But no action, no judgment, no statement will advance our alliance unless it is guided by firm and resolute regard to principles. Those principles must not yield either to immediate expedient or to any present danger.

So we come here today to renew, as we do in the acts of every day, our dedication to the principles of development, of diversity, and of democracy.

Franklin Roosevelt, a man whom I served and a man whom I loved, a man whose precepts I follow, said, and I quote, "Through democratic processes we can strive to achieve for the Americas the highest possible living standards for all of our people." So I pledge to you today that we will continue to pursue that goal until every campesino, every worker, is freed from the crushing weight of poverty, disease, and illiteracy and ignorance.

I have asked the Congress for the funds necessary to meet our obli"gation under the Alliance for Progress.29 I will fight for those funds with every resource of my Government. Furthermore, I intend to ask for $250 million this year to replenish the Bank's Fund for Special Operations in accordance with the unanimous vote of the Panama meeting of the Inter-American Bank.80 That Bank, supported first by President Eisenhower, has become a beacon of hope to the oppressed of our lands.

The principle of diversity stems from President Roosevelt's policy of the Good Neighbor. Within the loose and ample frame of the interAmerican system there is room for each nation to order its institutions and to organize its economy so long as it respects the rights of its neighbors. In the councils of the alliance we must guide each other toward the most rewarding course of progress. We do not confuse that duty and that responsibility with any desire or any right to impose those views on unwilling neighbors.

In devotion to democracy, we are guided by the command of Bolívar that we must fearlessly lay the foundations of South American liberty: To hesitate is destruction.

Our charter charges each American country to seek and to strengthen representative democracy. Without that democracy and without the freedom that it nourishes, material progress is an aimless enterprise, destroying the dignity of the spirit that it is really meant to liberate. So we will continue to join with you to encourage democracy until we build a hemisphere of free nations from the Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic Circle.

!

But the charter of the alliance is not confined to political democracy. It commands a peaceful, democratic, social revolution across the hemisphere. It calls upon us to throw open the gates of opportunity to the landless and the despised, to throw open the gates of opportunity to the poor and to the oppressed. It asks that unjust privilege be ended and that unfair power be curbed.

29 See ante, doc. I-2.

30 See post, doc. III-82. Concerning the establishment of the Bank, see American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1959, pp. 436–484.*

The United States signed that charter. We are fulfilling that commitment. We have already begun an all-out war on poverty in this country, for a just country cannot permit a class of forsaken in the midst of the affluent and the fortunate. We are also marching forward in our struggle to eliminate racial injustice, to permit every man of every race, of every color, of every belief, to share fully in America's national life.

In the same way we will join with those forces across the hemisphere who seek to advance their own democratic revolution. We are finding in the United States that it is not easy to change the customs of centuries. Some seek to halt reform and change. Others seek to impose terror and tyranny. But Bolívar's wisdom is our warning: To hesitate is destruction.

I know my country's policies and my country's help are very important to the Alliance for Progress. But in 1961 a new hemisphere began to be born. In that hemisphere, success or failure does not hinge on testing each shifting wind or each new word which comes from our neighbors. Rather, it depends on the courage and the leadership that we can bring to our own people in our own land. I am doing my dead-level best to provide that leadership in my country

now.

The Alliance for Progress, true, is a most complex task. It has many dimensions and many directions. But it does rest on the hopes of people much like those that I have seen in my recent trips through the poverty areas of the United States.

In the last 13 days I have personally met the people in 13 States. Across this hemisphere there are millions of despairing men and women that I hope to meet when I can get away from Washington. They come to birth, they toil, and they die, never knowing a day without hunger. They never feel the joy of rewarded achievement. They never feel the pride that comes from providing for those they love. They struggle for their self-respect, for their dignity as one of the children of God, against those who exploit them in a world which is closed to their hopes. Faces bent and backs bowed, they see ahead of them only that darkness in which they walk.

Well, we work for these men and women not because we have to. We work because morality commands it, and I said in Atlanta the other morning justice requires it and our own dignity as men depends on it. We work not because we fear the unjust wrath of an enemy-because we do fear the just wrath of God.

The path ahead, I can tell you, is long and the way is hard. There will be many editorials written about us, and there will be many complaints spoken of us. But we must, in the words of the prophet, "Mount up on the wings of eagles, run and not grow weary."

We have reached a turning point.

The foundations have been laid. The time calls for more action and not just more words. In the next year there will be twice as much action, twice as much accomplished as in any previous year in this program. I can say that today with confidence, and I can say that our Alliance for Progress will succeed. The success of our

effort the efforts of your countries and my country-will indicate to those who come after us the vision of those who set us on this path. Today, in this room, you have not only the great ambassadors and spokesmen of the great Republics which are part of this worthy endeavor, but you have the leaders in the Congress of both parties whose first concern is humanity, wherever it exists, and who dedicate their lives and their talents and their energies to seeing that their country does her part, and more, in driving the ancient enemies of mankind from this hemisphere.

Document III-80

"What Can We Do To Help Make the Democratic Ideal a Reality in This Hemisphere": ADDRESS BY THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INTER-AMERICAN AFFAIRS (MANN), UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME, NOTRE DAME, INDIANA, JUNE 7, 1964 (EXCERPTS)

It has long been, and continues to be, our firm policy to discourage any who conspire to overthrow constitutionally elected governments. But if governments are overthrown, it has long been our practice, in ways compatible with the sovereignty and the national dignity of others, to encourage the holding of free and fair elections-to encourage a return to constitutional procedures. Other American Republics make equally valuable contributions to building a Western Hemisphere tradition of democracy by their example, by the strength of their moral positions, and by expressions of their principles.

It is understandable that all of us sometimes become impatient with the rate of progress toward making this ideal a reality everywhere. We have not yet reached perfection in our own country. Many American Republics have made great progress in establishing a democratic tradition within the last few decades. In others, democracy seems at times to take two steps forward only to be temporarily pushed back a step. In Cuba the light of democracy has temporarily been extinguished.

But we should not, I think, judge either the rate or degree of hemisphere progress toward democracy solely by the number of coups d'etat which take place. The degree of individual freedom which exists in the hemisphere, the average life span of de facto governments, the extent of political repression, the degree of freedom of the press and of peaceful assembly, and the growing number of people in the hemisphere who consistently support the principle of free and periodic elections, are also relevant yardsticks.

If one looks at the forest instead of the trees, he can see that these quiet, unpublicized efforts on the part of the United States and other American Republics have, along with many other factors, contributed to a wider and deeper observance of the forms of representative democracy in this hemisphere and, perhaps even more important, to a

"Department of State Bulletin, June 29, 1964, pp. 995-1000.

growing respect by governments, in deeds as well as words, for the dignity of man and for his basic human rights. I am confident that the general movement will continue to be forward; I hope it can be accelerated.

Our interventions [in the past] were, in the Latin American point of view, patronizing in the extreme. By making the United States the sole judge of Latin America's political morality, they were degrading to proud peoples who believed that, in their own wars of independence, they had earned the right to manage their own affairs-to be masters in their own houses. They produced schismatic tendencies in the interAmerican family and brought our relations with Latin America to an alltime low.

These historical experiences suggest two things: Unilateral United States interventions in the hemisphere have never succeeded, in themselves, in restoring constitutional government for any appreciable period of time. And they have, in every case, left for our country a legacy of suspicion and resentment which has endured long after our interventions were abandoned as impracticable.

All of this does not mean that we will in the future recognize all governments which come into power in an unconstitutional manner. Each case must be looked at in the light of its own facts. Where the facts warrant it-where the circumstances are such, to use someone else's phrase, as to "outrage the conscience of America"-we reserve our freedom to register our indignation by refusing to recognize or to continue our economic cooperation.

It does mean that, consistent with our treaty obligations, we cannot put ourselves in a doctrinaire straightjacket of automatic application of sanctions to every unconstitutional regime in the hemisphere with the obvious intention of dictating internal political developments in other countries. As the facts amply demonstrate, this is no departure from the practice which has prevailed in the most recent years.

The third point to which I invite your attention is this: Unilateral intervention for the purpose of forcing constitutional changes in another country does not always serve either the cause of democracy or the national security interests of the United States.

Against this background, what conclusions are to be drawn? What can we do to help make the democratic ideal a reality in this hemisphere? I offer the following suggestions:

First, we should continue, in our bilateral discussions with other governments, to encourage democracy in the quiet, unpublicized way and on the day-to-day basis that I have already referred to; and we should support parallel efforts of other American states. If there is no intent to force the will of a sovereign government, this tactic is entirely compatible with our commitments and with the dignity and self-respect of others.

Second, we should support appropriate measures for broadening the scope of collective action with the aim of addressing ourselves first to those cases where repression, tyranny, and brutality outrage the conscience of mankind. I can think of no way in which the American community of states can better serve the cause of human dignity, individual and national freedom, and representative democracy than to develop a set of procedures for dealing with this type of problem. The United States has never believed that collective action for such purposes is proscribed by the Charter of the Organization of American States; 32 but if the majority of the member states are of a contrary opinion, then let us amend the charter.

Third, in each case where a government is overthrown by force there should be a careful, dispassionate assessment of each situation in the light of all the surrounding facts and circumstances so that decisions concerning recognition, trade, aid, and other related matters can be made which are consistent with our ideals, with international law, and with our overall national interests. In making this assessment, regard should also be paid to the fact that not only is each American Republic different from all the others but that each de facto government is likewise different in its aims, its motives, its policies, and in the kinds of problems it faces.

Fourth, if, as a result of this appraisal, a decision is made not to recognize a regime-and this may well be the case in the future as it has been in the past-then it should be made clear that nonrecognition is based squarely on a failure on the part of another government to abide by the established rules of international conduct.

Fifth, when the decision is made to recognize a regime, it should be clear that there is no basis under international law for equating recognition with United States approval of the internal political policies and practices of another government. Resolution XXXV of the Ninth Inter-American Conference of American States makes this point very clear. It declares:

That the establishment or maintenance of diplomatic relations with a government does not imply any judgment upon the domestic policy of that government.*

Sixth, we should continue our established practice of consulting with other American Republics whenever a question of recognition arises.

Finally, let there be no mistake about our consistent and complete devotion to the principles of human dignity and freedom of the individual. We believe that these principles can only be realized in a democratic political system in which governments are the servants of the people and responsive to their will. They are a central element in our foreign policy toward Latin America. We shall in every way

Text in A Decade of American Policy: Basic Documents, 1941–49, pp. 427-445.

33 Text in Ninth International Conference of American States, Bogotá, Colombia, March 30-May 2, 1948: Report of the Delegation of the United States of America, With Related Documents (Department of State publication 3263), p. 271.