Pan-America

"Since Liberty was won the most transcendental act in the internal life of America will probably be the holding at Havana of the Sixth Pan-American Conference."

Sounding off with this truly transcendental overstatement, President Gerardo Machado of Cuba strove, last week, with titanic hospitality to welcome the delegates of 21 American nations who were in process of convening at his Capital.

Just 102 years ago the first truly Pan-American conference was assembled at Panama City by the great Simon Bolivar, "The Liberator," whose feat in kindling South America to shake off her bondage to Europe stands indirectly alluded to by President Machado. Unfortunately the Conference of 102 years ago accomplished absolutely nothing. What will be accomplished by the Pan-American Conference of 1928?

There are two schools of thought and proposed action. One, headed by the U. S., seeks to exclude major political issues, tries to keep the Conference and its permanent agency* in a rut of cumulative, bureaucratic progress: pamphlets . . . scholarships . . lectures infinitudes of supplemental Pan-American societies . . . emotion . . . soft soap. . . .

Spokesman for this First School is Dr. Leo Stanton Rowe, Director-General of The Pan-American Union at Washington and a U. S. delegate to the Conference (See THE PRESIDENCY). He recently said: "The Sixth Pan-American Congress is not intended to accomplish results of a spectacular nature. . . .

"Broadly speaking, the topics included in the agenda of the Conference may be divided into six groups: First, the organization problems of the Pan-American Union; second, questions of an inter-American judicial nature; third, problems of communication; fourth, intellectual cooperation; fifth, economic problems, and sixth, social problems."

The Second School represented at the Conference desires to burst through the bureaucratic, stereotyped agenda. An ardent "Second Schooler'' is President Isidore Ayora of Ecuador. His words: "It is necessary to step from verbal and declamatory Pan-Americanism to ... . concrete Pan-Americanism ... to the effective and total recognition of identical rights for all American states . . . repelling the possibility that there may exist or could exist, governments or peoples that domineer. ..."

This, the Second School wants to force the U. S. to cease to "domineer"--in Nicaragua, for instance (See NICARAGUA). Another prominent Second Schooler is black President Louis Borno of Haiti who demands "mutual Pan-American respect of liberty, independence and territorial integrity." Another is President Augusto B. Leguia of Peru: "The two Americas, different in origin, will (must) be equal in their final destiny."

The Second School will be handicapped at the Conference by the fact that none of its representatives will have the rank of a Chief Executive, whereas the First School will be strengthened by the prestige of President Calvin Coolidge and by the primeval emotion which Colonel Charles Augustus Lindbergh is expected to produce by landing at Havana while the Conference is assembling.

For 102 years no Pan-American pow-wow has taken an effective step toward solving the great political problem which also confronts The League of Nations, namely how to protect the little frogs in the world puddle from the big. Presumably the Sixth Pan-American Conference will not solve the Great Enigma. Rather it will draw into a trifle closer understanding of one another 21 nations whose political problems are. after all, dwarfed by the vital need of keeping in motion the vast interchange of their mutual trade.

* The Pan-American Union, located in the $1,000,000 Pan-American Building at Washington.