When the President of the Republic of La Plata, Don Hipólito Yrigoyen, instituted the Day of the Race, to which race was the high Argentine magistrate referring? Did his concept, with an antiquated preference, overlook the rest of the great ethnic mosaic of America? The Argentine president was referring to the Ibero-American race.
For us, race has nothing to do with biology. Neither moonlit complexion, nor curled hair, nor slanted eyes. Race is a perpetuity of virtues and characteristic institutions. We distinguish ourselves by our culture, our courage, our nobility, and our Catholic sense of civilization.
When Spanish unity was realized through the union of the Aragonese and Castilian kingdoms and independence was achieved with the expulsion of the Moors, Spain, full of itself, launched into the epic of the Discovery—the greatest epic of modernity. The discovery of man by man. God knows what moral cataclysm made possible the separation of humanity to the point of becoming unrecognizable to itself!
With the Discovery, Spain achieved human unity, gave the world its geographic unity, and made the Earth a sphere. Man did not know where he lived. His place of residence was mere conjecture. Spain gave him the assurance of stability, and upon feeling solid ground, man began to walk once more. The Discovery opened the path for all contemporary investigation in the fields of philosophical and natural sciences. It not only systematized the science of oceanic navigation, but brought to man a consciousness of the cosmos, setting him to sail among an immense fleet of constellations through infinite space.
Will the cosmos be infinite in the eternal perspective of that infinite space, or is its destiny a perpetual clustering and declustering in the miracle of creation?
The primacy of the Spanish race in Europe proved the benefit that a balance of valor and sanctity can bring to the world. There is a historical experience that compels us to seek ourselves in order to restore balance to the world. Today the racial sense resurges victorious.
The yellow peoples gather in the East to save themselves. Japan feels itself providentially destined to reestablish yellow unity in Asia. The Ethiopian races likewise react in Africa. The Anglo-Saxons rapidly unite in opposition to Latinity. It is a secret law of North American politics to follow the inertia of the politics of its motherland, Great Britain.
All possess from us their spiritual weapons, for it was we who, by blood and fire, with the cross of the sword and the sword of the cross, gave to old Europe and to virgin America the tradition of virtue, courage, honor, sacrifice, and contempt for death and material goods—qualities that make our race today the only hope for the world.
At this moment, when Europe trembles before the prospect of a catastrophic war, the peace of the Universe rests in the hands of two men of our race. Full faith in the values of our race: the world has placed its fate in the hands of two of our own. Don Salvador de Madariaga and Linazo, of Spain and Argentina respectively, face the problem of peace—cool, serene, upright in responsibility—with the ideal of our race raised in the banner of Christianity with which our friars brought civilization to half the planet and our heroes circled the globe.
Are there dangers? For our Race, danger has never existed.