IN Statement Upon Arrival in New York, January 13, 1937 IN THE judgment of the press and of statesmen throughout the twenty-one American republics, the Buenos Aires Conference already ranks with the most important of American accords. I think its real significance will bulk even larger as events progress. Its first and greatest achievement was the unanimous agreement to create a peace system taking in every republic of the American continent. It set up a machinery for making that organization effective, in the form of an arrangement for mutual consultation. We have served notice that we will work out means of acting together to prevent war from endangering the peace of our own continent. Primarily, the object of this understanding is to prevent war from arising between nations of this hemisphere. All the American governments also agreed that the same machinery should be used in the event of a war abroad which might endanger the maintenance of peace in the western world. While the Conference met at Buenos Aires each and every delegation was conscious of the anxious difficulties faced by Europe. We return hopeful that the effort we have made will strengthen the hands of those who are struggling to preserve peace there and elsewhere. After the Conference of Montevideo in 1933 I was heartened by the knowledge that the old log-jam of latent hostility between the United States and some of our southern neighbors had finally broken. This new spirit, born at Montevideo three years ago, culminated in the notable achievements of Buenos Aires. This welding of inter-American friendship has now become a powerful, positive force for peace throughout the world. I Address on the Results and Significance of the T IS with unusual satisfaction that I avail myself of this opportunity to review briefly the results and the significance of the Buenos Aires meeting. I welcome the opportunity especially because to those who, like myself, were privileged to take an active part in the work of the Conference, the experience remains a vivid and inspiring memory. The work of the Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace touched the very heart of the tangled complex of problems which today plague the responsible statesmen of the world and upon the solution of which depends so greatly the future welfare of the nations. The twenty-one American republics have forged among themselves new ties of friendship and peace. More than that, they have, in my opinion, made a genuine contribution not only to the safeguarding of peace but to the strengthening of democracy and of international order as well. While dealing with regional problems, the Conference pointed straight at the frightful deterioration of many essential international relationships everywhere and vigorously proclaimed a basic program for their restoration. *Delivered before the Council on Foreign Relations, at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, New York City, February 25, 1937. I The Buenos Aires meeting was one of a succession of inter-American conferences which have been, for nearly fifty years, a factor of ever-growing importance in the international life of the Western Hemisphere. There were, however, two features of outstanding importance which distinguished it from its predecessors and invested it with the character of a truly extraordinary occasion. The first of these was the subject-matter of the Conference itself-its all-embracing concentration upon the problem of safeguarding the maintenance of peace. The second was the dismal world setting, in which the representatives of the American republics assembled for their arduous and momentous labors. The problem of peace was never absent from the thoughts of those statesmen who had in the past gathered together in major inter-American conferences. Step by step foundations were laid for the organization of pacific relations. A feeling of mutual trust, an attitude of the "good neighbor", for some years have been steadily growing among the American republics. I well recall how completely and how gratifyingly that accumulated feeling permeated the atmosphere of the Seventh International Conference of American States, held at Montevideo in 1933. More than any other factor it was responsible for the constructive achievements which made that meeting a memorable occasion in the annals of American history. But even there opportunity was still lacking for a comprehensive effort to build a complete structure of enduring peace in the Western Hemisphere. It was primarily to launch this vast undertaking that the convocation of the Buenos Aires Conference was proposed by President Roosevelt in his letter, addressed on January 30, 1936, to the chiefs of state of the other twenty American republics. President Roosevelt's proposal met with prompt, unanimous, and enthusiastic response. The character of the response and the readiness and vigor with which the American republics engaged in the preparation of the proposed conference made it abundantly clear that the time was ripe for the effort which was in contemplation. All of us had watched with increasing apprehension the swelling of the angry stream of recent events in world affairs. The tendency almost everywhere was steadily in the direction of international anarchy. Religion and morals, constituting the entire foundation of normal and worth-while international relations and of civilized intercourse itself, were breached, and often flouted, with impunity. International or domestic strife was in progress in some parts of the world and in undisguised preparation in others. The construction of armaments was proceeding on a scale unparalleled in history, and more and more nations were being drawn into the suicidal race, notwithstanding that the late World War and the recent world panic had not been liquidated. The regime of international law was honored more in the breach than in the observance. Unilateral departure |