the port of Piraeus went on strike October 1, demanding that the government scrap a concession deal granted to the Beijing-based China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) Pacific.  COSCO is a shipping conglomerate scheduled to take over management of one of two existing cargo terminals on October 1 and to rebuild and manage a third terminal currently not used. The tentative deal to suspend the strike, about which few details are known, ended a 16-day saga that had paralyzed Greece's busiest commercial seaport, cost businesses and the government tens of millions of euro in lost revenue, and stranded over 10,000 shipping containers.

 2.  SUMMARY CONTINUED. On the surface, the suspension of the strike appears to be a win for the new government.  But it was not the decisive pro-business, pro-competition conclusion for which many affected business and potential investors had hoped, and it remains unclear what the government promised dockworkers to go back to work and whether it can deliver. Despite the suspension of the strike, and depending on any further negotiations, the PASOK government will continue to face challenges placating the powerful dockworkers' union as well as other labor groups looking to exploit the government's pro-labor leanings. More significantly, PASOK's apparently ambivalent approach to upholding the terms of the COSCO contract--signed by the previous government and approved by Parliament--raises fresh doubts over Greece's ability to attract and retain foreign investors in the midst of a global financial crisis that is forcing all to compete for a dwindling and increasingly risk-averse pool of foreign direct investment (FDI). In a battle that serves as a microcosm for the innate tensions in Greece between social democratic instincts and efforts to modernize and make the economy more competitive in order to attract much needed foreign investment, the victor remains elusive.   

COSCO: A Controversial Privatization from the Start

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3. In November 2008, in the presence of former ND Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis and visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao, COSCO and the Piraeus Port Authority (OLP) signed a landmark 4.3 billion euro (6.4 billion USD) port privatization deal granting COSCO up to a 35-year concession to manage one of two existing terminals and to rebuild a third terminal at Piraeus, Greece's largest port, near Athens, and the top container port in the eastern Mediterranean. Under the terms of the contract, COSCO's Greek subsidiary was granted, after a transition period, the right to manage all shipping transactions at terminals II and III. In exchange, COSCO promised to: a) retain for the time being all employees that currently work at the two terminals it will oversee (approximately 600 out of OLP's current Piraeus workforce of 1,500); b) invest millions of euro to upgrade the terminals' container-handling capacity, more than doubling the port's current capacity, thus creating 1,000 new jobs; and c) reserve 10 percent of new hires for the qualified children of current unionized OLP employees.  OLP, in turn, would retain exclusive control over the operations of terminal I. In the view of the Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry (EBEA), this landmark deal was a win-win for all parties.  For the GoG, which managed to achieve a major agreement prior to the onset of the financial crisis in Greece, the privatization and resulting expansion of port capacity was seen as helping to create greater role for Greece in Mediterranean shipping and transport. Export and import businesses and consumers hoped to benefit from increased port competition, which would decrease processing fees and reform the inefficient and corrupt offloading process, bringing down shipping costs and the cost of consumer goods over time. For labor in general, the deal maintained intergenerational job security and provided the possibility of new jobs.

4. Dockworker and port authority employees' unions, which had been calling intermittent complete and partial strikes and refusing to work overtime and weekends since the government announced the international tender for the port's operations in early 2008, immediately criticized the deal in November and continued to refuse to work overtime or weekends. Coinciding with the negative effects of the global economic crisis on shipping worldwide, strike action resulted in the Piraeus port suffering the biggest decline in container traffic among the world's 100 busiest ports,  caused several major shipping companies to temporarily forsake Piraeus for the Greek port of Astakos and other European ports, and increased the cost of transported consumer goods as a result of higher transport and processing costs.  While no specific statistics are available, EBEA indicated to DepEconCouns that many Greek export businesses were forced out of business as a result of delays and increased costs.

Dockworker Unions:  A Powerful, Corrupt Monopoly

5.The Dockworkers' Union and the Federation of Greek Port Personnel (OMYLE) have long held a labor monopoly over the operations of Greece's two major ports in Piraeus and in Thessaloniki.  Controlling exclusive contracts with the Piraeus Port Authority (OLP), the unions have reaped substantial financial benefits, with ironclad job security, guaranteed hiring privileges for the children of union members, and annual dockworker salaries in the range of 90,000 to 140,000 euro (135,000 to 210,000 USD), once overtime and other benefits are factored in--far above the average Greek yearly salary of 32,280 USD (National Statistics Services of Greece, data for 2008). According to union contacts, EBEA, and media reports, dockworkers also benefit from systematized corruption, manipulating the customs processing bureaucracy to expedite the containers of shippers who pay an extra fee--or holding up imports for those who refuse. All of this translates into what EBEA describes as the most expensive port in Europe in terms of fees and costs for shipping companies, importers, and exporters.  Privatization and competition would change all this and lessen opportunities for rent-seeking behavior.  Post's union contacts described the COSCO deal as threatening long-established dockworker salary levels and inter-generational job security, as OLP will need to cut costs in some way in order to stay competitive with the COSCO-operated terminals. Union officials noted that while they traditionally wield powerful influence within PASOK, they were willing to fight any government seeking to reduce their benefits…

Hail, Hail Freedonia

The Mickey Mouse country of Freedonia has financially collapsed and is begging benefactors to lend it money to stave off bankruptcy. To pull it out of this terrible crisis, Freedonia appoints as its leader the 'progressive, fearless fighter' Rufus T. Firefly, a man with a thick moustache and bushy eyebrows, who declares:

The last man nearly ruined this place
He didn't know what to do with it
If you think this country's bad off now
Just wait till I get through with it

The country's taxes must be fixed
And I know what to do with it
If you think you're paying too much now
Just wait till I get through with it.

Albert Camus: The New Mediterranean Culture

Below is the text of a lecture Albert Camus gave on Mediterranean culture at the Maison de la Culture in 1937, and indeed the reflections are very much of their time, with concerns over the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the Spanish civil war and the rise of Nazi Germany. They are also, of course, the product of a Pied-Noir, a European born and raised in French colonial Algeria. The lecture is not so much interesting for its commitment to internationalism and collectivism; but for its attempt to describe a distinct Mediterranean culture and physical way of life, under threat from joyless northern Europeans, ‘buttoned right up to the neck’. Camus is, of course, one of the twentieth century's great exponents of Greek civilisation and there are many observations he makes here and elsewhere that remind us of the poet Odysseas Elytis and his Hellenism. Indeed, Elytis could have come up with the phrase 'nationalism of the sun' to describe his own aesthetics, which Camus invents to stress the unique humanism of Mediterranean culture. Also, Camus' thoughts on the ontological differences separating the Mediterranean from northern Europe seem pertinent given the small cultural war that has resurfaced between Germany and Greece in which the economic crisis afflicting Greece has been portrayed by Germans as a consequence of southern European 'laziness and propensity to corruption and thievery'; while Greeks have responded to the hostility by depicting Germans as soulless bullies and mass murderers.

The New Mediterranean CultureI. The aim of the Maison de la Culture, which is celebrating its opening today, is to serve the culture of the Mediterranean. Faithful to the general directions governing institutions of its type, it seeks within a regional framework to encourage the development of a culture whose existence and greatness need no proof. Perhaps there is something surprising in the fact that left-wing intellectuals can put themselves to work for a culture that seems irrelevant to their cause, and that can even, as has happened in the case of Maurras, be monopolized by politicians of the Right.

It may indeed seem that serving the cause of Mediterranean regionalism is tantamount to restoring traditionalism with no future, celebrating the superiority of one culture over another, or, again, adopting an inverted form of fascism and inciting the Latin against the Nordic peoples. This is a perpetual source of misunderstandings. The aim of this lecture is to try to dispel them.

The whole error lies in the confusion between Mediterranean and Latin, and in attributing to Rome what began in Athens. To us it is obvious that our only claim is to a kind of nationalism of the sun. We could never be slaves to traditions or bind our living future to exploits already dead. A tradition is a past that distorts the present. But the Mediterranean land about us is a lively one, full of games and joy. Moreover, nationalism has condemned itself. Nationalisms always make their appearance in history as signs of decadence. When the vast edifice of the Roman empire collapsed, when its spiritual unity, from which so many different regions drew their justification, fell apart, then and only then, at a time of decadence, did nationalisms appear.

The West has never rediscovered unity since. At the present time, internationalism is trying to give the West a real meaning and a vocation. However, this internationalism is no longer inspired by a Christian principle, by the Papal Rome of the Holy Roman Empire. The principle inspiring it is man. Its unity no longer lies in faith but in hope. A civilization can endure only insofar as its unity and greatness, once all nations are abolished, stem from a spiritual principle. India, almost as large as Europe, with no nations, no sovereignty, has kept its own particular character even after two centuries of English rule.

This is why, before any other consideration, we reject the principle of a Mediterranean nationalism. In any case, it would never be possible to speak of the superiority of Mediterranean culture. Men express themselves in harmony with their land. And superiority, as far as culture is concerned, lies in this harmony and in nothing else. There are no higher or lower cultures. There are cultures that are more or less true. All we want to do is help a country to express itself. Locally. Nothing more. The real question is this: is a new Mediterranean civilization within our grasp?

II. Obvious facts, (a) There is a Mediterranean sea, a basin linking about ten different countries. Those whose voices boom in the singing cafes of Spain, who wander in the port of Genoa, along the docks in Marseilles, the strange, strong race that lives along our coasts, all belong to the same family. When you travel in Europe, and go down toward Italy or Provence, you breathe a sigh of relief as you rediscover these casually dressed men, this violent, colorful life we all know. I spent two months in central Europe, from Austria to Germany, wondering where that strange discomfort weighing me down, the muffled anxiety I felt in my bones, came from. A little while ago, I understood. These people were always buttoned right up to the neck. They did not know how to relax. They did not know what joy was like, joy which is so different from laughter. Yet it is details like this that give a valid meaning to the word 'Country.' Our Country is not the abstraction that sends men off to be massacred, but a certain way of appreciating life which is shared by certain people, through which we can feel ourselves closer to someone from Genoa or Majorca than to someone from Normandy or Alsace. This is what the Mediterranean is – a certain smell or scent that we do not need to express: we all feel it through our skin.

(b) There are other, historical, facts. Each time a doctrine has reached the Mediterranean basin, in the resulting clash of ideas the Mediterranean has always remained intact, the land has overcome the doctrine. In the beginning Christianity was an inspiring doctrine, but a closed one, essentially Judaic, incapable of concessions, harsh, exclusive, and admirable. From its encounter with the Mediterranean, a new doctrine emerged: Catholicism. A philosophical doctrine was added to the initial store of emotional aspirations. The monument then reached its highest and most beautiful form – adapting itself to man. Thanks to the Mediterranean, Christianity was able to enter the world and embark on the miraculous career it has since enjoyed.

Once again it was someone from the Mediterranean, Francis of Assisi, who transformed Christianity from an inward-looking, tormented religion into a hymn to nature and simple joy. The only effort to separate Christianity from the world was made by a northerner, Luther. Protestantism is, actually, Catholicism wrenched from the Mediterranean, and from the simultaneously pernicious and inspiring influence of this sea.

Let us look even closer. For anyone who has lived both in Germany and in Italy, it is obvious that fascism does not take the same form in both countries. You can feel it everywhere you go in Germany, on people's faces, in the city streets. Dresden, a garrison town, is almost smothered by an invisible enemy. What you feel first of all in Italy is the land itself. What you see first of all in a German is the Hitlerite who greets you with 'Heil Hitler'; in an Italian, the cheerful and gay human being. Here again, the doctrine seems to have yielded to the country – and it is a miracle wrought by the Mediterranean that enables men who think humanly to live unoppressed in a country of inhuman laws.

III. But this living reality, the Mediterranean, is not something new to us. And its culture seems the very image of the Latin antiquity the Renaissance tried to rediscover across the Middle Ages. This is the Latinity Maurras and his friends try to annex. It was in the name of this Latin order on the occasion of the war against Ethiopia that twenty-four Western intellectuals signed a degrading manifesto celebrating the 'civilizing mission of Italy in barbarous Ethiopia.'

But no. This is not the Mediterranean our Maison de la Culture lays claim to. For this is not the true Mediterranean. It is the abstract and conventional Mediterranean represented by Rome and the Romans. These imitative and unimaginative people had nevertheless the imagination to substitute for the artistic genius and feeling for life they lacked a genius for war. And this order whose praises we so often hear sung was one imposed by force and not one created by the mind. Even when they copied, the Romans lost the savor of the original. And it was not even the essential genius of Greece they imitated, but rather the fruits of its decadence and its mistakes. Not the strong, vigourous Greece of the great tragic and comic writers, but the prettiness and affected grace of the last centuries. It was not life that Rome took from Greece, but puerile, over-intellectualized abstractions. The Mediterranean lies elsewhere. It is the very denial of Rome and Latin genius. It is alive, and wants no truck with abstractions. And it is easy to acknowledge Mussolini as the worthy descendant of the Caesars and Augustus of Imperial Rome, if we mean by this that he, like them, sacrifices truth and greatness to a violence that has no soul.

What we claim as Mediterranean is not a liking for reasoning and abstractions, but its physical life – the courtyards, the cypresses, the strings of pimientos. We claim Aeschylus and not Euripides, the Doric Apollos and not the copies in the Vatican; Spain, with its strength and its pessimism, and not the bluster and swagger of Rome, landscapes crushed with sunlight and not the theatrical settings in which a dictator drunk with his own verbosity enslaves the crowds. What we seek is not the lie that triumphed in Ethiopia but the truth that is being murdered in Spain.

IV. The Mediterranean, an international basin traversed by every current, is perhaps the only land linked to the great ideas from the East. For it is not classical and well ordered, but diffuse and turbulent, like the Arab districts in our towns or the Genoan and Tunisian harbors. The triumphant taste for life, the sense of boredom and the weight of the sun, the empty squares at noon in Spain, the siesta, this is the true Mediterranean, and it is to the East that it is closest. Not to the Latin West. North Africa is one of the few countries where East and West live close together. And there is, at this junction, little difference between the way a Spaniard or an Italian lives on the quays of Algiers, and the way Arabs live around them. The most basic aspect of Mediterranean genius springs perhaps from this historically and geographically unique encounter between East and West. (On this question I can only refer you to Audisio).

This culture, this Mediterranean truth, exists and shows itself all along the line: (1) In linguistic unity – the ease with which a Latin language can be learned when another is already known; (2) Unity of origin – the prodigious collectivism of the Middle Ages – chivalric order, religious order, feudal orders, etc., etc. On all these points, the Mediterranean gives us the picture of a living, highly colored, concrete civilization, which changes doctrines into its own likeness – and receives ideas without changing its own nature.
But then, you may say, why go any further?

V. Because the very land that transformed so many doctrines must transform the doctrines of the present day. A Mediterranean collectivism will be different from a Russian collectivism, properly so-called. The issue of collectivism is not being fought in Russia: it is being fought in the Mediterranean basin and in Spain, at this very moment. Of course, man's fate has been at stake for a long time now, but it is perhaps here that the struggle reaches its tragic height, with so many trump cards placed in our hands. There are, before our eyes, realities stronger than we ourselves are. Our ideas will bend and become adapted to them. This is why our opponents are mistaken in all their objections. No one has the right to prejudge the fate of a doctrine, and to judge our future in the name of a past, even if the past is Russia's.

Our task here is to rehabilitate the Mediterranean, to take it back from those who claim it unjustly for themselves, and to make it ready for the economic organistation awaiting it. Our task is to discover what is concrete and alive in it, and, on every occasion, to encourage the different forms which this culture takes. We are all the more prepared for the task in that we are in immediate contact with the Orient, which can teach us so much in this respect. We are, here, on the side of the Mediterranean against Rome. And the essential role that towns like Algiers and Barcelona can play is to serve, in their own small way, that aspect of Mediterranean culture which favors man instead of crushing him.

VI. The intellectual's role is a difficult one in our time. It is not his task to modify history. Whatever people may say, revolutions come first and ideas afterward. Consequently, it takes great courage today to proclaim oneself faithful to the things of the mind. But at least this courage is not useless. The term 'intellectual' is pronounced with so much scorn and disapproval because it is associated in people's minds with the idea of someone who talks in abstractions, who is unable to come into contact with life, and who prefers his own personality to the rest of the world. But for those who do not want avoid their responsibilities, the essential task is to rehabilitate intelligence by regenerating the subject matter it treats, to give back all its true meaning to the mind by restoring to culture its true visage of health and sunlight.

I was saying that this courage was not useless. For if it is not indeed the task of intelligence to modify history, its real task will nevertheless be to act upon man, for it is man who makes history. We have a contribution to make to this task. We want to link culture with life. The Mediterranean, which surrounds us with smiles, sea, and sunlight, teaches us how it is to be done. Xenophon tells us in The Persian Expedition that when the Greek soldiers who had ventured into Asia were coming back to their own country, dying of hunger and thirst, cast into despair by so many failures and humiliations, they reached the top of a mountain from which they could see the sea. Then they began to dance, forgetting their weariness and their disgust at the spectacle of their lives. In the same way we do not wish to cut ourselves off from the world. There is only one culture. Not the one that feeds off abstractions and capital letters. Not the one that condemns. Not the one that justifies the excesses and the deaths in Ethiopia and defends the thirst for brutal conquests. We know that one very well, and want nothing to do with it. What we seek is the culture that finds life in the trees, the hills, and in mankind.

This is why men of the Left are here with you today, to serve a cause that at first sight had nothing to do with their own opinions. I would be happy if, like us, you were now convinced that this cause is indeed ours. Everything that is alive is ours. Politics are made for men, and not men for politics. We do not want to live on fables. In the world of violence and death around us, there is no place for hope. But perhaps there is room for civilization, for real civilization, which puts truth before fables and life before dreams. And this civilization has nothing to do with hope. In it man lives on his truths.

It is to this whole effort that men of the West must bind themselves. Within the framework of internationalism, the thing can be achieved. If each one of us within his own sphere, his country, his province agrees to work modestly, success is not far away. As far as we are concerned, we know our aim, our limitations, and our possibilities. We only need open our eyes to make men realize that culture cannot be understood unless it is put to the service of life, that the mind need not be man's enemy. Just as the Mediterranean sun is the same for all men, the effort of man's intelligence should be a common inheritance and not a source of conflict and murder.

Can we achieve a new Mediterranean culture that can be reconciled with our social idea? Yes. But both we and you must help to bring it about.