the Guayanas to the Plata opened a trail through the forests toward the heart of the continent, desired to reach the fantastic lakes with islands of marble and porphyry, with sands of gold and pebbles of diamond.

The liberators displayed the most heroic prowess and achieved the most noble deeds in their search not in their own behalf, but in behalf of their descendants for a Dorado greater than the Dorado of

the legends: the Dorado of liberty.

Thus, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, America assumed a personality in the concert of the world, because she fused all her peoples in the same aspiration and the same sacrifice. Two characteristics synthesized the spirit of the American revolution: heroic enthusiasm and a sentiment of unity.

A hundred years passed. The onward march of humanity created new ideals, and, by a sublime law of history, the approximation of each new ideal must involve a heartrending tragedy. The principle of nationality, initiated in the American revolution, and consummated in the French revolution, was smothered by the political equilibrium or the rivalries of hegemony. From the great revolutionary commotion and from the Napoleonic epopee issued civil equality and political liberty in definitive form, and the sentiment of great nationalities was revived. However, neither the equilibrium nor the hegemony were extinguished, nor were the liberty of weak peoples and international justice established. Successive efforts have changed the old monarchical states into just and humane democracies; but they have not succeeded in making juridical principles the basis of the life of humanity. The European conflict presents to our eyes a sanguinary crisis, big with the mystery of future solutions. The major problem that the military imperialism of Rome did not resolve with its elements of force in the still virgin land; which the papacy could not decide in the middle ages with the incomparable energy of the religious sentiments; whose profound human significance could not be penetrated by Carlos V, Louis XIV and Napoleon, presents itself in the midst of the desperate strife of races and empires, not in order to find a solution in the unity of force or in the unity of authority, now impossible, but of harmony in the equality of all the nations and of justice for all men.

The war is therefore the greatest event of history since the advent of Christianity; greater than the Renaissance, which returned to us a

sense of nature and life; greater than the religious reformation, which bestowed upon us spiritual liberty; and greater than the revolution, which brought us political liberty.

Well then, what does our America feel in the presence of that ideal upon its sad march? Where is her heroic enthusiasm? Where is her sentiment of unity? Why does there not spread from México to the Plata the same intoxication that our fathers felt? Why do our hearts not unite and our arms reach out with longing? Is it possible that the ideal of justice and fraternity is not our ideal, that it is not blood of our blood and soul of our soul?

In the face of the tragic sublimity of this hour, irreconcilable interests, distrust and suspicion, incoherence and isolated attitudes, seem a profanation. We saw with pain that the epic courage of those moments did not unite our thought or our action: frontiers seemed still higher; souls further apart. Let us, however, open our hearts to hope. A strong, friendly voice comes to break the silence of this indifference, the chill of this incomprehension. It is a voice that springs from history; in it vibrate the dreams of Bolívar, the longings of San Martín and the faith of Artigas; it speaks to us of fraternity and union, of an ideal and of effort. It is Uruguay that tells us through your lips, friend Brum, that for America the moment for joint action has arrived, and that, by taking advantage of her material and moral forces, she will win the influence to which she has a right in the destinies of the world. The consciousness of the duty and mission of Spanish America is illuminated in the Uruguayan soul and expressed by the words of a man come forth from our ranks, nourished by the same ideals, the pride of our generation. The dream of the philosophers and the ideal of the apostles has found the practical formula of the jurisconsults and the active expression of the politicians. The solidarity of America in the face of the war and of the principles she upholds must be a reality. Hail Uruguayan nation! Sublime predestination hovers over thy soul. Providence saw fit to endow thee with all the gifts of nature and all the energies of the spirit. Thou representest in the new continent what Switzerland has been for aged Europe. As in Helvetia, thy bucolic moors render life sweet and awaken the love of liberty. Like her, thou wast indomitable and fierce in the defense of thy autonomy. Situated between rival powers, thou wast the refuge of persecuted thought and proscribed heroism. Like the model confederation, thou

dost incarnate neutrality and international justice. Thy towns, like the traditional cantons, possess the instinct of democracy and the fecund disquietude of the most advanced political reforms. If Switzerland is the grain of anise-seed that has perfumed Europe, Uruguay is the spiritual garden that has regaled wondering America with the aroma of the most genuine poesy of the soil in the verses of Tabare,1 and the seasoned fruitage of the most noble of ideals: those of Ariel.2 Blessed land that didst produce the seer-like heroism of Artigas, the rhythms of Zorrilla and the words of Rodó. Stand, youth, now that I have pronounced the name of the master! Death has haloed him with glory. None felt the greatness of America as he felt it; none formulated with more eloquence her future destiny. His marvelous pen awakened in us the worship of heroes and of the great; in his immortal sketches will live the genius of Bolívar, the eloquence of Montalvo, the music of Darío. In consonance with his style, formed of the power contained in it and of the enchantment that dominates it, he caused to flutter over the exuberance of the virgin land and the fieriness of our young blood his ideal of grace, comprehension and harmony. I feel that your applauses are changed to-night into a mysterious emanation which rises above the cordilleras, crosses the infinite forests, traverses the immense sea and reaches the eternal city, the depository of the Latin soul, which was his soul, in order to impart a warm breath of life to the tomb wherein reposes his wise man's brow and his artist's heart amid Hellenic accents and under the Christian cross, a symbol of his work formed from the Greek worship of the beautiful and the spirit of evangelical love.

Let us render now to the dead and to the illustrious ancestors the only homage worthy of them: an action and an effort to realize the ideal that informed their spirit and for which they immolated their lives. Let us sum up in a major work the sacred voice of the founders, the serene activity of the statesman and youth's spirit of hope.

Finally, let us establish fraternity and let us not forget that the only way that leads to it is justice. Let us say, very loud and with the frankness imposed by the solemnity of these moments, that peace and har

1 An epic poem by Juan Zorrilla de San Martín: see Inter-America for February, 1918, page 130, biographical data.

2 By José Enrique Rodó: see Inter-America for October, 1917, page 23 and page 64, biographical data.

mony in America, as in Europe, will become a fact only by means of a reparation for violence committed and a restitution for outraged right. Let us prepare for the advent of the amphictyonic American. As the Hellenic peoples placed above their political interests and their military rivalries the interests of the race, the worship of their heroes, the love of their language and their conception of life; so the American peoples, who have only one soul, in which are fused the legends collected by Garcilaso, the traditions that immortalized Palma, the visions of the greatness and the prophetic lamentations of the Liberator, Alberdi's intuitions of genius and the sublime realism of Sarmiento, ought to establish the supreme institution which, while representing the physiognomy of each people and its peculiar mission, shall stimulate spiritual values, attend to the common needs and impose the reign of law.

To-morrow, when redeemed humanity shall find in the new continent its true patria; when the treasures snatched from interminable cordilleras shall stir only to peaceful activity; when the rivers shall be united, from the Orinoco to the Plata, by the mysterious communication discovered by Humboldt; when the secular forests fall beneath the blows of fruitfully demolishing axes; and when upon the infinite pampas and the smiling valleys shall arise populous cities, then, from the lands of Anáhuac, from the plains of Cundinamarca and from the Incaic Callao, the men of the future will set forth toward the banks of the Plata to commemorate the new era of justice in your legendary Montevideo. The voices of those men, coming from all parts of America, will raise a vast hymn of fraternity to your symbolic mount that near the immense sea and under the blue sky lifts the arrogance of its summit like an aspiration toward the infinite.

GLOSSARY