THE Governing Board of the Pan American. Union and the diplomatic corps of Washington have gained a new member in the Honorable Samuel Lewis, the Ambassador of Panama, who recently took up his residence. in the capital of the United States. He presented his letters of credence to President Roosevelt on March 19, 1945.

The Ambassador was born in Panama City June 20, 1901. After attending school there, he was graduated from the Colegio de La Salle and in 1926 married Doña Raquel Galindo.

Señor Lewis has followed faithfully in the footsteps of his father, an eminent patriot, statesman, diplomat, and man of letters. He served his country first as an assistant in the protocol division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and then as a Deputy in the National Assembly and Vice President of that body, which he represented at the inauguration of the President of Nicaragua in January 1933. After three years as assistant manager of the National Lottery, he became manager of that important enterprise, which he left to become Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1944. Later in the year the Ministry of Finance was also put in his charge.

Señor Lewis has taken an active interest in journalistic life as editor of Mundo Gráfico, a weekly published in Panama City. Furthermore, he was president of the Panama City Improvement Board, vice president of the Panamanian Development Commission, and a corresponding member of the Panama Academy of History. He holds the Grand Cross of the following orders: Vasco Núñez de Balboa, of Panama; Al Mérito, of Chile; and El Sol, of Peru.

Last December, while Señor Lewis was Minister of Foreign Affairs, he came to the United States and stayed a few days in Washington as the guest of the United States. At a special session of the Governing Board held in his honor he was welcomed by the Honorable Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., Secretary of State of the United States, and Chairman of the Board. Señor Lewis replied to Mr. Stettinius' cordial greetings with an eloquent address, which was in part as follows: MR. CHAIRMAN, GENTLEMEN:

One feels in this building a deep and gratifying sense of Americanism which comforts the spirit and encourages reflection on the elements

required to strengthen and solidify the present unity of the Continent and contribute to its victory and glory.

And this thought, prompted by the time and the place, leads me to point out that to attain full unity, to gain decisive triumphs, our nations must know each other better. We must know our problems and our needs as we know our resources and potentialities, and thereby acquire a sincere and effective sense of mutual assistance. We shall thus develop a continental conscience, strong and just, and be able to fulfill our destiny in history with our face turned toward the future.

The great union of the Americas needs a profound and thorough sense of reciprocal collaboration, recognized by all as an obligation and not merely as a generous and spontaneous contribution. We must tell one another, openly, frankly and without reticence, of our lacks, our errors, our defects, and our deficiencies.

A self-defeating diplomacy, an unwarranted attachment to exaggerated formulas of courtesy, has led in the past to constant praise by some nations of others, perhaps in the erroneous belief that real brotherhood consists in repeatedly asserting that we are a composite of all the virtues. We have, in general, hidden from our neighbors of America the intimate problems that worry us, the fundamental defects that retard us, while childishly proclaiming the fertility of our soil, the mildness of our climate, the beauty of our landscape, and the courage of our heroes. Such a method has divided rather than united us, and these laurel leaves that we have so carefully intertwined have concealed one nation from another more effectively than smoke screens would have.

With a national spirit ever alert but more freely communicative, with a more practical idea of real comradeship and legitimate pride, we shall be in a position to look for and find in another country what we lack in our own, to learn from other nations what we do not know, to ask for support in our weakness, for helpful advice in our dilemmas. For there is no nation in the great American family so powerful and rich that it has no need of another; and none so weak and poor that it cannot offer material and moral help. It is such assistance that will accelerate the progress of this vast continent, our common country.

It is imperative that we take a further step,

that we broaden our thinking; and just as one's ties expand from the home to the city, and from the city to the country, so likewise must each one's thought stretch beyond his own country to all America. Thus each part will become an offering to the whole, and the glory and the benefit due each nation will constitute its contribution to the common benefit and glory of the Continent. If we selfishly reserve our possessions to ourselves, we shall enjoy their fruits only; but if we take a broad American view, we shall enjoy not only our fruits but also the yield of the entire Continent.

And finally, to give effect to the idea which I am presenting, we of the North, the Center, and the South must eradicate the last vestiges of friction rooted in the past. If at one time the youthful energy of the United States devoted itself primarily to achieving success and thus aroused fears, the United States of today, because of its ever-growing sense of justice, is the nation of the world that has the best balance between physical power and the moral strength of the spirit. If in the past the South American countries have sometimes given the impression of peoples following no precise direction, today all of them are firmly established and sincerely interested in order and progress, ready to fulfill their mission as part of the Continent destined to be the granary of the world, the bulwark of democracy, and the eternal fount of law. .

These must be, in my opinion, as a Panamanian and an American, the standards by which we shall attain an indestructible unity and make a beautiful reality of the Good Neighbor Policy, proclaimed and put into practice by an illustrious citizen of our continent and of the world. I venture to express these opinions in the friendly atmosphere of the Pan American Union. I am encouraged, too, by the words addressed to me by the distinguished representative who has had the kindness to welcome me, and inspired by the presence of Dr. L. S. Rowe, to whom the entire Continent owes a debt of gratitude. And now that I have presented my views, I want to add with pride that these are the sentiments of Panama, because there exist in Panama a deep love of country and at the same time a constant desire for the complete realization of the brotherhood and the greatness of America.

OUR first glimpse of Santarém came from the round window of a plane which circled over the little Brazilian town before coming in to land on the Tapajós River. Here we could see the bright clear blue water of the tributary forming a distinct line of demarcation as it joined the gray muddy flow of the Amazon. Red-tile-roofed buildings hugging the curving sandy beach were dominated by the twin spires of a large church. The broken lines and varied colors relieved our eyes from the monotony of the green jungle over which we had been flying constantly since leaving Belém three and a half hours before. Soon we stepped from the plane onto the Panair dock, and went about the task of getting settled for an indefinite stay.

Floriano Peixoto No. 4, our home for many months, was back from the street and completely enclosed, giving us a measure of privacy. This privacy, unfortunately, did not extend to the neighbors' chickens, which were always squeezing through the picket fence, or their pet toucan, a gawdy amusing creature with a huge beak, that begged constantly for a bit of banana or a piece of ripe tomato. Once a pig managed to slip through and give the little boys who came for him a merry chase. Though we connected a bell with the front gate it was only rung by the small neighborhood children in fun. For all practical purposes the Brazilians announced themselves by a loud hand clap.

The house itself was clay-plastered and

tile-proofed. An open back porch was our only kitchen, but we boasted of hooks for fifteen hammocks. Beds were an oddity on the Amazon where men, women, and children preferred hammocks. I myself never mastered the art of sleeping in a hammock, even after two months of steady practice, but stretched out on the bed we finally obtained from Belém with a great delight— straw mattress and all! Our water was carried from the river by a boy with two gasoline tins hung from a pole across his shoulders. There was electricity from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. and we were charged according to the number of light bulbs in the house.

For food we had a combination of native fruits, vegetables, and meat and American cans, the only difficulty with the latter being that we invariably drew No. 10 cans from the U. S. Commissary in Belém. Just try to use up a big can of diced beets for two people, especially with indifferent and variable refrigeration! However, those cans made all the difference in the world. And from the native market we had the sweetest pineapples I have ever tasted; huge avocados costing 212 cents apiece; eggplant; tomatoes;

strange purple potatoes; long, thin green beans; a first cousin to our squash; and beef twice a week by arrangement with the butcher. From our back yard we picked limes, coconuts, and custard apples, sweet fruits with as many seeds as watermelons; and guavas, which we didn't care for but which made us very popular with the small fry. The fish was wonderful, especially boiled in coconut milk and combined with a few slices of green pepper and tomato to make a sort of stew. We had gorgeous oranges and a dozen varieties of banana (try it fried and garnished with grated coconut and sprinkled with cinnamon). All water had to be boiled. Evaporated milk or milk powder when we could get it was our only supply of milk, as the supply for the town was completely inadequate. Bread came in small hard loaves which we found fairly palatable when toasted. Butter came from cans. Coffee was one commodity of which there was plenty, and we drank it as the Brazilians did, strong and black and very sweet.

Rufina, the middle-aged Brazilian negress who kept house for us, was an interesting character. Her whole life had been spent on the Amazon and she had traveled widely