86 STAT. ]
PROCLAMATION 4122-APR. 10, 1972
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defense, and as a tribute to the men and women who make possible the movement of people and goods throughout our land and abroad. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this seventh day of April, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-two, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-sixth.
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PROCLAMATION 4122
Pan American Day ^^'^ and Pan American Week; By the President of the United States of America
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A Proclamation
Eighty-two years ago this spring, the first International Conference of American States was completing its work in Washington. The hopes which millions of people throughout the Western Hemisphere held for that conference were voiced in these words of a leading churchman of the day, Edward Everett Hale: "We trust that the American Congress, representing North and South America, will address itself squarely to some * * * practicable system, not content with general statements
- * * of the folly and cost and horror of war."
While the hemispheric court of arbitration for which Hale specifically argued was not created at that time, a "practicable system" was—the system which we now call the Organization of American States. And ^
April 10, 1972
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down all the decades since, that system has increasingly fulfilled the hopes of its founders for modes of cooperation and unity which should make peace permanent and war obsolete among the sister republics of the New World. Today the Organization of American States stands as the oldest continuous regional body in the world, and one of the most vigorous and progressive as well. Geography, history, shared traditions of selfgovernment, and common interests in the world give a special depth and durability to international ties in the Americas. The OAS, in turn, gives those ties structure, substance, and a strong arm for action. It is an organization based on a workable combination of idealism and realism; on a capacity to grow and adjust with the times; and on the principle that all nations, large and small, are juridical equals, each
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2 UST 2394; 21 UST 607.
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