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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, July 25, 1980
Page 13
We have listened to your program on many occasions for the last
three years, and lately every night. Your voice is a comfort to us
and our prayers are with you.
We are very poor, and lately we have been depressed. The other night
we listened to your program and you mentioned a one-room house with
little furnishings. It brought tears to our eyes, but it also
brought a very warm feeling, because we felt like you were here
with us in a little one-room house. You made us realize that though
we may be poor materially, in other ways we are very rich.
--Mr. & Mrs. Carl M. (Snowflake, AZ)
I listen to your program every weekday. I am so very glad to be
able to hear you. It has helped me considerably this past year.
I would have never made it without your help and the Eternal's."
--Virginia F. (White Marsh, MD)
ON THE WORLD SCENE
"EUROPE MUST RESTORE ITS POWER AND INFLUENCE"--GISCARD: In a summer
chock-full of high-powered summit conferences, the five-day state visit
of President Giscard d'Estaing to West Germcny, beginning July 7, was an
easy one to overlook, especially for Americans. Nevertheless, Giscard's
trip to Bonn and other selected sites--the first official visit to Germany
by a French President since de Gaulle's historic fence-mending journey in
1962--was loaded with significance.
Call for "Independent Role" for Europe
Throughout his trip, Giscard d'Estaing repeatedly urged that West Europe
take a more independent role in world affairs, implying that the region
should loosen its dependence on the United States in political and
military matters.
On the very first night, at a banquet given in his honor in Bonn, the
French leader said that France and West Germany must act together to pre
vent Europe from falling into political oblivion and to restore its power
and influence in world affairs. "If we succeed we will have rendered a
great service to peace and the balance in the world which, as we see every
day, needs an independent and strong Europe," he said.
Giscard drew attention to the significance, 18 years earlier, of President
de Gaulle's tour of reconciliation intended to heal the breach between
Europe's most bitter foes of the past. He succeeded: the following year,
Germany and France signed their "Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation."
Giscard spoke of a shared destiny between the trans-Rhine powers: "Never
have our countries been so bound together. Never have we been so close."
West Germany and France have grown together, he said, and "now no lonqer
aim cannons across the rivers at one another, but offer instead their
hands in friendship," adding that France and West Germany were "obliged
to use our united strength to preserve Europe from a shadowy existence
and return it to its proper role of might and importance in the world."