711.00 Statement July 16, 1937/107
Statement by the Nicaraguan Minister for Foreign Affairs (Cordero Reyes)63
Commentary and Adherence of the Government of Nicaragua
The statement of the Secretary of State, Mr. Cordell Hull, made public to the people of Nicaragua on this occasion is considered by the Government of Nicaragua as of enormous importance and is received with the greatest approval.
Effectually, the growth of the world’s population, the incorporation in autonomous life and civilization of large territories, technical progress which has increased agricultural and industrial production, the extensive development of means of transport which have intensified commercial and economic relations, etc., have created a situation of interdependence by virtue of which disturbances which occur in any part of the globe affect, in greater or less degree, the rights, obligations, or at least the interests of all nations, whether they be great or small.
It is therefore natural that those who feel themselves injured without fault of theirs, through any local or international action which takes place in any part of the world, should seek to obtain the universal rule of those principles of policy or of law which they consider most adequate for the maintenance of peace.
The statement of principles which has just been made by the Government of the United States through the medium of the Secretary of State constitutes, for the American countries, a true decalogue which has its roots deep in the enlightened reasoning of the leaders of independence, parting from Washington’s Farewell Address and the admonitions of Bolivar, and which have been gradually elaborated in documents put forth by the Panamerican assemblies from the Congress of Panama of 1826 down to that of Buenos Aires the year past, as well as in bilateral or multilateral acts entered into by various American nations. These principles are: equal sovereignty, the peaceful solution of controversies, renunciation of war—above all of aggression or conquest—compliance with international obligations, the sanctity of treaties, codification of law, and the principle of non-intervention. (This latter since the Congress of Lima of 1848.)
The statement of the Secretary of State adds the reduction of armament, the reduction or removal of barriers to international [Page 735] commerce and the principle of equality of treatment. It is obvious that the armament race maintains and aggravates what might be called the atmosphere of war, and it is also certain that there cannot be peace while there is no effective economic disarmament and while irritating and alienating privileges are granted in commercial competition.
These principles are incorporated in the conventions, declarations, and resolutions approved at the seventh Interamerican Conference for the Maintenance of Peace. But although all the Governments of America are ratifying them, the Government of Nicaragua considers of the greatest utility the American statement on which I am making comment, because it reveals the bases of a practical policy truly inspired in the principles mentioned.
Under the influence of doctrines so beneficent, all the American peoples and the entire world have been enabled to contemplate the spectacle which is truly moving, and auspicious of the greatest efficacy for the American system, of a great world power such as the United States putting into practical effect, as regards the weak peoples, the redressing and just policy of the good neighbor.
The statement of the Secretary of State, Mr. Hull signifies, in my way of thinking, the conviction that only through adherence to the practice of such principles by all the nations of the world can the maintenance of peace be secured in a firm and permanent manner. This conviction, which the Government of Nicaragua fully agrees with, would seem to-day to be eloquently demonstrated by the fact that systems of politics prevailing in other sections of the globe, which contravene or differ from some or all of these principles, have led to the serious disturbances which now afflict the world and threats of still greater ones.
The Government of Nicaragua, which has approved without reservations all pacifist instruments elaborated during nearly half a century, expresses in the same manner its adherence without reservations to the statement of principles made by the United States of America, through medium of Secretary of State Hull, on July 16 of the current year.
Especially, it considers of the greatest importance for practical international cooperation, to increase the spirit of mutual confidence and for the rule of justice in international relations, the principle which admits of the modification of treaties, when the necessity is presented for doing so, by means of orderly processes conducted in a spirit of reciprocal helpfulness and accommodation.
Thus the Americas, filled with gratification and faith, contemplate the practical application of this principle in the contractual relations [Page 736] of the United States with the Republic of Panama deriving from the construction of the interoceanic canal.
As regards economic disarmament, already at Montevideo and Buenos Aires Nicaragua approved the liberal policy enunciated by the Secretary of State, with the sole reservation, in respect to the principle of equality of treatment, of the advantages which the Central American states have granted or may reciprocally grant to each other by virtue of their special conditions.
And precisely in point, invoking the principles of commercial policy embraced in the splendid initiative of the Secretary of State Mr. Hull—which were approved by all the American states, with one or another regrettable exception, in the assemblies mentioned—Nicaragua has requested of the Central American states, in the projects of commercial treaties submitted to their consideration, the cessation of the tariff war which is being waged against her and the supremacy of the principle of equality of treatment in inter-Central American relations, since she considers that as long as the most complete economic disarmament is not brought to pass in Central America, and even as long as a real tariff union is not created not only the Central American states cannot prosper economically through the development of their special capabilities but also it will not be possible to establish the peace of the Isthmus, mutual confidence, and the spirit of solidarity to which a common destiny and the unquestionable unity of their geography invites them.
- Published in the Nicaraguan press on July 30; copy transmitted to the Department by the Minister in Nicaragua in his despatch No. 562, August 2; received August 6.↩