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Patriot, Warrior, Statesman Father of Five Nations
[Illustration: STATUE OF THE LIBERATOR at the head of the Avenue of the
Americas, New York City.]
Patriot, Warrior, Statesman Father of Five Nations
Guillermo A. Sherwell (1878-1926) was the recipient of DoctorateDegrees from the National University of Mexico and from the Universityof Georgetown. Among the posts which he filled was that of Rector of theNational University of Mexico, Legal Counsellor of the Inter-AmericanCommittee in Washington and Professor of History and of Hispano-Americanliterature. Sincerely interested in the heroes of Spanish-Americanindependence, he dedicated himself to the study of their lives andespecially to that of the Liberator. He also wrote a biography of Sucre.
This biography of Bolívar was first published in Washington in 1921. It wasagain published in Baltimore in 1930. There have been two translations intoSpanish, that of Roberto Cortázar and that of R. Cansinos-Assens, publishedrespectively in Bogotá (1922 and 1930) and in Madrid (1922).
The Bolivarian Society of Venezuela has decided that in homage to thememory of the Liberator on the occasion of the transfer of the statue inNew York to its new site at the head of the Avenue of the Americas, thepublication of another edition of this excellent work of Mr. Sherwell'swhich gives in an excellent condensed form the historical significations ofBolívar. The children of Mr. Sherwell have kindly given their consent tothe publication of this edition which is made under the auspices of theJunta de Gobierno of the United States of Venezuela.
Introduction
In the history of peoples, the veneration of national heroes has been oneof the most powerful forces behind great deeds. National consciousness,rather than a matter of frontiers, racial strain or community of customs,is a feeling of attachment to one of those men who symbolize best thehigher thoughts and aspirations of the country and most deeply impress thehearts of their fellow citizens. Despite efforts to write the history ofpeoples exclusively from the social point of view, history has been, andwill continue to be, mainly a record of great names and great deeds ofnational heroes.
The Greeks, for us and for themselves, are not so much the people who livedin the various city-states of Hellas, nor the people dominated and more orless influenced by the Romans and later the Mohammedan conquerors, noreven the present population in which the old pure Hellenic element is in aproportion much smaller than is generally thought. Greece is what she is,lives in the life of men and shapes the minds and souls of peoples,through her great heroes, through her various gods, which were nothingbut divinized heroes. Greece is for us Apollo, as a symbol of whateveris filled with light, high, beautiful and noble; Heracles for what isstrength, energy, organization, life as it should be lived by human beings.Leonidas stands for us as a symbol of heroic deeds; Demosthenes as a symbolof the convincing powers of oratory and Pericles as the crystallization ofGrecian life in its totality of beauty, learning and social and civic life.Greece is a type, is an attitude, is a protest against oppression, is an