AMERICA'S INTERNATIONAL IDEALS
VIII
In Washington is the marble palace of the Pan American Union. This building, without doubt the most beautiful in our capital city, is a significant symbol of the new internationalism as exemplified in the friendship and co-operation of the twenty-one American republics whose diplomatic representatives at Washington meet there every month rationally to discuss their common interests and common ideals. The Secretary of State of the United States is ex officio Chairman. The purpose of the conferences is to develop and conserve "peace, friendship, and commerce" among these, all the independent nations of the Western Hemisphere. Through these conferences the peoples represented are rapidly achieving a mutual understanding which they could have attained in no other way,—certainly not through mutual fear and suspicion and a diplomacy backed by competitive armaments. The activities of the Pan American Union are already so various and far-reaching that it would require an entire book to describe them. It points the only practicable way to permanent international peace: for, as its efficient Director General, John Barrett, lately remarked to me, "The greatest achievement of the Pan American Union is the gradual growth of understanding and friendship between the republics of the Western Hemisphere; and it is chiefly through such a friendship that we shall gain any genuine constructive co-operation and any permanent peace."
Only the evening before, Secretary of State Bryan had expressed the same thought to me in different language. "Not through mutual fear will peace come to the world," he said. "You remember the words of the angels' song,
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