96 RBPORT OF THE SECRETARY GENERAL. . 



of politics. For politics I conceive to be nothing more than the science 

 of the ordered progress of society along the lines of greatest usefulness 

 and convenience to itself. I have never in my own mind admitted the 

 distinction between the other departments of life and politics. Some 

 people devote themselves so exclusively to politics that they forget there 

 is any other part of life, and so soon as they do they become that thing 

 which is described as a "mere politician." Statesmanship begins where 

 these connections so unhappily lost are reestabUshed. The statesman 

 stands in the midst of life to interpret life in political action. 



The conference to which I have referred marked the consciousness of 

 the two Americas that economically they are very dependent upon one 

 another; that they have a great deal that it is very desirable they should 

 exchange and share with one another; that they have kept unnaturally 

 and unfortunately separated and apart when they had a manifest and 

 obvious community of interest; and the object of that conference was 

 to ascertain the practical means by which the commercial and practical 

 intercourse of the two continents could be quickened and facilitated. 

 And where events move, statesmen, if they be not indifferent or be not 

 asleep, must think and act. 



For my own part I congratulate myself upon living in a time when 

 these things, always susceptible of intellectual demonstration, have begun 

 to be very widely and universally appreciated and when the statesmen 

 of the two American Continents have more and more come into candid, 

 trustful, mutual conference, comparing views as to the practical and 

 friendly way of helping one another and of setting forward every hand- 

 some enterprise on this side of the Atlantic. 



But these gentlemen have not conferred without realizing that back of 

 all the material community of interest of which I have spoken there Ues 

 and must he a community of political interest. I have been told a very 

 interesting fact — I hope it is true — that while this congress has been 

 discussing science it has been in spite of itself led into the feeling that 

 behind the science there was some inference mth regard to pohtics, and 

 that if the Americas were to be united in thought they must in some 

 degree sympathetically be united in action. But these statesmen who 

 have been conferring from month to month in Washington have come 

 to realize that back of the community of material interest there is a 

 community of pohtical interest. 



I hope I can make clear to you in what sense I use these words. I do 

 not mean a mere partnership in the things that are expedient. I mean 

 what I was trying to indicate a few moments ago, that you can not 

 separate poHtics from these things, that you can not have real intercourse 



