154 FINAL ACT OF SECOND PAN AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS. 



effect. This method of procedure does not in any way interfere with 

 the primary duty of the United States to transmit the resolutions and 

 recommendations of the Final Act or to urge, if it should deem it advis- 

 able, that steps be taken to secure their realization. It does, however, 

 invest any Government with the right to take the initiative in the matters 

 specified in the Article and it would seem that, indefinite and vague as 

 the recommendation may be, it nevertheless creates a duty on the part 

 of the Government possessing such special interest to propose the meas- 

 ures to carry the resolution or recommendation into effect and to continue 

 to interest itself in the matter, either until it has been realized or circum- 

 stances suggest a renunciation of the initiative taken in pursuance of 

 the suggestion contained in the Article. 



It was the hope, and indeed the expectation, of the Congress that 

 the machinery devised by this Article would set in motion the wheels of 

 Government, whereby the inertia so frequent and so deadening in the 

 aftermath of a Congress would be avoided. 



The Congress is fully conscious of its many shortcomings and of its 

 manifold imperfections, which even a casual examination of its proceed- 

 ings will not fail to disclose. It nevertheless ventures the hope that 

 its labors may prove to be not wholly in vain, that it may be found in 

 some small measure to have contributed to the success of future Con- 

 gresses, in which it is, as it were, but an insignificant link in an ever- 

 lengthening and indeed endless chain, and that through their combined 

 efforts there may emerge an intellectual Pan Americanism whose vastness 

 and beneficent influence are barely visible in the first faint beginnings of 

 the intellectual and scientific cooperation of the Americas. 



