REPORT OF THE SECRETARY GENERAL. 63 



This is a Pan American gathering. It is the first large meeting of 

 eminent men from all Americas held since and soon after the transcen- 

 dental manifestation of purposes by the two officials embodying the rep- 

 resentation and assuming the responsibilities for the foreign policy of 

 the United States. Therefore no other opportunity is more propitious 

 nor any representative body is better qualified than ours at this time to 

 take notice of such declarations and to place them as the frontispiece 

 of this congress within a frame built by the friendship and love of the 

 other 20 Republics of the continent. 



Although representing only one of those Republics, I am nevertheless 

 convinced that I am interpreting the thought and feeling of each and 

 every one of them when I say that the Government of the United States 

 to-day completes the erasing with a friendly hand of the last traces of 

 any past misunderstandings and any erroneous interpretations which 

 may have clouded in former times the political horizon of America. No 

 doubt there had prevailed before now in the atmosphere in American 

 foreign offices uncertainties, misgivings, and suspicions whenever the 

 well-inspired and unquestionably beneficial declaration by President 

 Monroe was brandished in the United States with a view to practical 

 appHcation. There w^as lacking the precise definition of the meaning 

 and extent of that memorable document, and many of the weaker 

 American nations, like small birds that feel in the air the sound of a 

 menacing flight, seemed afraid and apprehensive whenever the news 

 reached them of a possible practical application of its declarations. 

 Thus the Monroe doctrine might have seemed a threat so long as it was 

 only a right and an obligation on the part of the United States. Gen- 

 eralized as a derivation from the Pan American policy, supported by all 

 the Republics in the continent as a common force and a common defense, 

 it has become a solid tie of union, a guaranty, a bulwark for our 

 democracies. 



Before now some steps had been tried with success along the path of 

 Pan American evolution, and if those preliminary efforts have through 

 circumstances b^en participated in only by a numerically small and 

 geographically distant group of the countries in the hemisphere, it is not, 

 indeed, due to purposes of exclusion or selection which would have been 

 inconsistent with the well-proven spirit of brotherhood that always in- 

 spired the Governments of those countries. All the Republics of America 

 are capable of setting up their own destiny, and all are unquestionably 

 bound to serve in their turn as exponents of our civilization and progress. 

 48192—17 5 



