Pan-A mericana

Pan-American

The Sixth Pan-American Conference (TIME, Jan. 6 et seq.) functioned only in committees, last week, and with a lofty detachment from practical realities suggestive of Olympic Games.

Adopted unanimously in committee were a Mexican proposal and a Peruvian amendment which bade fair to alter slightly the makeup of the Governing Board of the permanent Pan-American Union at Washington, a bureau which functions between Pan-American Conferences.

"We desire to disdiplomatize the Governing Board," said Mexican Delegate and Supreme Court Justice Urbina, urging that the Board should be made up of special representatives of each nation, and not, as at present, of the diplomatic representatives of Latin American states at Washington, sitting under the chairmanship of the U. S. Secretary of State.

Soon the thesis that it might be well to "disdiplomatize" the Board was gently chided by Chief U. S. Delegate Charles Evans Hughes. Olympianed he:

"I have never been accused of being a diplomat or a politician, and, while I have had the honor of holding the office of Secretary of State of the United States, it is well known that it is not necessary that he should be a diplomat, and when I was in that office I think there were no politicians in the department, least of all myself.

"Now, of course, the Latin-American republics should have entire freedom in the selection of their representatives on the board of the Pan-American Union.

". . . . [However] I have observed with great satisfaction the distinguished character and ability of the representatives of the Latin-American republics who have been accredited to the government at Washington."

The Mexican scheme then passed unanimously, but Delegate Hughes imme- diately secured unanimous passage for a Peruvian amendment stating that "at the option of each State" its representative on the Board could continue to be identical with its diplomatic plenipotentiary in Washington. Thus all was virtually as before.

Chief Argentine Delegate Dr. Honorio Pueyrredon, Argentine Ambassador to the U. S. created a mild stir by proposing a Pan-American treaty of commerce leveling tariff barriers between the signatory states. Naturally this idea went glimmering when Mr. Hughes intimated firmly that no such proposal had, to his knowledge, a place in the set Conference agenda (TIME, Jan. 23).

A further pious interjection was made by Chief Bolivian Delegate Jose Antezana who plaintively remarked that his country has no outlet to the sea, but did not quite dare to propose that she be given one through Tacna-Arica, that notorious region so immemorially in dispute between Chile and Peru (TIME, Nov. 26, 1923 et seq.).

When the Committee on Public International Law ventured to discuss a resolution which would have countenanced intervention from without to maintain the government of a state against internal revolution, the proceedings were abruptly halted by a passionate defense of the "right of revolution" delivered by Cuban Delegate and Ambassador to the U. S. Senor Don Orestes Ferrara. Cried he in fervent, vibrant tones: "Never would Cuba have won independence if a provision like this had been in effect! ... A Pan-American Conference has not the right to seek to make impossible the very thing that gave all Americans their independence. . . ." Tut-tutted Argentine Delegate Pueyrre don, suavely, "To be sure a little some thing should be left for the revolutionary. ... As Dr. Ferrara has said, revolution is many times the salvation of a people."