AMERICAN ACHIEVEMENTS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 15 April 1939, Page 7

AMERICAN ACHIEVEMENTS

President Roosevelt opened his remarks with a review of American

achievements. “The American family Ol nations pay honour to-day to the eldest and most successful association of sovereign governments in the whole world. Few of us realise that the PanAmerican jrganisation has at present attained a longer history and a greater catalogue of achievements than any similar group known to modern history. Justly we can be proud of it, and even more rightly can look to it as a symbol of great hope at a time when much of the world finds hope dim and difficult Never was it more fitting to srlute the Pan-American Dnv than in the stormy prr'ent. A COMMON CIVILIK \TION “For upward, of half a century the republics in the western world have been working together, promoting a common civilisation under a System of peace. That venture launched so hopefully fifty years ago has succeeded. Tht American family is to-day a great co-operative group facing a troubled world in serenity and calm. This success is sometimes attributed to good! fortune. I do not share that view. I There are not wanting here all the usual | rivalries, all the normal human de-1 sires for power and expansion, and all! f h e commercial problems. The Americas are sufficiently rich to be the object of desire on the part of overseas Governments. Our traditions and history are as deeply rooted in the old world as Europe’s. It was not accident that prevented South America and our own wes f from sharing the fate of other great areas of the world in the nine- j ttenth century We have here diversities of race, language, customs, natural tesources. and intellectual forces at least as great as those that prevailed in Europe. What has protected us from the tragic involvements which at pre sent are making the old world a nev cockpit of old struggles? The answe is easily found. A new powerful idea —that of a community of nationssprang up and at the same time thi Americans became free and indepen dent. WILL TO PEACE “We hold conferences not as a resul of war but as a result of the will t< peace. Elsewhere in the world to hole conferences similar to ours it is necessary to fight a major war until exhaustion or defeat at lengths brings th« Governments together to reconstruct the shattered fabrics. “Greeting the conference in I>uenos Aires in 1936. I said: The madness of a great war in another part of the worlc would affect us and threaten our gooc ir a hundred ways. The economic collapse of any nation or nations must necessarily harm our prosperity. I am confident that we can help the old world avert the catastrophe which impends.’ 1 still have that confidence. There is no fate which forces Europe towards a new catastrophe. Men are not prisoners of fate, but prisoners of their own minds. They have v/ithin themselves the power to become free at any moment. PLEDGE OF ECONOMIC FORCE As an instance last summer J stated that the United States would join in defending Canada if she was attacked from overseas. At Buenos Aires in 1936 all of us agreed that in the event of a war threat or war on the Continent we would consult to remove that threat. Yet no American nation reeaided these understandings as threats. "The American peace has no quality or weakness. We are prepared to maintain and efend It to the fullest extent of our strength, matching force to fo-ce if an attempt is made to subvert our institutions, and impair the independence of any of our group. Should the method of attack be economic pressure I pledge the United States also to give economic support, so no t meri-

can nation nede surrender any fraction of its sovereignty freedom. America may j rightfully claim now to speak to the rest of the world. We have an interest wider than the mere defence of our «ra-ringed continent, and know now that development in the next generation will so narrow oceans that our customs and actions are necessarily involved with Europe’s. "The economic functioning of the world becomes increasingly a unit, and no interruption anywhere can fail in the future to disrupt economic life everywhere. The trust defence of peace in our hemisphere must always

li'i in the hope that our sister nations beyond the seas will break the bonds of ideas which constrain them toward perpetual warfare.”