The Act of Havana
The Pan-American Conference, which closed at Havana on Tuesday, must be counted an unqualified success. That is a great deal more than some of its predecessors have been, and a great deal more than Germany desired this particular meet- ing to be. It has done more for the unity of the two Americas south of the Great Lakes than all the previous conferences put together. That result is due primarily to the wise and con- ciliatory leadership displayed by the leader of the United States delegation, Mr. Cordell Hull. He went to the conference With two purposes, to secure that the American States should defend and temporarily administer any European territory in the Western hemisphere (such as French or Dutch islands) threatened with a change of ownership through the subjuga- tion of their metropolitan States in Europe ; and to effect an arrangement for the joint marketing of the agricultural sur- pluses of American States, with the financial assistance of the United States Government. That was essential unless States with a surplus which they must dispose of somehow were to be forced into economic arrangements with Germany, which, like all Germany's economic arrangements, would inevitably have political consequences. Resolutions embodying all that was essential in the United States proposals have been unanimously approved at Havana, though Argentina, always reserved in these matters, is deferring her signature of the " Act " in which the decisions of the conference are embodied. The Monroe Doctrine, which for over a century had simply the status of a unilateral declaration by the United States, represents now the accepted policy of the whole of the Western Hemisphere.
