REPORT OF THB SECRETARY GENERAL. 3 1 



Nineteen participating Governments are perfecting at this writing their 

 organizations. 



It is singularly fortunate at this time that Washington is to be the 

 meeting place of this congress. The Pan American Union, to which the 

 United States as a participating member looks with pride, makes Wash- 

 ington in a sense the capital of Pan America. I beg, therefore, in con- 

 clusion, in presenting this brief statement concerning the nature and 

 importance of the Second Pan American Scientific Congress to your 

 honored bodies, to express the hope that, as associations and as indi- 

 viduals, you will lend your highly valued cooperation whenever requested, 

 in order that this Pan American meeting of scientists and publicists may 

 create through their labors a rational and practicable Pan Americanism 

 that should prove mutually beneficial to all of the Republics that are now 

 sincerely striving to establish relations of commerce and culture based on 

 solid ties of friendship and esteem. 



Glen Levin Swiggett, 

 Assistant Secretary General. 



CIRCULAR LETTER TO THE PRESS. 



[Prepared by Dr. GlEN Levin Swiggett, Assistant Secretary General.] 



The Republics of the Western Hemisphere present to-day in relation to 

 each other a very interesting spectacle, even to disinterested persons. 

 Apparently novel situations and conditions have arisen since the begin- 

 ning of the present European war. Men of business are talking through- 

 out this Western World of a Pan American solidarity. They speak of it 

 as if it were something that had sprung at birth, like Minerva or Venus, 

 into the full power of life, incident to the outbreak of this war. Public 

 men and scholars, however, of this Western World, students of the 

 history of these countries, know that events have been shaping them- 

 selves for years, even for centuries, in the Americas, for the creating of 

 a new-world message, the source of which is in the self-consciousness of a 

 new- world group; of a group of young nations with their sacred duty of 

 repairing through union exercised with patience, zeal, and sympathy the 

 ravages wrought by war in the fields of commerce and science. 



Pan Americanism is no longer the dream of a Monroe or a Bolivar, to 

 whom the beginnings of this new alliance were foreshadowed by Destiny 

 in the interlaced gropings and wanderings along the coasts and in the 

 interior of the two continents, of splendid conquistadores like Pinzon y 

 Solis, Narvaez, Cabeza de Vaca, De Soto, Balboa, Cortez, and Pizarro 

 The publicists, scholars, and scientists of these Western Republics, con 

 48192—17 3 



