Through a magnificent destiny, which you are loftily fulfilling, you proclaim yourselves the champions of a democracy whose models will be, on the American continent, amid glory common to us all, Washington and Bolívar; the one representing the equanimity of the great Saxon race, and the other embodying the dreams of progress, at times impatient, but always magnanimous, of that Latin soul which vibrates in our veins and inspires our conduct.
These two souls come into symbolical contact to-day,—and God grant that it be forever so!—in this intellectual communion of youthful students at the foot of our Ávila, students who may one day be the citizens of that future country announced by Rodó, which may then call itself by a single, glorious name—simply and grandly,—America, a country created not through political combinations or sordid calculations, nor through imperialistic and warlike expansions, but through community of interests and community of ideas; a country created through confraternity, supported by justice, and made everlasting through right.
Gentlemen:
The noblest edifice that has reared its ideal shield over the world is Law.
No institution created by mortal beings (by its grandeur, law has been thought divine, and indeed, jus and fas were identical in their origin) answers more fully the higher aspirations of the human soul.
Man, who has lived in a hole in a rock, or on his native plains, under the roof of heaven, can build for his residence dwellings more or less sumptuous; for him a ray of a torrid sun is an abundance; when he loves or dreams he is satisfied with a moonbeam and is able to boast that he has destroyed darkness; man, who carries within himself the essential substance of all beings, the substance which, by its manifestations, is the synthesis of the world, and through which great silent men can live happily by themselves, may traverse distances with the wings of the condor and, at will, join his fellow-beings for pleasure or for labor; he inhabits palaces with Agrippa, partakes of banquets with Lucullus, and is carried with Cleopatra, in the bark of pleasure, the nuptial, dream-hued ship. * * * But is that all, the final purpose of his destiny? Is such perchance, the essential? Does that answer the cravings of his own soul and the conscience of humanity?
No; that is not the test of value, not even of progress. For in the face of such philosophy a thousand queries will ever rise to his lips. Is he free or not? Does he enjoy equality and, on his part, does he not tyrannize? Does he hold among his fellow-beings a place, great or humble, but a place, none the less, from which he can work out his own destiny and that of a group such as his family, his city, or his country? May he think, live, produce, build up a fortune and a home for himself, thus ennobling with a serene dignity his existence and finally perpetuating himself, through his ideas, his children, and his achievements? In order that we may always freely answer "yes," man has forged Law. And I repeat it, he has truly forged law because that process, though begun with man himself and continuing through all the ages to be his glory in history and for eternity, this science which he has produced is like those lofty structures which have exhausted the effort of one generation after another, their formidable architecture forever providing unfinished work for generations to come.
In that great total, one of the most modern and perhaps one of the noblest parts is International Law, whose subjects are not merely individuals, but the groups we call states.
When, in the midst of the dismay produced in our souls by the European war, I began, in 1917, my lectures on the History of International Law, I made an optimistic profession of faith, a profession of absolute faith in the efficacy of those principles of justice which must regulate the relations of peoples.