ences in fellowship conducive to international understanding.

Since the first Rotary Club was organized at Chicago in 1905, the Rotary principles of friendship and service to others have spread throughout the world. Rotary membership stands at an all-time high with 6,358 Rotary Clubs, which have a membership of 308,000 business and professional executives in 80 countries and geographical regions.

Rotary in Latin America has more than held its own with the growth of the organization in other parts of the world. Beginning with the founding of the Rotary Club of Habana, Cuba, in 1916, Rotary has spread to every Spanish- and Portu

guese-speaking country in the Western Hemisphere. There are now 815 Rotary Clubs south of the Rio Grande with a membership in excess of 21,000. The principal Rotary activities in Latin America include general community-betterment undertakings, work for crippled and underprivileged children, the establishment and supervision of camps for boys and girls, assistance to students through scholarships and student loan funds, the promotion of high standards in businesses and professions, and the development of international good will and understanding.

Such are the aims that will be furthered by the meeting in A Cidade MaravilhosaThe Marvelous City.

AT THE Third Inter-American Agricultural Conference, held in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1945, a resolution was passed in support of international cooperation for the prevention and extermination of agricultural pests. The last paragraph of this resolution reads as follows: "It is agreed that an investigation be made of the principal migratory pests which can be controlled in the countries where they originate and that, with the cooperation of all nations, the necessary steps be taken to combat these pests effectively."

This resolution was in line with the previous agreement reached at the Second Agricultural Conference at Mexico City

in 1942. At that time, it had been resolved that the American Republics should band together in the common cause of waging a campaign against one of the most serious of all insect pests—the migratory locust.

Concrete action on the Mexico City and Caracas resolutions was finally taken in February 1947 when it was learned that a swarm of migratory locusts, after having devastated the grain fields of Costa Rica, where it had originated, was making its way northward through Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, and was due to reach the southeastern states of Mexico within three to six months, where it would end its migration. As a

result of this impending invasion, a conference of the Ministers of Agriculture of the five Central American republics and Mexico was held in San Salvador, in an effort to find some solution to the problem. It was at this Conference that a permanent body (The International Technical Committee) was created to study the locust plague and determine the best means of combating it.

In December 1934, through an exchange of notes, an agreement had been reached between Mexico and Guatemala whereby each country would wage a simultaneous campaign to exterminate the migratory locust. However, since the locust did not originate either in Mexico or in Guatemala, but in the republics farther south, the measures taken by these two countries alone proved futile.

It became obvious, then, that the success of a campaign of this nature would depend upon the concerted action of all countries affected, rather than upon the individual efforts of each. With this idea in mind, the International Technical Committee went to work, designating as the locale of its operations the area from the southern states of Mexico to the southern boundary of Costa Rica.

Since the Committee first came into existence a year ago, considerable progress has been achieved in the campaign against the locust. Mexico, for example, lost no crops in 1947 as a result of this pest, and

the other countries, too, have succeeded in controlling it to a great extent.

Among the insecticides which are found to be effective in fighting the locust are hexachlorobenzene and Effusan. Planes are often used to explore infested areas, to follow the movements of a swarm of locusts step by step, and to attack it from the air when necessary.

The habit of the locust is to start its migration about every seven or eight years. The swarm originates in tropical climates, in coastal sections, or in regions. densely covered with low vegetation, where it is easy for the insect to lay its eggs. According to Dr. Alfonso Dampf, a Mexican entomologist, another area in which the locust originates is South America, particularly in Argentina, where it exists as a chronic pest.

The South and Central American locusts are separated from each other by the vast jungles of the Amazon River basin. Since the locusts of Argentina fly no farther north than southern Brazil, the the two groups never mix with each other, and hence the problem of fighting the Central American locust is made somewhat easier.

It is hoped that the cooperative measures already adopted by the various nations and the technical studies being made by the Committee will lessen the damage done by each successive migration of locusts and eventually succeed in destroying the pest altogether.

STAMP collectors represent a very small percentage of the population, but who is there that doesn't feel a spark of interest at the sight of an envelope bearing strangelooking stamps? Whom and what do those strange pictures represent to the one who stuck them on that letter? A face, a scene, a bird, or a flower, a cryptic design, a simple motto each has its special meaning. A little inquiry reveals an exalted tradition, a people's pride in the beauty of their land, a proud memory of a great leader, tender gratitude for an unselfish benefactress.1

Among the women whom Latin American countries have honored by stamps we find saints and revolutionaries, a poet and a pianist, a rich woman who gave almost all her fortune to her fellow citizens and to her country, and an imperial princess who sacrificed a throne that all her countrymen might be free.

Isabel the Redeemer
Princess Imperial of Brazil

The daughter of Dom Pedro II, the last Emperor of Brazil, she might have been Empress. Let us meet her at the most significant moment of her life. Princess Isabel, at 42, was a handsome, fair-haired woman, "every inch a queen," and indeed at this time she was regent, ruling in her father's place while he attempted to regain his health in Europe.

It was Sunday, May 13, 1888, and the

1 Chicago students are studying stories of Latin America through a unique project, Let the Stamps Tell the Story, a series of bulletins issued by the Good Will Curriculum Committee of the Chicago Public High Schools.

place was the City Palace, Rio de Janeiro.

Flanked by her husband and the Ministers of her Cabinet she was conscious of the suspense of thousands of people who packed the throne room and filled the corridors of the palace and the street outside. She took in her hand the golden pen, which the people had given her for this occasion, and signed the shortest law in the annals of her country:

"Slavery is abolished in Brazil. All provisions to the contrary are hereby revoked."

And as she signed a great shout went up that spread to every corner of the empire. Men wept for joy. But her friend the Baron of Cotegipe said, "Dona Isabel, to free a race you have lost a throne." For Brazil's agricultural economy rested heavily on slave labor and its monarchical system on the great landowners. Isabel and her father knew this, but Dom Pedro had been an initiator and supporter of the movement for the gradual emancipation of the slaves; his daughter, a passionate abolitionist. By previous acts freeing all children born to slave mothers (1871) and all slaves over sixty (1885) they had participated in the process of emancipation which now reached its climax in total liberation.

The Emperor, in Milan, was too ill to hear the message. On May 22 he seemed near the end of his strength and Empress Thereza would keep the news from him no longer. Through his weakness he heard her words and whispered, "Are there, then, no more slaves in Brazil?" And he ordered sent to Dona Isabel a cable which said, "I embrace you,

Emancipator. Pedro, your father." Soon he was out of danger.

As a member extraordinary of the Council of State and three times regent, Dona Isabel pursued her father's self-assigned tasks of fostering education and freedom of thought, and she gave unstintingly of her possessions and her time to charities of all kinds and to nursing in times of distress.

Despite the democracy of Dom Pedro II, his broadmindedness, magnanimity, and true greatness of character, the Brazilian monarchy came to an end not many months after his return home. Republicanism had been growing in strength for more than 20 years, and in fact the Emperor had done practically nothing to check it. The planters, many of whom had been ruined by abolition, began to work for the overthrow of the monarchy. Furthermore, Dona Isabel's French husband, who would be Prince Consort if she succeeded to the throne, was unpopular, and there were various grievances of long standing. The disaffection of the military after the Paraguayan War brought

matters to a crisis, and the republican government banished the royal family.

At half-past one on the morning of November 17, 1889, the family was assembled in the main room of the deserted City Palace, and requested to board ship immediately so as to avoid the danger of an armed uprising at a daylight departure. A little later, while Dom Pedro, the Magnanimous, controlled his grief and Dona Isabel her proud indignation, the sad little Empress knelt to kiss the soil of her dear adopted land and her son-in-law helped her into the boat.

When in 1920 the National Congress of Brazil repealed the decree of banishment and provided for the return of the remains of the Emperor and Empress, Dona Isabel was deeply happy, but her dream of seeing her country again was not to be fulfilled. More than thirty years of exile and the death of her two younger sons, one in the Allied cause in World War I, had robbed her of the strength needed for the journey. Her husband and her son Dom Pedro accompanied the remains home, and the following year they brought Dona Isabel. She was accorded funeral honors due the head of the Nation, but no tribute could have pleased her more than the enduring affection with which her countrymen remember Isabel the Redeemer.-S. L. F.

Marta Abreu, of Cuba

"My last peseta is for the Republic, and if more is needed, I will sell my land; if that is not enough, I must give my jewels; and if all that is still too little, we ourselves will beg in the streets and be happy, because it is for the liberty of Cuba."

This was the answer of Marta Abreu to a well-meaning friend who cautioned her against bankrupting herself to aid Cuba in the War for Independence which ended in 1899. Her self-effacement was such that