"IN presenting, in the name of the government and the people of Venezuela . . . this statue of the Liberator of my country . . . I entrust it to your generous devotion to Bolívar as though I were giving you a seed of love for Venezuela, to be planted in your soil, in the hope that the flower. that eventually blooms upon the plant grown from that seed will be love for that America which we all share." With these words, President Rómulo Gallegos of Venezuela unveiled on July 5 a marble and bronze statue of Simón Bolívar in the Missouri town that bears the Liberator's

name.

The presentation of the statue, a gift of Venezuela to the people of the United States, was the highlight of an 11-day official visit that brought President Gallegos to this country on July 1. The flags.

of two nations decked Washington National Airport and a 21-gun salute greeted the Venezuelan statesman as he arrived from Caracas in President Truman's personal plane, the Independence. President Gallegos was accompanied by his wife; by the United States Ambassador to Venezuela, Walter J. Donnelly; by several Cabinet members and their wives; and by a number of other officials. President and Mrs. Truman and a party of Cabinet members and State Department officials were present at the airport to welcome the guests from Venezuela.

That evening, a state dinner was held at the White House honoring the distinguished visitors. In the course of the evening President Truman awarded the Venezuelan President the Legion of Merit, degree of chief commander. The citation,

read by Mr. Truman, called President Gallegos Venezuela's "greatest modern littérateur" and a "strong pillar in the organization of hemispheric solidarity.” Speaking in Spanish, Señor Gallegos said that the decoration was an unexpected honor, and that he accepted it in the name of his people and in recognition of the great friendship between the two countries.

The Venezuelan President and Señora de Gallegos spent the night at the White House, and on the following day moved to Blair House for the remainder of their stay in Washington.

At the Pan American Union

On July 2, the Council of the Organization of American States met in a special session to greet President Gallegos. In his address of welcome, Dr. Juan Bautista de Lavalle, Chairman of the Council and Representative of Peru, spoke as follows to one who, he said, belongs to the "family of great men of America":

It is an honor and a privilege for me to extend to you in the name of the Council of the Organization of American States a most cordial welcome to this building. It is twice yours, as much for the personal and outstanding qualities that have won for you the admiration of America, as for the eminent title that you bear with dignity and pride as the true representative of the Venezuelan people.

From time to time in the course of American history, thinkers, artists, and men of action arise as magnificent examples. In them humanity attains such perfection that through the ideas they champion and their superior character they become peerless guides, powerful stimuli, archetypes of noble inspiration for those who seek to improve themselves. Thus you, Mr. President, self-sacrificing educator, renowned writer, and eminent statesman, prove that you belong to that family of great men of America.

Like so many others on the continent, all of us in this room have known the fullness of your vigorous personality through your work as a teacher and your widespread fame as a writer. Abraham

Lincoln once said, “Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

In you the man and the reputation, life, work, and action, make up a strong, harmonious, and inseparable unit in which the gifts of the writer, the teacher, and the statesman complement one another and work together for a single purpose.

Notable are your works of fiction which command the respect of the public and the critics and have made edition follow edition, carrying your fame beyond the continent: an Americanism surging with life, born of an affection for the land and for man; a remarkable power of animation and characterization that, with the incomparable vigor of the great masters, makes the people of your novels stand out in the nobility or in the poverty of their human qualities; a limpid style, rich in terse expressions of the purest Spanish and in real names and local phrases, glowing with all the colors and tones of the inexhaustible palette of the painter of landscapes and customs. Love for and fascination with nature and its scenes are not expressed in the magic of your descriptions alone; in the verses of your Cantaclaro you have turned your feeling into legend and poetry like an ardent strolling troubadour, singer of the plains you know so well.

Your books display the thought and wisdom of those who dig deep to reach the roots of things. 1 But if they sometimes depict a naked and unhappy reality, from it springs an idealistic and evangelistic inconformity and plan for redemption, a calm and radiant confidence in the future.

The enthusiasms, customs, worries, and concerns of the men of the field and the forest, the gold prospectors and the oil workers, are given esthetic proportions and rank by your pen. Thanks to it, the men of the plains, who had won a place in the glorious tapestry of the emancipation, assume reality in world literature. The distinguished Mexican critic José Núñez y Domínguez spoke justly and truthfully when he said that your literary work is a great glory of continental letters and that the man of America is drawn with immortal lines in your incomparable books.

We know your work and the educational influence you exercised, first in the Colegio of Barcelona, then from your post as Director of the Normal School and the Liceo Andrés Bello. You were father, adviser, and inspiration to the young Venezuelans who suffered exile with you in Spain. As I call to mind those days when you gave of yourself all that you had and the friendships and undying respect that you won, allow

me, in this place which is also an American classroom, to call you, with the moving simplicity of the youth of your country, Gallegos, the Teacher.

The America that had its Miranda, Bolívar, Sucre, and Páez, to mention only the greatest of your compatriots, today needs statesmen capable of building new institutions of progress and justice, of molding the spirit of their peoples through education and culture, and of teaching them, through word and example, the difficult and delicate exercise of freedom and authority, of rights and duties in democratic life.

Since selection by election is the basis of representative and democratic institutions, we admire the wisdom the Venezuelan people displayed in electing you to the highest position in the government in the balloting on December 14, 1947. It was an election that the countries of America hailed as an auspicious sign of Venezuela's political destiny again marching toward the future with the same sweeping force as in the days of liberation.

Your address last February 15 is a civic docu

ment that is worthy of your pen and of the ideas and program of a government "born of republican virtues and the exemplary observance of law." In this speech, full of lofty, constructive, and definite ideas, you pointed out with your typical clarity of intellect and style that "ambitions must never prevail over ideals, nor contingencies over the effort directed unswervingly toward achieving the greatest dignity of the nation and the greatest possible happiness of the people, who are its flesh and blood." The concept of international relations that you set forth there expresses felicitously the elevated aims of the activities to which we devote ourselves in this institution, when you state that these relations must be conducted not only within the field of proper diplomacy, "but also through greater knowledge of one another through mutually advantageous forms, both in the material world of economic interests and in the spiritual realm of cultural interests." We find in this notable document an energetic expression of your interest in meeting what you call the "dramatic needs"