Flag of the West

"This is the day of America. Fate itself wished to make a symbol of it, even in the calendar."

So said Luis Munoz Marin, Puerto Rico's most extraordinary politician, in his Fourth of July speech in San Juan. Of all the great mass of oratory on the Fourth--the sincere, the deeply-felt, the mechanical--his was perhaps the most imaginative. For Munoz Marin, around again after his illness (TIME, March 31), did not merely spout the old phrases or wave the old words. He appealed for a united celebration of all the independence days of the Western Hemisphere (Cuba's May 20, Argentina's May 25, Venezuela's July 5, Mexico's Sept. 16) on the Fourth of July--which is "symbolic of the liberty of nations, the liberty of the world, which is greater than nations, and of man, also greater than nations. . . ."

For that great day Munoz Marin proposed a united flag of democracy:

"I see now the symbols of that flag of the American Hemisphere as if it were materially before my eyes: I see the lone star of the unified purpose of democracy, with the eagle of the North and the condor of the South--wings of democracy for its flight, claws for its defense--in the single light of that star portrayed in a white field of liberty and justice."

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