The last topic of the agenda refers to the decision of the Governing Board of the Pan American Union taken on January 8, 1945 to abstain from calling a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the American republics as proposed by Argentina "to consider the existing situation between the Argentine republic and the other American nations." As this initiative involved questions necessitating joint personal consideration by the Foreign Ministers it was decided that the Argentine request could best be considered at this Conference as the final item on the agenda. Organization At the preparatory session of the Conference, the regulations drawn up by the Government of Mexico were approved with one modification. As originally drafted, the regulations proposed that Spanish should be the official language but that the delegates might speak in their own languages. On motion of the Delegation of Brazil this article was modified to provide that the official languages of the Conference should be Spanish, English, Portuguese, and French. Subsequently the Committee on Drafting and Coordination proposed, and the Conference approved, that the Final Act be signed only in Spanish and that the Pan American Union be entrusted with the translation of this document into the other languages. At the same session, the order of precedence of the delegations was determined by lot as is customary at the inter-American conferences, with the following result: Colombia, Cuba, Panama, United States, Uruguay, Guatemala, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, Nicaragua, Chile, Paraguay, Ecuador, Honduras, Peru, Costa Rica, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Bolivia, El Salvador. The Secretariat for the Conference was appointed by the Mexican Government. The Honorable Manuel Tello, Under Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, was Secretary General, and Mr. Rafael de la Colina, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary attached to the Mexican Embassy at Washington, was Assistant Secretary General. Under their able direction an extremely capable Secretariat was organized which made a very valuable contribution to the success of the Conference. Following the practice of other inter-American conferences, the Chairman of the Mexican Delegation, His Excellency Ezequiel Padilla, Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, was elected permanent President of the Conference. Under the regulations, the chairmen of the other delegations were vice presidents. Six committees were designated on which each delegation was entitled to be represented by one or more of its members. These committees were: Complementary Measures To Intensify Cooperation in the War Effort. World Organization. Inter-American System. Postwar Economic and Social Problems. Economic Problems of the War and Transition Period. In addition, there was a Committee on Initiatives, composed of the chairmen of delegations and presided over by the President of the Conference. Plenary Sessions On the afternoon of February 21, the inaugural plenary session of the Conference was held in the Chamber of Deputies Building. General Manuel Avila Camacho, President of Mexico, delivered the address of welcome, and in response, the Honorable Caracciolo Parra Pérez, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Venezuela, gave an address on behalf of all of the delegates. President Avila Camacho, after emphasizing the important role that international conferences have played in the development of the inter-American system, declared in part in defining the problems before the Conference: "War and peace are the principal themes of your Assembly. No more important subject has been offered to society since the most primitive peoples began to acquire a sense of responsibility for their conduct. War with its cruelties and its fears, its slaughter, its calamities and its ruin; peace, with its factories and its schools and with its open furrows "We have spoken with insistence on winning the peace. But to win the peace we want, it is imperative first to win the war: not to win it for the benefit of this or that individual, or so that a limited and regional interest may profit, or merely for the triumph over the forces of our enemy; but also for the moral triumph of the victors over themselves so that victory, when it is attained, may be a total victory of humanity. "Such a victory, truly human, will provide an opportunity for inaugurating an era of effective harmony on earth.' In addition to the inaugural session, six other plenary sessions were held at which formal approval was given to the conclusions reached in the committee and where addresses were made by Their Excellencies Jacobo Varela, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Uruguay; Gustavo Cuervo Rubio, Minister of State of Cuba; Camilo Ponce Enríquez, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador; Manuel C. Gallagher, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Peru; Pedro Calmon, President of the Brazilian Academy of Letters; Julián R. Cáceres, Ambassador of Honduras to the United States; Pedro Leão Velloso, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Brazil; Guillermo del Pedregal, Dean of the Faculty of Economy and Commerce of the University of Chile; Gustavo Chacón, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bolivia; Guillermo Toriello, Ambassador of Guatemala to Mexico; Gérard Lescot, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of Haiti; Joaquín Balaguer, Minister of the Dominican Republic to Colombia; Mariano Argüello Vargas, Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Nicaragua; Minerva Bernardino, President of the Inter-American Commission of Women, Dominican Republic; Eduardo Chibás, Senator of Cuba; and Joaquín Fernández Fernández, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Chile. At the meeting on February 22 the President of the Conference, Lic. Ezequiel Padilla, delivered a brilliant address. He said in part: "What does America expect of this Conference? The first thing it expects is practical resolutions, resolutions that relieve the misery, the helplessness of a great section of our masses, that satisfy the desire for permanent security and for a peace based on justice for all our peoples. If we emerge from this Assembly more united than ever, it must be because we know how to ennoble the solidarity of war confirmed by our devotion to liberty and the firm resolve of our peoples, and convert it into a solidarity of peace; a solidarity that considers the poverty of the people, its social instability, its malnutrition, its unemployment, wherever they occur in the Americas— whether in the far reaches of the Amazon or in the mines of Bolivia, in the plantations of Honduras or in the llanos of Venezuela-as inequities staining not only the life of the countries affected but the dignity of the whole of America "These objectives can only be reached by uniting the energies, the resources and the confidence of the whole of America "The wealth and the beauty of America are due to the material and spiritual variety which makes of it a sparkling mosaic. The United States and Latin America are the creative equation of the greatness of America. Each of these portions has its contribution to make. "If democracy is not an imposture, it must offer assurance of work, fair salaries, decent homes for the people; it must build schools, hospitals, gardens, but above all, and this is what characterizes democracy, it must guarantee economic security, not founded on dictatorship or slavery but based on real liberty, abundance, fair distribution, social justice, and liberty-authentic liberty. This is the battle that we have to fight in America Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., addressed the same session. He gave an extensive report on the conference at Yalta and spoke of the policies of the United States Government concerning inter-American questions in the transition and postwar periods. The following extracts are taken from this address of the Secretary of State: "I wish to reaffirm to the representatives of all the Governments assembled here that the United States Government regards the goodneighbor policy and the further development of inter-American co operation as indispensable to the building, after victory, of a peaceful and democratic world order. I wish also to reaffirm the belief of the United States that this democratic order must be built by all nations, large and small, acting together as sovereign equals "The United States intends to propose and support measures for closer cooperation among us in public health, nutrition and food supply, labor, education, science, freedom of information, transportation, and in economic development, including industrialization and the modernization of agriculture." Work of the Conference One hundred and fifty-five draft proposals were introduced by the various delegations. These were referred to the five committees which in turn prepared the conclusions for approval and adoption by the Conference. Sixty-one such instruments were adopted and are contained in the Final Act (appendix I). The detailed work of the Conference can best be described by the record of the activities of those several committees. COMMITTEE ON INITIATIVES The Committee on Initiatives was composed of the chairmen of the delegations and presided over by the President of the Conference. As has been customary at previous meetings of representatives of American republics, this Committee actually served as the executive and steering body of the Conference. It received and passed on all draft resolutions in a preliminary way to determine whether they were appropriate for consideration by the Conference and assigned them to the respective committees. It also approved outright five resolutions including the one with respect to the last topic of the agenda concerning Argentina, discussed in a subsequent section of this report. Of the other four resolutions, one (I, app. I) provided for a public ceremony to be held, in tribute to the people and Government of Mexico, with the laying of a floral offering and an address by a delegate designated by the President of the Conference before the statue of Benito Juárez. Another resolution (II, app. I) adopted extended an invitation to the deputies and senators of the Mexican Congress to attend the plenary sessions of the Conference. A similar resolution (III, app. I) invited the press of Mexico and other countries of the world to attend its sessions. These three resolutions were originally introduced by the Delegation of Cuba. At the final plenary session, there was also adopted a resolution (LXI, app. I) expressing gratitude to the Republic of Mexico for its warm and generous hospitality and congratulations to General Manuel Avila Camacho, President of Mexico, and Dr. Ezequiel Padilla, Min ister of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, for their outstanding statesmanship. It also thanked Mr. Manuel Tello, Secretary General of the Conference, and the officials, advisers, and associates for their effective contribution to the success of the Conference. COMMITTEE I Complementary Measures To Intensify the Cooperation in the War Effort In the original agenda this topic was "Further Cooperative Measures for the Prosecution of the War to Complete Victory" but on the recommendation of the Chilean and Mexican Delegations and with the unanimous approval of the other delegations, it was changed to "Complementary Measures To Intensify the Cooperation in the War Effort." Mr. Pedro Leão Velloso, Minister of Foreign Relations of Brazil, was elected Chairman of this Committee and Lic. Miguel J. Moreno, Jr., Second Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Panama, was elected Vice Chairman. Mr. Adolf A. Berle, Jr., Ambassador of the United States to Brazil, was chosen as Reporter of the Committee, Lic. Augusto Moheno, Official of the Department of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, Secretary, and Mr. Alberto Guido, Jr., of the Department of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, Assistant Secretary. Two subcommittees were appointed, one to deal with proposals of a military and the other with proposals of a political character. The former was composed of representatives of Chile (Sr. Humberto Alvarez Suárez, the Chairman), Mexico (Dr. Francisco Castillo Nájera, the Reporter), and Colombia (Sr. Alberto González Fernández). The political subcommittee was composed of representatives of Cuba (Dr. Eduardo R. Chibás, the Chairman), Uruguay (Dr. Cyro Giambruno, the Reporter), and Peru (Dr. Andrés F. Dasso). This Committee was charged with study and recommendation of proposals of both a military and political nature concerning further measures of cooperation and solidarity among the American republics for the continued successful prosecution of the war. The Committee's attention was mainly engaged with the continuation and amplification of the agreements with respect to the waging of the war that were reached by the Third Meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the American Republics held at Rio de Janeiro, January 1942. Eleven proposals were referred to the Committee. Three of these were subsequently withdrawn by the proposing delegations, viz: a resolution proposed by the Mexican Delegation relating to the manufacture of war materials (71, app. II); a resolution proposed by the Cuban Delegation calling for a declaration of war by all of the American republics against Germany and Japan (88, app. II); and a reso |