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The PEN charter
The P.E.N. Charter is based on resolutions passed at its international congresses and may be summarised as follows:
P.E.N. affirms that:
1. Literature, national though it be in origin, knows no frontiers, and should
remain common currency between nations in spite of political or international
upheavals.
2. In all circumstances, and particularly in time of war, works of art, the
patrimony of humanity at large, should be left untouched by national or political
passion.
3. Members of P.E.N. should at all times use what influence they have in
favour of good understanding and mutual respect between nations; they pledge
themselves to do their utmost to dispel race, class and national hatreds,
and to champion the ideal of one humanity living in peace in one world.
4. P.E.N. stands for the principle of unhampered transmission of thought
within each nation and between all nations, and members pledge themselves
to oppose any form of suppression of freedom of expression in the country
and community to which they belong, as well as throughout the world wherever
this is possible.
P.E.N. declares for a free press and opposes arbitrary censorship in time
of peace. It believes that the necessary advance of the world towards a more
highly organised political and economic order renders a free criticism of
governments, administrations and institutions imperative. And since freedom
implies voluntary restraint, members pledge themselves to oppose such evils
of a free press as mendacious publication, deliberate falsehoods and distortion
of facts for political and personal ends.
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