Venezuela, an economic report / Presented by students of the School of Foreign Service, as an aid to the foreign trade of the United States

by Georgetown University. School of Foreign Service

Permit me to repeat what I said on that occasion:

International Law is truly a triumph of reason. Applying to this subject a well-known saying spoken, however, with reference to broader fields, it is "human reason itself in so far as applied to the government of nations." For although some of its rules are obeyed crudely and instinctively as manifestations of social requirements in primitive groups, force, which is the negation of Right, has prevailed over those rules to such an extent that only through the supreme influence of religious ideas, which are all powerful in the infancy of social organizations, have they been applied to some extent in safeguarding rights such as the respect due to ambassadors, the inviolability of sacred truces and the burial of soldiers fallen on battlefields.

It was through an effort of reason, ever progressing and steadily receiving more enlightenment, that, with the passing of centuries, those standards which now impose unavoidable obligations on modern states have been established. The evolution has been harmonious in its changes, and reflects the different stages of civilization through which mankind has advanced.

Reason has striven to replace the reign of violence, the negation of thought, by effecting the progressive development of human society through the force of justice; and, hence it is that every day more perfect relations have been established among civilized countries through respect for the equality of all and through the acknowledgment of mutual individuality, which is in effect a consequence of the respect we demand for ourselves. In short, this advance rests on the realization of the dignity of man, a realization which, in this case, leads men logically to admit the sovereignty of the people and the sovereign independence of the state, which implies that each is free to organize as it seems fit in order to fulfil its destiny without foreign interference.

It is only too true that the present catastrophe which shook the world has given rise to the thought, the sad thought, that the work of centuries has failed; and truly the spectacle appals us with its magnitude. The leaders of humankind, who led the forward movement towards spiritual freedom, who had fostered congresses and conferences designed to draw men closer to one another and thus to settle their differences, who had established at The Hague a supreme Tribunal of Nations, have seen themselves compelled to adopt the very expedient which seemed forever repudiated because of universal condemnation.

England, prudent England, the model on which all free nations chose to shape their institutions and their lives; vigorous Germany, as learned as she is strong, whose power is established through the maintenance of that discipline and virile rule of life admired by Tacitus who proposed it to the decadent Romans as reproach since it could not serve as a model; Italy, our teacher in arts as well as in the science we profess, favored as she was with the subtle, deep and harmonious genius which made forever famous the schools of Proculus and Sabinus; France, admired and admirable France, alma mater of so many happy innovations and of so many generations of high thinkers, especially of that generation of a century ago, deemed heroic as Carlyle understood heroism, and which aroused by Bolívar translated idealism into action and immortalized the most transcendental moment in the history of these Americas;—Russia,—I shall refrain from mentioning Russia because a dark cloud has obscured for the great majority the spiritual strength of that people, weighed down with future problems but permeated with a sentimental and deep mysticism which some discovered when they grew to admire Tolstoy and Dostoievsky whom Enrico Ferri has compared to Dante,—all these nations and those they strongly influence, all these peoples who occupy so prominent a place in history, we see fanaticized by the fire of war, sowing death mercilessly, spreading ruin from one hemisphere to another and planting pessimism, if not despair, in one conscience after another. This, too, just when it seemed impossible that any of them, at the present stage of development, should need to engage in contest other than those through which life could be more secure and comfortable, physical welfare greater, and nations brought nearer the tranquil reign of the spirit.

But we must never lose sight of the fact that all this is but a crisis, one of those great convulsive crises of the moral organism, from which the concept of right and the necessity of employing the only formulas truly protective of equity and justice shall emerge more vigorous than ever.

After this great war, the desire for a lasting peace will be more intense, and the means to make that peace certain will be applied with greater energy.

These hopes, cherished by many of us during the struggle, we have seen synthesized in the Wilsonian concept and incorporated with the precision of a code in the Covenant of the League of Nations. Since the appearance of Christianity, only the Thirty-Years war terminating in its Congress of Westphalia, and the French Revolution, with its declaration of the rights of man (which Grégoire intended to supplement with a declaration of the rights of states), will leave on international law as deep a mark as the World War with its Covenant of the League of Nations.

A flight of eagles, but happily not of imperial eagles, crosses all borders; a magnanimous feeling of solidarity struggles to conquer sterile distrust, and the members of the human family begin to recognize each other. It seems as if we were approaching the realization of the generous idea of Cicero and Seneca; man is nowhere a foreigner; his true country is the universe. The dream of a Magna Civitas, the ideal city of humankind, is taking shape.