710.C2/166
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Brazil (Morgan)
Sir: The Department has received your … despatch No. 2270 of October 28, 1924,27 stating that Doctor Guillermo A. Sherwell, Secretary General, Inter-American High Commission, was informed by Minister Pacheco28 that it was the latter’s desire that Doctor Leo S. Rowe, Director General of the Pan American Union, should visit Rio to confer with him regarding the meeting of the International Congress of Jurists which should assemble at Rio next year. You add that Doctor Pacheco advised you that one of the subjects he wishes to discuss with Doctor Rowe was the propriety of inviting the Secretary General of the League of Nations to assign a representative of the International Law Section of that body to attend the Rio meeting in order to bring the members of the Section into relation with that committee from whose advice and experience they might benefit.
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[Page 303]In reply you are informed that the Department understands that it is not Doctor Rowe’s intention to visit Rio at this time but rather to visit the Central American States on returning to the United States after the termination of the Third Pan American Scientific Conference at Lima.
The Department however desires that you should, should you perceive no reason for not doing so, make known to Doctor Pacheco informally and confidentially the Department’s views regarding the participation of the League of Nations, or Sections thereof, in American conferences.
It should be understood that no disparagement or criticism of the League of Nations is intended when it is observed that the International Conference of American States, and the subsidiary, technical and specialized Pan American Conferences, are organized upon a distinct and separate basis. The scope of the League of Nations is intended to be world wide and a number of American States are members of the League and are thus able to express their points of view on matters of world wide import which come before the attention of the Council and the Assembly of the League respectively. The Pan American Conferences exist because of the distinct interests of the American States which, without antagonism to any world relationship, makes it desirable for them to confer with respect to the problems which especially relate to the States of this hemisphere.
There is, of course, not the slightest opposition to cooperation with the technical service of the League of Nations through the exchange of reports and information, and reciprocal advantage may thus appropriately be taken of statistics and reports of investigation. Participation of representatives of the League of Nations in the International Conferences of American States and the more important non-technical subsidiary conferences resulting therefrom would however bring to the Conferences the view points and policies of States who are members of the League of Nations and are not American States and thus fundamentally alter the nature of the Conferences themselves.
The law of nations is of universal application. Consequently it is not suggested that there exists an American international law as distinct from that which necessarily prevails throughout the society of civilized states. There are, however, legal problems which are peculiar to the States of the American continents. In the formulation and advocacy of proposals designed to make clear the application of the principles of international law to those problems there are reasons for their particular consideration by American States; for they have a distinctive interest in a cause peculiarly their own. Thus the labors of the Congress of Jurists, like those of the International Conferences [Page 304] of American States, possess a special character demanding the maintenance of the integrity of the Congress as an exclusively American institution.
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