In May 1888 the Congress of the United States had passed an Act authorizing the President to invite the several Latin-American governments to a conference in Washington to consider measures for preserving the peace, the formation of a customs union, the establishment of better communication between ports, the adoption of a common silver coin, a uniform system of weights, measures, patent-rights, copyrights and trade-marks, the subject of sanitation of ships and quarantine, &c. All the governments except Santo Domingo accepted the invitation and this conference is commonly known as the first Pan-American Conference. It met on the 2nd of October 1889, was presided over by James G. Blaine, the American secretary of state, who had been instrumental in having the conference called, and continued its sessions until the 19th of April 1890. A majority of its members voted for compulsory arbitration, and recommendations were made relating to reciprocity treaties, customs regulations, port duties, the free navigation of American rivers, sanitary regulations, a monetary union, weights and measures, patents and trade-marks, an international American bank, an intercontinental railway, the extradition of criminals, and several other matters. Nothing came of its recommendations, however, except the establishment in Washington of an International Bureau of American Republics for the collection and publication of information relating to the commerce, products, laws and customs of the countries represented. At the suggestion of President McKinley the government of Mexico called the second Pan-American Conference to meet at the City of Mexico on the 22nd of October 1901. There was a full representation and the sessions were continued until the 31st of January 1902. The chief subject of discussion was arbitration, and after much wrangling between those who insisted upon compulsory arbitration and those opposed to it a majority of the delegations signed a project whereby their countries should become parties to the Hague conventions of 1899, which provide for voluntary arbitration. At the same time ten delegations signed a project for a treaty providing for compulsory arbitration. The conference also approved a project for a treaty whereby controversies arising from pecuniary claims of individuals of one country against the government of another should be submitted to the arbitration court established by the Hague convention. The conference ratified a resolution of the first conference recommending the construction of complementary lines of the proposed Pan-American railway.
At this conference, too, the International Bureau of American Republics was organized under a governing board of diplomatists with the secretary of state of the United States as chairman; it was directed to publish a monthly bulletin, and in several other respects was made a more important institution. Its governing board was directed to arrange for the third Pan-American Conference, and this body was in session at Rio de Janeiro from the 21st of July to the 26th of August 1906. Delegates attended from the United States, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, San Domingo, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Salvador and Uruguay; Haiti and Venezuela were not represented. The secretary of state of the United States, Elihu Root, though not a delegate, addressed the conference. The subjects considered were much the same as those at the two preceding conferences. With respect to arbitration this conference passed a resolution that the delegates from the American republics to the second conference at the Hague be instructed to endeavour to secure there “the celebration of a general arbitration convention so effective and definite that, meriting the approval of the civilized world, it shall be accepted and put in force by every nation.” With respect to copyrights, patents and trademarks this conference re-affirmed the conventions of the second conference, with some modifications; with respect to naturalization it recommended that whenever a native of one country who has been naturalized in another again takes up his residence in his native country without intending to return to his adopted country he should be considered as having reassumed his original citizenship; and with respect to the forcible collection of public debts to which the “Drago Doctrine”[1] is opposed, the conference recommended that “the Governments represented therein consider the point of inviting the Second Peace Conference at the Hague to consider the question of the compulsory collection of public debts, and, in general, means tending to diminish between nations conflicts having an exclusively pecuniary origin.” The fourth Conference met in Buenos Aires in July–August 1910, agreed to submit to arbitration such money claims as cannot be amicably settled by diplomacy, and renamed the Bureau the Bureau of Pan-American Union.[2]
The first Pan-American scientific congress met at Santiago, Chile, on the 25th of December 1908 for the consideration of distinctly American problems. It continued in session until the 5th of January 1909, and resolved that a second congress for the same purpose should meet at Washington in 1912.
See International American Conference, Reports and Recommendations (Washington, 1890), and especially the Historical Appendix.
PANATHENAEA, the oldest and most important of the
Athenian festivals. It was originally a religious celebration,
founded by Erechtheus (Erichthonius), in honour of Athena
Polias, the patron goddess of the city. It is said that when
Theseus united the whole land under one government he made
the festival of the city-goddess common to the entire country,
and changed the older name Athenaea to Panathenaea (Plutarch,
Theseus, 24). The union (Synoecism) itself was celebrated by
a distinct festival, called Synoecia or Synoecesia, which had no
connexion with the Panathenaea. In addition to the religious
rites there is said to have been a chariot race from the earliest
times, in which Erechtheus himself won the prize. Considerable
alterations were introduced into the proceedings by Peisistratus
(q.v.) and his sons. It is probable that the distinction of Greater
and Lesser Panathenaea dates from this period, the latter being
a shorter and simpler festival held every year. Every fourth
year the festival was celebrated with peculiar magnificence;
gymnastic sports were added to the horse races; and there
is little doubt that Peisistratus aimed at making the penteteric
Panathenaea the great Ionian festival in rivalry to the Dorian
Olympia. The penteteric festival was celebrated in the third
year of each Olympiad. The annual festival, probably held
on the 28th and 29th of Hecatombaeon (about the middle of
August), consisted solely of the sacrifices and rites proper to this
season in the cult of Athena. One of these rites originally
consisted in carrying a new peplus (the state robe of Athena)
through the streets to the Acropolis to clothe the ancient carved
image of the goddess, a ceremonial known in other cities and
represented by the writer of the Iliad (vi. 87) as being in use
at Troy; but it is probable that this rite was afterwards restricted
to the great penteteric festival. The peplus was a costly,
saffron-coloured garment, embroidered with scenes from the
battle between the gods and giants, in which Athena had taken
part. At least as early as the 3rd century B.C. the custom was
introduced of spreading the peplus like a sail on the mast of a
ship, which was rolled on a machine in procession. Even the
religious rites were celebrated with much greater splendour at
the Greater Panathenaea. The whole empire shared in the great
sacrifice; every colony and every subject state sent a deputation
and sacrificial animals. On the great day of the feast there
was a procession of the priests, the sacrificial assistants of every
kind, the representatives of every part of the empire with their
victims, of the cavalry, in short of the population of Attica and
- ↑ So named from a note (1902) directed by Dr Don Louis Maria Drago, the Argentine minister of foreign affairs, to the Argentine diplomatic representative at Washington at the time of the difficulties of Venezuela incident to the collection of debts owed to foreigners by that country.
- ↑ The Bureau is supported by contributions, varying in amount according to population, of the twenty-one American republics. Andrew Carnegie contributed $750,000 and the various republics $250,000 for the erection of a permanent home for the Bureau in Washington. The Bureau has a library of some 15,000 volumes, and publishes numerous handbooks, pamphlets and maps, in addition to its monthly Bulletins. Its executive head is a director, chosen by the Governing Board.
