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this report, and in proposing that the programmes which it outlines should be adopted, we are speaking not to the General Conference of UNESCO alone, but to the peoples of the world." " Here, in our opinion, is a programme for common action to construct in the minds of men such defences as the minds of men can maintain. If it is possible in the present dark and lowering atmosphere of cynicism, suspicion, and despair for men to agree upon a common programme, they should, we think, be able to agree on this. In the final count, in the last determination, we must trust our power to be men. As men —as men who think, believe, and have the will to act —we can agree together on the end of peace. Agreeing on that end, we should be able to agree that there are steps by which the end can be approached. In the high confidence that the projects here proposed are projects which can bring us nearer to the hoped-for goal, we put this programme in your hands." B. Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Commission (Chairman: Dr M. B. Drzewieski (Poland)) This Commission was required to recommend to the Conference the ways in which UNESCO could best help the war-devastated countries to rehabilitate themselves educationally, scientifically, and cujlturally. Obviously this task could not be separated from the general programme, and all the Programme Sub-Commission's reports contained sections on relief and rehabilitation. The report of the Commission was adopted unanimously by the General Conference, and almost every speaker stressed that no other activity must be allowed to interfere with UNESCO's most urgent duty of helping the war-devastated countries to reconstruct at least the rudiments of their educational and cultural life. In the course of the discussion pitiabjle stories were told of the conditions under which education is being carried on in eastern and southern Europe, in China, and the Philippines, and even in portions of France and the Low Countries. Buildings destroyed, teachers killed and scattered, libraries and laboratories devastated, and in some cases even the barest minimum of equipment, pencils, paper, chalk entirely lacking —it is under conditions such as these that a whole generation of school-children are being brought up to build a new world. If no help is given, to the evil of ignorance will be added the bitterness and resentment of peoples who have had education themselves but cannot get it for their children. The Conference felt that educational rehabilitation is not just humanitarianism: it is an essential for a reasonable and peaceful world. In spite of its deep feeling on this matter, the Conference realized that UNESCO could not itself set up as a direct relief agency in the field, although the UNESCO National Commissions in the various member States may be expected' to play an active part in
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