The Wilmington Morning Star

Cooperation

Rodolfo Rojas, Venezuela's minister of agriculture, addressing a luncheon gathering in New York the other day, called for absolute equality in this country's relations with his own land when peace returns. He emphasized the possibilities for mutual aid and benefit after the war among all the American republics, but placed equal emphasis on unselfishness as a contributing factor in attaining the most helpful results.

His remarks on cooperation are not to be accepted lightly. Full cooperation and complete understanding were never so necessary as now and only through their further development can the Western Hemisphere achieve its highest goal in the years ahead. Said Mr. Rojas:

The time has come when isolation and chauvinism must disappear from the Americas: when we must look at each other's problems without selfishness and with a spirit of real cooperation, because today the problems of any one of the American nations are problems which affect the whole continent, and it will be ever more so as science progresses and through human ingenuity distances become shorter.

When Germany's subtle influence has been removed from the other Americas, the United States will have its greatest opportunity to bring its more benign influence to bear, but only if American business firms look upon the other republics, not as lands to be exploited for their own exclusive gains, but as parts of a great community of nations permitted by favor of Providence to work together for mutual advancement.