Símon Bolívar, the Liberator | Page 2

planes of

feeling and thought. But Greece is not all that as a people; Greece is all
that through men converted into symbols.
So it is with other peoples.
Rome still signifies for us the defense of the bridge against the
powerful enemy; a man taking absolute power over the State and then
surrendering it to the people from whom it came. Rome is Repúblican
virtue, and imperial power,--and also, alas! imperial degradation.
Imperial Rome represents persecution of religion which does not
recognize Caesar as a god and the assimilation of religions which do
not hesitate to add a god to those they adore. Rome, too, symbolizes the
tendency to unity which survives and inspires the life of the nations of
Europe, if not of the world,--a tendency altogether manifest in the last
gigantic struggle through which mankind has just passed. Rome, finally,
stands for Law, for the most marvelous social machine ever devised by
human brains. But Rome is all that, and more than that, through Horace,
Sulla, Cato, Caesar, Cicero, Nero, Caracalla and Justinian.
The confusion of the Middle Ages has some points of light, always
around a man. The great Frederic Barbarossa stands for Germany, as
does William Tell for Switzerland, as Ivan the Great for Russia, as the
Cid for Spain, as King Arthur for England and Charlemagne for France.
The modern peoples, those who only lately have begun to live as
nations, have their heroes, who perhaps do not seem so great to us as
the old heroes, because they have not been magnified by time; but, if
compared with men of the past, many of them are as great, if not, in
some cases, greater. The countries of America are at present forming
this tradition about their illustrious ancestors. And, if they want to live
the strong life of the nations destined to last and to be powerful and
respected, they must persevere in the work of building up around their
fathers the frame-work of their national consciousness. Washington
every day appears nobler to us, because every day we understand better
what is the meaning of his sacrifice and his work; every day we learn to
appreciate more the value of the inheritance he left to us when he gave
us a free country where we can think and speak and work, untrammeled
by the whims and caprices of foreign masters. And the nations to the
south of us are also building their national consciousness around their
great heroes, among them the greatest of all, Bolívar, one of those men
who appear in the world at long intervals, selected by God to be the

leaders of multitudes, to be performers of miracles, achieving what is
impossible for the common man. They live a life of constant inspiration,
as if they were not guided by their own frail judgment, but, like Moses,
by the smoke and the flame of God through a desert, through suffering
and success, through happiness and misfortune, until they might see
before them the Promised Land of Victory, some destined to enjoy the
full possession of it, and others to die with no other happiness than that
of leaving an inheritance to their successors.
These few pages, devoted to the life and work of Simón Bolívar, the
great South American Liberator, will attain their object if the reader
understands and appreciates how unusual a man Bolívar was. Every
citizen of the United States of America must respect and venerate his
sacred memory, as the Liberator and Father of five countries, the man
who assured the independence of the rest of the South American
peoples of Spanish speech; the man who conceived the plans of
Pan-American unity which those who came after him have elaborated,
and the man who, having conquered all his enemies and seen at his feet
peoples and laws, effected the greatest conquest, that of himself,
sacrificing all his aspirations and resigning his power, to go and die,
rewarded by the ingratitude of those who owed him their existence as
free men. The more the life of this man is studied, the greater he
appears, and the nearer he seems to the superhuman.
The American people, made free by Washington, do not begrudge the
legitimate glory of other illustrious men, and if they have not rendered
up to this time the homage due to Simón Bolívar, it has been mainly
through lack of accurate knowledge of his wonderful work. The city of
New York, the greatest community in the world, is now honoring his
memory by placing in a conspicuous section of its most beautiful park a
statue which the Government of Venezuela has given it; the statue of
the Man of the South, the brother in glory to our own Washington. No
greater homage could be paid to him than