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Title: Latin America and the United States
Addresses by Elihu Root
Author: Elihu Root
Editor: Robert Bacon
James Brown Scott
Release Date: May 30, 2009 [EBook #29003]
Language: English
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LATIN AMERICA AND THE
UNITED STATES
ADDRESSES
BY
ELIHU ROOT
COLLECTED AND EDITED BY
ROBERT BACON
AND
JAMES BROWN SCOTT
[Illustration]
CAMBRIDGE
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1917
COPYRIGHT, 1917
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTORY NOTE ix
FOREWORD xiii
SPEECHES IN BRAZIL
RIO DE JANEIRO
At the Third Conference of the American Republics:
HIS EXCELLENCY JOAQUIM NABUCO, President of the
Conference 3
MR. ROOT, Honorary President 6
MR. MARIANO CORNEJO, Delegate from Peru 11
HONORABLE A. J. MONTAGUE, Delegate from the
United States. 13
HIS EXCELLENCY BARON DO RIO BRANCO, Honorary
President 13
At the Banquet of the Minister for Foreign Affairs:
HIS EXCELLENCY BARON DO RIO BRANCO 14
MR. ROOT 15
DR. JAMES DARCY 16
MR. ROOT 17
In the Federal Senate:
SENATOR RUY BARBOSA 19
SENATOR ALFREDO ELLIS 28
In the Chamber of Deputies:
DR. PAULA GUIMARÃES 30
MR. ROOT 31
SÃO PAULO
At a Mass-Meeting of Law School Students:
MR. THEODOMIRO DE CAMARGO 35
MR. GALAOR NAZARETH DE ARUJO 36
MR. GAMA, JR 36
MR. ROOT 38
At a Football Game:
MR. ROOT 40
SANTOS
At the Commercial Association:
DR. REZENDE 41
MR. ROOT 42
PARÁ
At a Breakfast given by the Governor:
HIS EXCELLENCY AUGUSTO MONTENEGRO 45
MR. ROOT 45
PERNAMBUCO
At a Breakfast given by the Governor:
SUMMARY OF SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY SIGISMUNDO GONÇALVEZ 47
MR. ROOT 47
BAHIA
At a Banquet given by the Governor:
HIS EXCELLENCY JOSÉ MARCELINO DE SOUZA 48
MR. ROOT 50
SENATOR RUY BARBOSA 52
SPEECHES IN URUGUAY
MONTEVIDEO
At a Banquet of the Minister for Foreign Affairs:
HIS EXCELLENCY JOSÉ ROMEU 55
MR. ROOT 58
At a Banquet given by the President of Uruguay:
HIS EXCELLENCY JOSÉ BATLLE Y ORDÓÑEZ 60
MR. ROOT 63
At a Breakfast by the Reception Committee:
DR. ZORRILLA DE SAN MARTÍN 65
MR. ROOT 69
SPEECHES IN ARGENTINA
BUENOS AYRES
In the Chamber of Deputies:
HONORABLE EMILIO MITRE 73
At a Banquet given by the President of Argentina:
HIS EXCELLENCY J. FIGUEROA ALCORTA 81
MR. ROOT 84
At a Reception by American and English Residents:
MR. FRANCIS B. PURDIE 86
MR. ROOT 90
At a Banquet at the Opera House:
DR. LUIS M. DRAGO 93
MR. ROOT 97
SPEECHES IN CHILE
SANTIAGO
At the Government House:
HIS EXCELLENCY JERMÁN RIESCO 103
MR. ROOT 103
At a Banquet given by the President of Chile:
HIS EXCELLENCY ANTONIO HUNEEUS 104
MR. ROOT 109
SPEECHES IN PERU
LIMA
At a Banquet given by the President of Peru:
HIS EXCELLENCY JOSÉ PARDO Y BARREDA 113
MR. ROOT 114
Banquet of the Minister for Foreign Affairs:
HIS EXCELLENCY JAVIER PRADO Y UGARTECHE 116
MR. ROOT 123
Reception at the Municipal Council:
DR. FEDERICO ELGUERA 127
MR. ROOT 129
At an Extraordinary Session of the Senate:
SENATOR BARRIOS 130
MR. ROOT 132
University of San Marcos:
DR. LUIS F. VILLARÁN 133
DR. RAMÓN RIBEYRO 136
MR. ROOT 140
SPEECHES IN PANAMA
PANAMA
In the National Assembly:
HIS EXCELLENCY RICARDO ARIAS 145
MR. ROOT 148
SPEECHES IN COLOMBIA
CARTAGENA
At a Breakfast by the Minister for Foreign Affairs:
HIS EXCELLENCY VÁSQUEZ-COBO 153
MR. ROOT 154
THE VISIT TO MEXICO
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
At a Banquet by the International Club:
MR. ROOT 159
NUEVO LAREDO
GENERAL PEDRO RINCÓN GALLARDO 161
MR. ROOT 162
CITY OF MEXICO
At a Banquet at the National Palace:
PRESIDENT DÍAZ 162
MR. ROOT 164
At a Reception at the Municipal Palace:
GOVERNOR GUILLERMO DE LANDA Y ESCANDÓN 165
MR. ROOT 167
Reception by the Chamber of Deputies:
LICENTIATE MANUEL CALERO 168
MR. ROOT 174
Luncheon by the American Colony:
GENERAL C. H. M. Y AGRAMONTE 177
MR. ROOT 179
Mexican Academy of Legislation and Jurisprudence:
LICENTIATE LUIS MÉNDEZ 181
LICENTIATE JOAQUÍN D. CASASUS 184
MR. ROOT 188
Banquet of the American Ambassador:
AMBASSADOR THOMPSON 192
VICE-PRESIDENT CORRAL 192
MR. ROOT 193
LICENCIADO DON JOSÉ IVES LIMANTOUR 195
Banquet of the Minister for Foreign Affairs:
LICENTIATE IGNACIO MARISCAL 198
MR. ROOT 199
Farewell Supper given by Mr. Root:
MR. ROOT 202
VICE-PRESIDENT CORRAL 203
PUEBLA
At the Governor's Banquet at the Municipal Palace:
GENERAL MUCIO P. MARTÍNEZ 204
MR. ROOT 205
ORIZABA
Luncheon at the Cocolopan Factory:
GOVERNOR D. TEODORO A. DEHESA 206
MR. ROOT 206
GUADALAJARA
GOVERNOR AHUMADA 208
MR. ROOT 209
ADDRESSES IN THE UNITED STATES ON LATIN AMERICAN RELATIONS
THE CENTRAL AMERICAN PEACE CONFERENCE 213
Opening Address, Washington, D. C., December 13, 1907 214
Closing Address, Washington, December 20, 1907 217
THE PAN AMERICAN CAUSE 219
Response to the Toast of the Ambassador of Brazil at a
dinner in honor of the Rear-Admiral and Captains of
visiting Brazilian ships, Washington, D. C., May 18,
1907
THE PAN AMERICAN UNION 223
Address at the laying of the corner stone of the
building for the Pan American Union, Washington, D. C.,
May 11, 1908 228
Address at the dedication of the building, Washington,
D. C., April 26, 1910 231
OUR SISTER REPUBLIC--ARGENTINA 235
Address at a Banquet of the Chamber of Commerce, New York,
April 28, 1893
OUR SISTER REPUBLIC--BRAZIL 239
Address at a Banquet of the Chamber of Commerce, New York,
June 18, 1913
HOW TO DEVELOP SOUTH AMERICAN COMMERCE 245
Address before the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress,
Kansas City, Missouri, November 20, 1906
SOUTH AMERICAN COMMERCE 269
Address at the National Convention for the Extension of
the Foreign Commerce of the United States, Washington,
D. C., January 14, 1907
INDIVIDUAL EFFORT IN TRADE EXPANSION 283
Address at the Pan American Commercial Conference,
Washington, D. C., February 17, 1911
THE SECOND PAN AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS 291
Address of Welcome, Washington, D. C., December 30, 1915
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The collected addresses and state papers of Elihu Root, of which this is
one of several volumes, cover the period of his service as Secretary of
War, as Secretary of State, and as Senator of the United States, during
which time, to use his own expression, his only client was his country.
The many formal and occasional addresses and speeches, which will be
found to be of a remarkably wide range, are followed by his state
papers, such as the instructions to the American delegates to the Second
Hague Peace Conference and other diplomatic notes and documents,
prepared by him as Secretary of State in the performance of his duties
as an executive officer of the United States. Although the official
documents have been kept separate from the other papers, this plan has
been slightly modified in the volume devoted to the military and
colonial policy of the United States, which includes those portions of
his official reports as Secretary of War throwing light upon his public
addresses and his general military policy.
The addresses and speeches selected for publication are not arranged
chronologically, but are classified in such a way that each volume
contains addresses and speeches relating to a general subject and a
common purpose. The addresses as president of the American Society of
International Law show his treatment of international questions from the
theoretical standpoint, and in the light of his experience as Secretary
of War and as Secretary of State, unrestrained and uncontrolled by the
limitations of official position, whereas his addresses on foreign
affairs, delivered while Secretary of State or as United States Senator,
discuss these questions under the reserve of official responsibility.
Mr. Root's addresses on government, citizenship, and legal procedure are
a masterly exposition of the principles of the Constitution and of the
government established by it; of the duty of the citizen to understand
the Constitution and to conform his conduct to its requirements; and of
the right of the people to reform or to amend the Constitution in order
to make representative government more effective and responsive to their
present and future needs. The addresses on law and its administration
state how legal procedure should be modified and simplified in the
interest of justice rather than in the supposed interest of the legal
profession.
The addresses delivered during the trip to South America and Mexico in
1906, and in the United States after his return, with their message of
good will, proclaim a new doctrine--the Root doctrine--of kindly
consideration and of honorable obligation, and make clear the destiny
common to the peoples of the Western World.
The addresses and the reports on military and colonial policy made by
Mr. Root as Secretary of War explain the reorganization of the army
after the Spanish-American War, the creation of the General Staff, and
the establishment of the Army War College. They trace the origin of and
give the reason for the policy of this country in Cuba, the Philippines,
and Porto Rico, devised and inaugurated by him. It is not generally
known that the so-called Platt Amendment, defining our relations to
Cuba, was drafted by Mr. Root, and that the Organic Act of the
Philippines was likewise the work of Mr. Root as Secretary of War.
The argument before The Hague Tribunal in the North Atlantic Fisheries
Case is a rare if not the only instance of a statesman appearing as
chief counsel in an international arbitration, which, as Secretary of
State, he had prepared and submitted.
The political, educational, historical, and commemorative speeches and
addresses should make known to future generations the literary,
artistic, and emotional side of a statesman of our time, and the
publication of these collected addresses and state papers will, it is
believed, enable the American people better to understand the generation
in which Mr. Root has been a commanding figure and better to appreciate
during his lifetime the services which he has rendered to his country.
ROBERT BACON.
JAMES BROWN SCOTT.
APRIL 15, 1916.
FOREWORD
The visit of the Secretary of State to South America in 1906 was not a
summer outing. It was not an ordinary event; it was and it was intended
to be a matter of international importance. It was the first time that a
Secretary of State had visited South America during the tenure of his
office, and the visit was designed to show the importance which the
United States attaches to the Pan American conferences, and by personal
contact to learn the aims and views of our southern friends, and to show
also, by personal intercourse, the kindly consideration and the sense of
honorable obligation which the Government of the United States cherishes
for its neighbors to the south without discriminating among them, and to
make clear the destiny common to the peoples of the western world. These
were the reasons which prompted Mr. Root to undertake this message of
good will and of frank explanation, and these were also the reasons
which caused the President of the United States in his message to
Congress to dwell upon the visit, its incidents and its consequences.
Thus President Roosevelt said in his message of December 3, 1906:
The Second International Conference of American Republics,
held in Mexico in the years 1901-02, provided for the
holding of the third conference within five years, and
committed the fixing of the time and place and the
arrangements for the conference to the governing board of
the Bureau of American Republics, composed of the
representatives of all the American nations in Washington.
That board discharged the duty imposed upon it with marked
fidelity and painstaking care, and upon the courteous
invitation of the United States of Brazil, the conference
was held at Rio de Janeiro, continuing from the twenty-third
of July to the twenty-ninth of August last. Many subjects of
common interest to all the American nations were discussed
by the conference, and the conclusions reached, embodied in
a series of resolutions and proposed conventions, will be
laid before you upon the coming-in of the final report of
the American delegates. They contain many matters of
importance relating to the extension of trade, the increase
of communication, the smoothing away of barriers to free
intercourse, and the promotion of a better knowledge and
good understanding between the different countries
represented. The meetings of the conference were harmonious
and the conclusions were reached with substantial unanimity.
It is interesting to observe that in the successive
conferences which have been held the representatives of the
different American nations have been learning to work
together effectively, for, while the First Conference in
Washington in 1889, and the Second Conference in Mexico in
1901-02, occupied many months, with much time wasted in an
unregulated and fruitless discussion, the Third Conference
at Rio exhibited much of the facility in the practical
dispatch of business which characterizes permanent
deliberative bodies, and completed its labors within the
period of six weeks originally allotted for its sessions.
Quite apart from the specific value of the conclusions
reached by the conference, the example of the
representatives of all the American nations engaging in
harmonious and kindly consideration and discussion of
subjects of common interest is itself of great and
substantial value for the promotion of reasonable and
considerate treatment of all international questions. The
thanks of this country are due to the Government of Brazil
and to the people of Rio de Janeiro for the generous
hospitality with which our delegates, in common with the
others, were received, entertained, and facilitated in their
work.
Incidentally to the meeting of the conference, the Secretary
of State visited the city of Rio de Janeiro and was
cordially received by the conference, of which he was made
an honorary president. The announcement of his intention to
make this visit was followed by most courteous and urgent
invitations from nearly all the countries of South America
to visit them as the guest of their Governments. It was
deemed that by the acceptance of these invitations we might
appropriately express the real respect and friendship in
which we hold our sister republics of the southern
continent, and the Secretary, accordingly, visited Brazil,
Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Panama, and Colombia. He
refrained from visiting Paraguay, Bolivia, and Ecuador only
because the distance of their capitals from the seaboard
made it impracticable with the time at his disposal. He
carried with him a message of peace and friendship, and of
strong desire for good understanding and mutual helpfulness;
and he was everywhere received in the spirit of his message.
The members of government, the press, the learned
professions, the men of business, and the great masses of
the people united everywhere in emphatic response to his
friendly expressions and in doing honor to the country and
cause which he represented.
In many parts of South America there has been much
misunderstanding of the attitude and purposes of the United
States toward the other American republics. An idea had
become prevalent that our assertion of the Monroe Doctrine
implied, or carried with it, an assumption of superiority,
and of a right to exercise some kind of protectorate over
the countries to whose territory that doctrine applies.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Yet that impression
continued to be a serious barrier to good understanding, to
friendly intercourse, to the introduction of American
capital and the extension of American trade. The impression
was so widespread that apparently it could not be reached by
any ordinary means.
It was part of Secretary Root's mission to dispel this unfounded
impression, and there is just cause to believe that he has succeeded. In
an address to the Third Conference at Rio on the thirty-first of
July--an address of such note that I send it in, together with this
message--he said:
We wish for no victories but those of peace; for no
territory except our own; for no sovereignty except the
sovereignty over ourselves. We deem the independence and
equal rights of the smallest and weakest member of the
family of nations entitled to as much respect as those of
the greatest empire, and we deem the observance of that
respect the chief guaranty of the weak against the
oppression of the strong. We neither claim nor desire any
rights or privileges or powers that we do not freely concede
to every American republic.
These words appear to have been received with acclaim in every part of
South America. They have my hearty approval, as I am sure they will have
yours, and I cannot be wrong in the conviction that they correctly
represent the sentiments of the whole American people. I cannot better
characterize the true attitude of the United States in its assertion of
the Monroe Doctrine than in the words of the distinguished former
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Argentina, Doctor Drago, in his speech
welcoming Mr. Root at Buenos Ayres. He spoke of--
the traditional policy of the United States, which, without
accentuating superiority or seeking preponderance, condemned
the oppression of the nations of this part of the world and
the control of their destinies by the Great Powers of
Europe.
It is gratifying to know that in the great city of Buenos
Ayres, upon the arches which spanned the streets, entwined
with Argentine and American flags for the reception of our
representative, there were emblazoned not only the names of
Washington and Jefferson and Marshall, but also, in
appreciative recognition of their services to the cause of
South American independence, the names of James Monroe, John
Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and Richard Rush. We take especial
pleasure in the graceful courtesy of the Government of
Brazil, which has given to the beautiful and stately
building first used for the meeting of the conference the
name of "Palacio Monroe." Our grateful acknowledgments are
due to the Governments and the people of all the countries
visited by the Secretary of State, for the courtesy, the
friendship, and the honor shown to our country in their
generous hospitality to him.
In view of the statements made by Mr. Root himself in his various
addresses, and in view of President Roosevelt's statement of them, and
of the results of the visit, it does not seem necessary further to
detain the reader. It is, however, proper to call attention to the fact
that, in addition to the speeches delivered by Mr. Root in South
America, which were published by the Government of the United States in
an official volume, the reader will find Mr. Root's addresses during a
visit to Mexico which he made in 1906, upon his return from South
America; Mr. Root's addresses before the Central American Peace
Conference, which met in Washington in the fall of 1907; and the various
addresses which Mr. Root made in the United States in his official and
unofficial capacity, explaining to his countrymen the aims and
aspirations of the American peoples to the south of our own Republic,
the progress they have made since their emancipation from European
tutelage, and the future before them which, like ripening fruits, they
need only stretch forth the hand to pluck. The undiscovered land--for to
many of us it is unknown--is a land of exquisite beauty, grace and
courtesy, which the reader may here visit, if he choose, in company with
Mr. Root.
* * * * *
Mr. Root's addresses on his South American trip were all in English. The
addresses of welcome and congratulation were in the language of the
country in which they were delivered. They appear in translated form in
the present volume, and attention is called to the fact that they are
translations, in order to relieve the speakers of responsibility for any
infelicities of expression in their English form.
LATIN AMERICA AND THE UNITED STATES
BRAZIL
THE THIRD CONFERENCE OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLICS
RIO DE JANEIRO, JULY 31, 1906
As Secretary of State Mr. Root was _ex-officio_ chairman of
the Governing Board of the Bureau of American Republics, now
called the Pan American Union. As chairman, he took a very
great interest in considering and arranging the program of
the third conference which was to meet in Rio de Janeiro on
July 23, 1906. Indeed, he was so deeply interested in the
conference of the American republics upon the eve of the
meeting of the Second Hague Peace Conference, that he
decided to visit Rio de Janeiro during the meeting of the
conference. The American republics welcomed this decision as
soon as it was made known and urged him to visit them, and
it was with great regret that Mr. Root found himself unable
to visit all of the republics. He was made honorary
president of the conference and in that capacity delivered
the following address.
It is proper to state, in this connection, that all the
American republics were invited to attend and to participate
in the Second Hague Peace Conference and that the Conference
was set for 1906. Mr. Root was unwilling that either
conference should interfere with the other, and through his
intervention with the European Powers the Second Hague Peace
Conference was postponed to the summer of 1907, in order not
to interfere with the Pan American Conference held at Rio de
Janeiro in the summer of 1906, and the participation of the
American republics in that conference. Only three American
republics were invited to the First Hague Peace Conference,
namely, Brazil, Mexico, and the United States. Through the
efforts of the United States, and particularly through Mr.
Root's efforts as Secretary of State, all of the American
republics were invited to the Second Hague Peace Conference.
The noble passage in Mr. Root's address as honorary
president of the conference, proclaiming the equality of
American states, and quoted by President Roosevelt in his
message to Congress, reproduced in the preface to this
volume, was constantly referred to by Latin American
delegates in the Hague Peace Conference, and was quoted by
Mr. Ruy Barbosa, the Brazilian delegate, who added, "These
words reverberated through the length and the breadth of our
continent, as the American evangel of peace and of
justice."[1]
SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY JOAQUIM NABUCO
AMBASSADOR EXTRAORDINARY AND PLENIPOTENTIARY FROM THE UNITED STATES OF
BRAZIL TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, PRESIDENT OF THE CONFERENCE
You do not come here tonight as a stranger to take your place as an
honorary president of this conference. You were the first to express a
desire that the conference should meet this year; it was you who, in
Washington, brought to a happy conclusion the difficult elaboration of
its program and of its rules. Neither can we forget that at one time you
expected to be one of us, a plan you abandoned in order that you might
divide your time among all the republics that claimed the honor of your
visit. The meeting of this conference is thus to a great extent your own
work. In nothing else since you came to your high post have you taken a
more direct and personal interest. You seem to divine in the spirit that
animates you with regard to our continent the mark that your name will
leave in history.
I believe that you and the conference understand each other fully. The
periodical meeting of this body, exclusively composed of American
nations, assuredly means that America forms a political system separate
from that of Europe--a constellation with its own distinct orbit.
By aiming, however, at a common civilization and by trying to make of
the space we occupy on the globe a vast neutral zone of peace, we are
working for the benefit of the whole world. In this way we offer to the
population, to the wealth, and to the genius of Europe a much wider and
safer field of action in our hemisphere than if we formed a disunited
continent, or if we belonged to the belligerent camps into which the Old
World may become divided. One point specially will be of great interest
for you, who so heartily desire the success of this work. The conference
is convinced that its mission is not to force any nation belonging to it
to do anything she would not be freely prepared to do upon her own
initiative; we all recognize that its sole function is to impart our
collective sanction to what has already become unanimous in the opinion
of the whole continent.
This is the first time, sir, that an American Secretary of State
officially visits a foreign nation, and we all feel happy that the first
visit was to Latin America. You will find everywhere the same admiration
for your great country, whose influence in the advance of moral
culture, of political liberty, and of international law has begun
already to counterbalance that of the rest of the world. Mingled with
that admiration you will also find the sentiment that you could not rise
without raising with you our whole continent; that in everything you
achieve we shall have our share of progress.
There are few rolls of honor so brilliant in history as that of men who
have occupied your high position. Among them any distinction on the
ground of their merits would be fated to be unjust; a few names,
however, that shine more vividly in history, such as those of Jefferson,
Monroe, Webster, Clay, Seward, and Blaine--the latter the creator of
these conferences--suffice to show abroad that the United States have
always been as proud of the perfection of the mould in which their
Secretaries of State have been cast and as zealous in this respect as
they have been in the case of their Presidents. We fully appreciate the
luster added to this conference by the part you take in it tonight. It
is with sincere gratification that we welcome you. Here, you may be
sure, you are surrounded by the respect of our whole continent for your
great nation; for President Roosevelt, who has shown himself during his
term of office, and will ever remain, whatever position he may choose to
occupy in public life, one of the leaders of mankind; and for yourself,
whose sound sense of justice and whose sincere interest in the welfare
of all American nations reflect the noblest inspiration that animated
the greatest of your predecessors.
This voyage of yours demonstrates practically to the whole world your
good faith as a statesman and your broad sympathy as an American; it
shows the conscientiousness and the care with which you wish to place
before the President and the country the fundamental points of your
national external policy.
You are now exploring political seas never navigated before, lands not
yet revealed to the genius of your statesmen and toward which they were
attracted, as we are all attracted one to another, by an irresistible
continental gravitation. We feel certain, however, that at the end of
your long journey you will feel that, in their ideals and in their
hearts, the American republics form already a great political unit in
the world.
SPEECH OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE
HONORARY PRESIDENT OF THE CONFERENCE
I beg you to believe that I highly appreciate and thank you for the
honor you do me.
I bring from my country a special greeting to her elder sisters in the
civilization of America.
Unlike as we are in many respects, we are alike in this, that we are all
engaged under new conditions, and free from the traditional forms and
limitations of the Old World in working out the same problem of popular
self-government.
It is a difficult and laborious task for each of us. Not in one
generation nor in one century can the effective control of a superior
sovereign, so long deemed necessary to government, be rejected, and
effective self-control by the governed be perfected in its place. The
first fruits of democracy are many of them crude and unlovely; its
mistakes are many, its partial failures many, its sins not few. Capacity
for self-government does not come to man by nature. It is an art to be
learned, and it is also an expression of character to be developed among
all the thousands of men who exercise popular sovereignty.
To reach the goal toward which we are pressing forward, the governing
multitude must first acquire knowledge that comes from universal
education; wisdom that follows practical experience; personal
independence and self-respect befitting men who acknowledge no
superior; self-control to replace that external control which a
democracy rejects; respect for law; obedience to the lawful expressions
of the public will; consideration for the opinions and interests of
others equally entitled to a voice in the state; loyalty to that
abstract conception--one's country--as inspiring as that loyalty to
personal sovereigns which has so illumined the pages of history;
subordination of personal interests to the public good; love of justice
and mercy, of liberty and order. All these we must seek by slow and
patient effort; and of how many shortcomings in his own land and among
his own people each one of us is conscious!
Yet no student of our times can fail to see that not America alone but
the whole civilized world is swinging away from its old governmental
moorings and intrusting the fate of its civilization to the capacity of
the popular mass to govern. By this pathway mankind is to travel,
whithersoever it leads. Upon the success of this our great undertaking
the hope of humanity depends.
Nor can we fail to see that the world makes substantial progress toward
more perfect popular self-government.
I believe it to be true that, viewed against the background of
conditions a century, a generation, a decade ago, government in my own
country has advanced, in the intelligent participation of the great mass
of the people, in the fidelity and honesty with which they are
represented, in respect for law, in obedience to the dictates of a sound
morality, and in effectiveness and purity of administration.
Nowhere in the world has this progress been more marked than in Latin
America. Out of the wrack of Indian fighting and race conflicts and
civil wars, strong and stable governments have arisen. Peaceful
succession in accord with the people's will has replaced the forcible
seizure of power permitted by the people's indifference. Loyalty to
country, its peace, its dignity, its honor, has risen above
partisanship for individual leaders. The rule of law supersedes the rule
of man. Property is protected and the fruits of enterprise are secure.
Individual liberty is respected. Continuous public policies are
followed; national faith is held sacred. Progress has not been equal
everywhere, but there has been progress everywhere. The movement in the
right direction is general. The right tendency is not exceptional; it is
continental. The present affords just cause for satisfaction; the future
is bright with hope.
It is not by national isolation that these results have been
accomplished, or that this progress can be continued. No nation can live
unto itself alone and continue to live. Each nation's growth is a part
of the development of the race. There may be leaders and there may be
laggards; but no nation can long continue very far in advance of the
general progress of mankind, and no nation that is not doomed to
extinction can remain very far behind. It is with nations as it is with
individual men; intercourse, association, correction of egotism by the
influence of others' judgment; broadening of views by the experience and
thought of equals; acceptance of the moral standards of a community, the
desire for whose good opinion lends a sanction to the rules of right
conduct--these are the conditions of growth in civilization. A people
whose minds are not open to the lessons of the world's progress, whose
spirits are not stirred by the aspirations and the achievements of
humanity struggling the world over for liberty and justice, must be left
behind by civilization in its steady and beneficent advance.
To promote this mutual interchange and assistance between the American
republics, engaged in the same great task, inspired by the same purpose,
and professing the same principles, I understand to be the function of
the American Conference now in session. There is not one of all our
countries that cannot benefit the others; there is not one that cannot
receive benefit from the others; there is not one that will not gain by
the prosperity, the peace, the happiness of all.
According to your program, no great and impressive single thing is to be
done by you; no political questions are to be discussed; no
controversies are to be settled; no judgment is to be passed upon the
conduct of any state, but many subjects are to be considered which
afford the possibility of removing barriers to intercourse; of
ascertaining for the common benefit what advances have been made by each
nation in knowledge, in experience, in enterprise, in the solution of
difficult questions of government, and in ethical standards; of
perfecting our knowledge of each other; and of doing away with the
misconceptions, the misunderstandings, and the resultant prejudices that
are such fruitful sources of controversy.
And some subjects in the program invite discussion that may lead the
American republics toward an agreement upon principles, the general
practical application of which can come only in the future through long
and patient effort. Some advances at least may be made here toward the
complete rule of justice and peace among nations, in lieu of force and
war.
The association of so many eminent men from all the republics, leaders
of opinion in their own homes; the friendships that will arise among
you; the habit of temperate and kindly discussion of matters of common
interest; the ascertainment of common sympathies and aims; the
dissipation of misunderstandings; the exhibition to all the American
peoples of this peaceful and considerate method of conferring upon
international questions--this alone, quite irrespective of the
resolutions you may adopt and the conventions you may sign, will mark a
substantial advance in the direction of international good
understanding.
These beneficent results the Government and the people of the United
States of America greatly desire.
We wish for no victories but those of peace; for no territory except our
own; for no sovereignty except sovereignty over ourselves. We deem the
independence and equal rights of the smallest and weakest member of the
family of nations entitled to as much respect as those of the greatest
empire; and we deem the observance of that respect the chief guaranty of
the weak against the oppression of the strong. We neither claim nor
desire any rights or privileges or powers that we do not freely concede
to every American republic. We wish to increase our prosperity, to
expand our trade, to grow in wealth, in wisdom, and in spirit; but our
conception of the true way to accomplish this is not to pull down others
and profit by their ruin, but to help all friends to a common prosperity
and a common growth, that we may all become greater and stronger
together.
Within a few months, for the first time, the recognized possessors of
every foot of soil upon the American continents can be and I hope will
be represented with the acknowledged rights of equal sovereign states in
the great World Congress at The Hague. This will be the world's formal
and final acceptance of the declaration that no part of the American
continents is to be deemed subject to colonization. Let us pledge
ourselves to aid each other in the full performance of the duty to
humanity which that accepted declaration implies; so that in time the
weakest and most unfortunate of our republics may come to march with
equal step by the side of the stronger and more fortunate. Let us help
each other to show that for all the races of men the liberty for which
we have fought and labored is the twin sister of justice and peace. Let
us unite in creating and maintaining and making effective an
all-American public opinion, whose power shall influence international
conduct and prevent international wrong, and narrow the causes of war,
and forever preserve our free lands from the burden of such armaments as
are massed behind the frontiers of Europe, and bring us ever nearer to
the perfection of ordered liberty. So shall come security and
prosperity, production and trade, wealth, learning, the arts, and
happiness for us all.
Not in a single conference, nor by a single effort, can very much be
done. You labor more for the future than for the present; but if the
right impulse be given, if the right tendency be established, the work
you do here will go on among all the millions of people in the American
continents long after your final adjournment, long after your lives,
with incalculable benefit to all our beloved countries, which may it
please God to continue free and independent and happy for ages to come.
SPEECH OF MR. MARIANO CORNEJO
ENVOY EXTRAORDINARY AND MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY FROM THE REPUBLIC OF
PERU TO THE KINGDOM OF SPAIN, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE CHAMBER OF
DEPUTIES, DELEGATE FROM PERU
[The President. There is before me a motion presented by the
Peruvian delegation.
The motion was then read:
"The Peruvian delegation moves that the minutes of the grand
session of today, signed by all the delegates, be presented
to the Department of State at Washington as an expression of
the great pleasure with which the Pan American Conference
has received its honorary president, the Honorable Elihu
Root."]
The delegation from Peru desires that there may remain a mark of this
solemn session, in which all America has saluted as a link of union the
eminent statesman who has honored us with his presence, and, in his
person, the great American who, for the elevation of his ideas and for
the nobleness of his sentiments, is the worthy chief magistrate of the
powerful republic which serves as an example, as a stimulus, and a
center of gravitation for the political and social systems of America.
Honorable Minister, your country sheds its light over all the countries
of the continent, which in their turn, advancing at different rates of
velocity, but in the same direction, along the line of progress, form in
the landscape of American history a beautiful perspective of the future,
reaching to a horizon where the real and the ideal are mingled, and on
whose blue field the great nationality that fills all the present stands
out in bold relief.
These congresses, gentlemen, are the symbol of that solidarity which,
notwithstanding the ephemeral passions of men, constitutes, by the
invincible force of circumstances, the essence of our continental
system. They were conceived by the organizing genius of the statesmen of
Washington, in order that the American sentiment of patriotism might be
therein exalted, freeing it from that national egotism which may be
justified in the difficult moments of the formation of states, but which
would be today an impediment to the development of the American idea,
destined to demonstrate that just as the democratic principle has been
to combine liberty and order in the constitution of states, it will
likewise combine the self-government of the nations and fraternity in
the relations of the peoples.
Honorable Minister, your visit has given impulse to this undertaking.
The ideas you have presented have not only defined the interests, but
have also stirred in the soul of America all her memories, all her
dreams, and all her ideals.
It is as if the centuries had awakened in their tombs to hail the dawn
of a hope that fills them with new vigor and light.
It is the wish of Peru that this hope may never be extinguished in the
heart of America, and that the illustrious delegates who will sign these
minutes may remember that they are entering into a solemn engagement to
strive for the cause of American solidarity.
SPEECH OF HONORABLE A. J. MONTAGUE
FORMER GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA, DELEGATE FROM THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
If in disparagement of our modesty, yet in recognition of our gratitude,
the delegates from the United States have just requested me to express
our profound appreciation of the extraordinary courtesy you have
extended to our country in the person of her distinguished and able
Secretary of State, whose wise and exalted address we have all heard
with delight and satisfaction.
However, the honors you have paid him, and which come so graciously from
a polite and hospitable people, convey a deeper meaning, for in them we
must see a gratifying evidence of that American solidarity which unites
our republics in the common development of popular government, energized
by liberty, illumined by intelligence, steadied by order, and sustained
by virtue. The liberty of law, and the opportunity for duty, and the
dignity of responsibility come to us by the very genius of our
institutions. Therefore, in recognition of the fraternity which inspires
the greatest tasks which have yet fallen to the lot of so many peoples,
working together for a common end, we receive your compliment to our
country, and for this purpose I have thus detained you to hear this
imperfect expression of our thanks.
SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY BARON DO RIO BRANCO
MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE UNITED STATES OF BRAZIL
HONORARY PRESIDENT OF THE CONFERENCE
I have risen merely to make a statement which I am sure will be received
with pleasure by this illustrious assembly.
His Excellency the President of the Republic, in remembrance of the
visit paid by His Excellency President Roosevelt to this building in St.
Louis, and in order to perpetuate the memory of the coming of the
distinguished Secretary Elihu Root to this country, has resolved by a
decree bearing today's date to give to this edifice in which the
International Pan American Conference is now in session the name of
Palacio Monroe.
[The Conference then adjourned.]
BANQUET OF THE MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS
SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY BARON DO RIO BRANCO
MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Rio de Janeiro, July 28, 1906
The enthusiastic and cordial welcome you have received in Brazil must
certainly have convinced you that this country is a true friend of
yours.
This friendship is of long standing. It dates from the first days of our
independence, which the Government of the United States was the first to
recognize, as the Government of Brazil was the first to applaud the
terms and spirit of the declarations contained in the famous message of
President Monroe. Time has but increased, in the minds and hearts of
successive generations of Brazilians, the sympathy and admiration which
the founders of our nationality felt for the United States of America.
The manifestations of friendship for the United States which you have
witnessed come from all the Brazilian people, and not from the official
world alone, and it is our earnest desire that this friendship, which
has never been disturbed in the past, may continue forever and grow
constantly closer and stronger.
Gentlemen, I drink to the health of the distinguished Secretary of State
of the United States of America, Mr. Elihu Root, who has so brilliantly
and effectively aided President Roosevelt in the great work of the
political _rapprochement_ of the American nations.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I thank you again and still again for the generous hospitality which is
making my reception in Brazil so charming.
Coming here as head of the department of foreign affairs of my country
and seated at the table of the minister of foreign affairs of the great
Republic of Brazil, where I am your guest, I am forcibly reminded of the
change which, within the last few years, has taken place in the
diplomacy of the world, leading to a modern diplomacy that consists of
telling the truth, a result of the government of the people by the
people, which is in our days taking the place of personal government by
sovereigns. It is the people who make peace or war; their desires, their
sentiments, affections, and prejudices are the great and important
factors which diplomacy has to consult, which diplomats have to
interpret, and which they have to obey. Modern diplomacy is frank,
because modern democracies have no secrets; they endeavor not only to
know the truth, but also to express it.
And in this way I have come here as your guest; not because the fertile
or ingenious mind of some ruler has deemed it judicious or convenient,
but because my visit naturally represents the friendship which the
eighty million inhabitants of the great Republic of the North have for
the twenty million people of Brazil; and it is a just interpretation of
that friendship. The depth of sentiment which in me corresponds to your
kind reception results from the knowledge I have that the cordiality
which I find here represents in reality the friendship that Brazilians
entertain for my dear country. Not in my personal name or as
representative of an isolated individual, but in the name of all the
people of my country and in the spirit of the great declaration
mentioned by you, Mr. Minister, the declaration known by the name of
Monroe, and which was the bulwark and safeguard of Latin America from
the dawn of its independence, I raise my glass, certain that all present
will unite with me in a toast to the progress, prosperity, and happiness
of the Brazilian Republic.
SPEECH OF DR. JAMES DARCY
The same deep and profound emotion which I, as a Brazilian and an
American, feel in this hour is undoubtedly felt by all here on the
floor--representatives of the nation, and identical with the nation
itself. When the Chamber of Deputies sees the Secretary of State of the
United States of America in the gallery it cannot go on with its regular
work even for a minute longer. So great and extraordinary have been the
demonstrations occasioned by the presence in our country of the eminent
envoy of the great republic of the United States that it is necessary
that the Chamber, in this hour unequaled in the whole life of the
American Continent, manifest without delay its feelings of sympathy with
the work for the closer _rapprochement_ of the American nations.
In Scandinavia, the land of almost perpetual fogs and mists, there died
not long ago an extraordinary man. Ibsen, by some called revolutionary,
by others evolutionary, dreamed in all his works of a new day of peace
and concord for all mankind. This dream did not exist in the poet's
brain alone, for it has imbedded itself in the mind and heart of a great
American politician--Elihu Root.
From the moment he set foot on Brazilian soil he has been received with
loud acclamations of joy, in which all Brazilians have joined. The
demonstration which the student-body of Brazil made a short time ago,
which for enthusiasm and spontaneity of feeling has never been equaled,
manifested our feeling toward Mr. Root.
In his speech at the third Conference of the American Republics, the
statesman, the philosopher, the sociologist, the great humanitarian that
Elihu Root is, opened up a new era for the countries of the continent
of such an order that the old standard of morality has fallen to the
ground in ruins. On the public buildings, on the fortresses and masts of
war vessels, waves the same flag--a white flag, reminding the American
people that a new epoch of fraternity has risen for them.
Nothing has ever done so much for peace as this visit of Elihu Root
among us. It forms a spectacle that must mark an epoch in our national
life. The Chamber of Deputies, interpreting the unanimous sentiment of
the nation, from north to south, of old and young alike, has suggested
that I offer a motion, which is already approved in advance, and make
the request that Mr. Elihu Root be invited to take a seat on the floor
of the Chamber, as a mark of homage in return for the honor he has done
us in making a visit to this House.
The memory of this visit will live forever in our hearts. He who bestows
all favors will undoubtedly reward those who have done so much for
American peace and fraternity by setting them up as models for the whole
world.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I thank you sincerely for the flattering expressions which, through your
able and happy spokesmen, you have made regarding myself. I thank you
still more deeply for the expressions of friendship for my country. I
beg you to permit me in my turn to make acknowledgment to you, the
representatives of the people of Brazil--acknowledgment which I can make
to the President of the Republic, which I can make personally to your
distinguished and most able Secretary for Foreign Affairs, but which I
wish to make on this public occasion to the people of Brazil. I wish to
thank the Brazilian people for sending to my country a man so able and
so successful in interpreting his people to us as my good friend Mr.
Nabuco. I wish to thank the people of Brazil--its legislators, its
educated men of literature and of science, its students in their
generous and delightful enthusiasm, and its laboring people in their
simple and honest appreciation--for the reception which they have given
me, overwhelming in its hospitality and friendship; for the courtesy,
the careful attention to every detail that could affect the comfort, the
convenience, and the pleasure of myself and my family; for the abundant
expressions of friendship which I have found in your streets and in your
homes; for the bountiful repasts; for the clouds of beautiful flowers
with which you have surrounded us; and, more than all, for the deep
sense of sincerity in your friendship which has been carried to my
heart. I wish to make this acknowledgment directly to you, the direct
and immediate representatives of the people.
We, who in official life have our short day, are of little consequence.
You and I, Mr. President, Baron Rio Branco, the President of the
Republic himself--we are of little consequence. We come and go. We
cannot alter the course of nations or the fate of mankind; but the
people, the great mass of humanity, are moving up or down. They are
marching on, keeping step with civilization and human progress; or they
are lapsing back toward barbarism and darkness. The people today make
peace and make war--not a sovereign, not the whim of an individual, not
the ambition of a single man; but the sentiment, the friendship, the
affection, the feelings of this great throbbing mass of humanity,
determine peace or war, progress or retrogression. And coming to a
self-governing people from a self-governing people, I would interpret my
fellow-citizens--the great mass of plain people--to the great mass of
the plain people of Brazil. No longer the aristocratic selfishness,
which gathers into a few hands all the goods of life, rules mankind.
Under our free republics our conception of human duty is to spread the
goods of life as widely as possible; to bring the humblest and the
weakest up into a better, a brighter, a happier existence; to lay deep
the foundations of government, so that government shall be built up from
below, rather than brought down from above. These are the conceptions in
which we believe. True, our languages are different; true, we draw from
our parent countries many different customs, different ways of acting
and of thinking; but, after all, the great, substantial, underlying
facts are the same, humanity is the same. We live, we learn, we labor,
and we struggle up to a higher life the same--you of Brazil and we of
the United States of the North. In the great struggle of humanity our
interests are alike, and I hold out to you the hands of the American
people, asking your help and offering you ours in this great struggle of
humanity for a better, a nobler, and a happier life. You will make
mistakes in your council, that is the lot of humanity; no government can
be perfect--till the millennium comes; but year by year and generation
by generation substantial advance toward more perfect government, more
complete order, more exact justice, and more lofty conceptions of human
duty will be made.
God be with you in your struggle as He has been with us. May your
deliberations ever be ruled by patriotism, by unselfishness, by love of
country, and by wisdom for the blessing of your whole people, and may
universal prosperity and growth in wisdom and righteousness of all the
American republics act and react throughout the continents of America
for all time to come.
SPEECH OF SENATOR RUY BARBOSA
In the Federal Senate of Brazil, at Rio de Janeiro, August 2, 1906
If your excellency will permit me, Mr. President, I will call your
attention and that of the Senate to the fact that at this moment this
House is honored by the presence of Mr. Elihu Root, Secretary of State
of the United States.
For a week his stay among us has been spreading interest throughout the
country and filling the capital with joy, causing excitement among the
neighboring nations, and fixing the eyes of Europe on this obscure part
of the world. The fact is that we are not only in the presence of an
individual of great renown, who is one of the highest personages among
contemporaneous statesmen, with a reputation which is dear to the
western hemisphere, but we are experiencing an event of the most
far-reaching international importance, in the sense in which this word
corresponds to the common interests of the human race.
In the organization of the Government of the United States, the
portfolio of Secretary of State constitutes a notably characteristic and
peculiar feature. The Secretary is not merely a minister for foreign
affairs, but is the guardian of the seals of state, the medium through
whom the laws are promulgated, the depositary of the government
archives, and the first assistant of the Chief Executive. Tradition has
conferred upon him a dignity next to that of President, the law making
him second in the order of succession to the presidency by vacancy of
the office, while it has become the custom for the President to invite
him to participate in the performance of his duties rather as a
colleague and associate than as an adviser and servant. The triumphant
candidate in a presidential election has at times called to this office
his vanquished opponent, thus showing the homage paid by party spirit to
the value of merit. Being popularly designated as head of the Cabinet,
and granted the honors of precedence at diplomatic functions, his high
political entity inscribes him, together with the head of the nation,
the Secretary of the Treasury, the Speaker of the House of
Representatives, and the chairmen of the two great financial committees
of Congress, among the five or six personalities whose influence
usually directs the Government of the United States.
But a true idea of this eminent position cannot be formed without some
light on its history; for the line of Secretaries of State sparkles with
the almost continuous luster of a long, luminous zone, in which
irradiate the dazzling names of Jefferson, one of the patriarchs of
independence in the foundation and organization of the United States,
the philosopher, the writer, the statesman, the creator of parties, the
systematizer of popular education, and the twice-elected successor of
Washington; of Randolph, through whose initiative the stain produced by
the word "slavery" was effaced from the provisional draft of the
American Constitution; of Marshall, the most eminent jurist in the
Republic, the oracle of the Constitution and the constructor of the
Federal law; of Madison, the emulator of Hamilton in the editing of _The
Federalist_; of Monroe, the asserter of the international doctrine of
the independence of this continent; of John Quincy Adams, the pioneer of
abolitionism in his radical condemnation of slavery; of Clay, the warm
defender of the South American colonies in their struggle for
emancipation; of Webster, the Demosthenes of the Union and of American
liberty; of Seward, the rival for election of Lincoln, but who, being
defeated by the latter, was invited by him to form part of his Cabinet;
of Forsyth, Calhoun, Everett, Marcy, Evarts, Blaine, Bayard, and Hay. It
is a path of stars, at the termination of which the administration of
Mr. Elihu Root does not pale.
The annals of the United States could be traced by the route of this
numerous constellation, whose radiant points sparkle around yon apex, to
send forth their beams today from yon gallery, illumining the Brazilian
Senate, transfiguring the scene of our ordinary deliberations, and
realizing, with the pomp of the evocation of this glorious past, the
spectacle of the visit of one nation to the other which the illustrious
Secretary of State presented before our eyes when, a few days ago, he
said in response to our eminent and worthy Minister for Foreign
Relations, that his coming in the official capacity of his office to the
land of the Cruzeiro constitutes a natural expression of the friendship
which the eighty millions of inhabitants of the great Republic of the
North feel toward the twenty million souls of the Republic of Brazil.
It is not, then, a diplomatic representation; it is not an embassy. It
is the Government of the United States itself in person, in one of its
predominant organs--an organ so exalted that it holds almost as high a
position there in the national sentiment as the Presidency itself. For
the first time is the North American Union visiting another part of the
continent--Latin America. And this direct, personal and most solemn
visit of one America to the other has now as its scene the Brazilian
Senate, assuming, within the brief dimensions of this chamber, the
magnificent proportions of a picture for which our nation constitutes
the frame and the attentive circle of the nations the gallery.
For the modest importance of our nation, the event is of incomparable
significance. None other can be likened to it in the history of our
existence as a republic. After sixteen years of embarrassments, perils,
and conflicts, the latter appears to be receiving its final consecration
in this solemnity. It is the grand recognition of our democracy, the
proclamation of the attainment of our majority as a republic. The
stability of the government, its prestige, its honor and its vigor,
could not have received a greater attestation before the world. Replying
to the doubts, the negations, and the affronts with which our '89 was
received, amidst passions at home and prejudices abroad, it signifies
the irrevocable triumph of our revolution, closes forever the era of
monarchical reassertions and opens up our future to order, confidence,
and labor.
Almost all of us who compose this assembly, Mr. President, belong to
that generation who were opening their eyes to public life, or were
preparing for it by their higher studies, when the struggle was going on
in the United States between slavery and freedom--that campaign of
Titans which tore the entrails of America and shook the globe for many
years.
Washington, Jefferson, and Madison had died, despairing of the
extinction of slavery. This being openly proclaimed as the corner stone
of the Confederacy, which gloried in having as its basis and in holding
as a supreme truth the subjection by Providence of one race to the
other, it looked as if the work of the patriarchs of 1787 was doomed to
inevitable destruction against the black rock, thus consummating the
Jeffersonian prophecy.
But Christian order prevailed against the chaos of servile interests,
showing that the Constitution of the United States was not that "league
with death" and that "compact with hell," as was boldly declared by
Garrison upon the breaking out of the abolitionist reaction. And when
the Union rose again, still clinging to liberty, on the ruins of slavery
and dismemberment, we who had heard the earthquake, we who had witnessed
the opening of the abyss, we who had seen swallowed up in it a million
lives and an incalculable amount of wealth, and knew of the misfortunes
and tears it had caused, were surprised by the divine dawn which finally
appeared with the consoling victory of justice; and we felt the
penetration of its rays here into the depths of the Brazilian
conscience, realizing, with a holy horror of the tragedy of which we had
just been the witnesses, that we were still a country of slaves.
Very soon, however, the law of September 28, 1874, immediately
thereafter Brazilian abolitionism, and shortly thereafter the brilliant
stroke of abolition in 1888, responded to the splendid American lesson
by our purification from this stigma.
And if we adopted this lesson in 1889 and 1891, when we embraced the
federal system and framed a republican constitution, it was not, as has
been said, in obedience to the wishes, caprices, or predilections of
theorists. Ever since the beginning of the past century, the liberal
spirit among us had become imbued with Americanism through reading _The
Federalist_. The idea of federation carried away the Brazilian Liberals
in 1831. The condemnation of the monarchy in Brazil involved
fundamentally that of administrative centralization and the
single-headed form of government which were embodied in that régime. The
United States gave us the first model, and up to that time had furnished
us the only example of a republican form of government, extending over a
territorial expanse such as only monarchies had previously shown
themselves capable of governing. The dilemma was inevitable. We had
either to adhere to the European solution, which is a constitutional
monarchy, or else establish a republic on the American model.
We are still today as far from the perfect model which the United States
present of a federal republic, as we were from a likeness to England
under the parliamentary monarchy, although England was the example we
followed in that régime, just as the United States is our example in our
present government. But just as our backwardness in parliamentary
customs was no cause for us to revert from a constitutional to an
absolute monarchy, so the insufficiency of our republican customs
constitutes no reason for abandoning the federal republic. There are no
conditions more favorable for the political education of a nation than
those presented by our constitutional mechanism, modeled after the
American type; nor could a practical schooling be offered us for such
education equal to that of an intimate approximation between us and our
great model, our relations of all kinds with the United States being
drawn closer and multiplied.
Between them and us there was interposed the stupid, sullen wall of
prejudices and suspicions with which weakness naturally imagines to
shelter and protect itself from force. But this wall is cracking,
tottering, and beginning to crumble to ruins under the action of the
soil and the atmosphere--under the influx of the sentiments awakened by
this great movement of friendship on the part of the United States
toward the other American nations.
In this attitude, in the transparent clearness of its intentions, in the
eloquence of its language, and in the manifest frankness of its
promises, there stands forth a broad image of truthfulness, which may be
likened to those breezes in the sky on bright and sunny days which clear
the horizon, cause the azure of the firmament to pervade our souls, and
communicate the energy of life to our lungs. May God sustain the strong
spirit of magnanimity, which is as advantageous to themselves as to the
weak; and may He illumine the minds of the weak with an understanding of
a situation which, mutually comprehended and maintained with firmness
and honesty, will be productive of incalculable benefits for both
parties!
The United States would already, long ago, have exhausted the admiration
of the universe by the constant marvels of their greatness, if they were
not continually surpassing themselves.
I do not allude to their wonderful fecundity, which in a hundred years
has raised their population from five to eighty millions of souls. I do
not speak of the greatness of their expansion, which has almost
quintupled their territorial area in one century; I do not refer to the
greatness of their military prowess, which has never yet met a conqueror
either by land or sea. Neither am I occupying myself with the greatness
of their opulence, which is tending to transfer from London to New York
the center of capital and the money market of the world. I am thinking
only of their benefits to democracy, to right, and to civilization.
Their fundamental principles as colonies were based on religious
freedom. Their first charters embodied the essence of liberty in the
British constitution. Their Federal Constitution is considered by the
best judges as the highest product of political genius extant among
mankind. The five years of their civil war constituted a most tremendous
sacrifice, made by the superhuman heroism of a nation in the higher
interests of humanity, for the principle of human freedom. Their
international influence is frequently exerted in the great causes of
Christianity and civilization, first struggling as they did against
piracy in the Mediterranean; then opening the doors of Japan to the
commerce of the world in the Pacific, or fighting for the Armenians
against Ottoman despotism, or intervening in behalf of the Jews against
the tyranny of the Muscovite; here sympathizing with South America
against Spain, with Greece against Turkey, and with Hungary against
Austria; there promoting that memorable peace between the Russians and
Japanese at Portsmouth, which terminated one of the most horrible
hecatombs of peoples on record in the history of warfare. The methods
and rules of their teaching, the inspiration of their inventors, the
penetrating nature of their institutions, the reproductive influence of
their example, the contagious activity of their doctrines, the active
proselytism of their reforms, the irresistible fascination of their
originality, the exuberant florescence of their Christianity, all exert
a profound influence upon European culture and on the morals, the
politics, and the destinies of the world, and guide, improve, and
transform the American nations.
Nothing, however, could be conceived which would more magnificently
crown this miraculous career and assure forever to that nation the
title, _par excellence_, of the civilizer among nations, serving the
interests of its own prosperity as well as ours by a sincere, effective,
and tenacious adherence to the doctrine announced by Mr. Root, namely
the doctrine of mutual respect and friendship, of progressive
coöperation among the American States, large or small, weak or strong;
abandoning foolish race prejudices and admitting the superior power of
imitation, science, and modern inventions, which are the moral factors
in the development of peoples; and recognizing the natural truth that
the growing evolution of the human race must embrace in its orbit of
light all the civilized nations on this and the other continents.
Everything in the visit of Mr. Root, everything in his words, in his
acts, in the impressions left among us by his person, everything speaks
to us with absolute sincerity and resolute mind of devotion to this
auspicious program. Our eminent guest has seen how Brazil receives the
living message of the people of the United States; and, when he returns,
a faithful witness of our civilization, which is so little known, so
ill-treated, and so calumniated abroad, he will in all probability carry
with him a conviction of having found in this disliked South America,
between the Oyapoc and the Plata, the Atlantic and the Andes, a
non-indigenous, although new sister of the United States, in which the
opinion of public men and popular sentiment have but one ambition in
regard to the policy now inaugurated--that it may become rooted for
centuries and that it may shelter our future under its branches.
I wished, gentlemen--and all the members of this Senate wished--that Mr.
Root might hear from the mouth of the man of experience, authority, and
austere demeanor who is to preside over us, the most eloquent and
highest of these expressions of good wishes.
For this purpose I move that the Senate do now resolve itself into a
committee of the whole, and that the Secretary of State of the United
States be invited to take the post of honor in this assembly. In this
manner the proceedings of the Brazilian Senate and its traditions will
preserve the memory of this date forever. For it is not one of those
dates which flash and vanish into the past like falling meteors, but it
is of those which seek the future by luminously furrowing the horizon of
posterity like ascending stars.
And if the future is to be a substitution of right in place of might, of
arbitration in place of war, of congresses in place of armies, of
harmony, coöperation, and solidarity among the American peoples, in
place of hostile rivalries, we may, on seeing seated here today at the
right of our President, the Secretary of State of the United States,
affirm to him, as Henry Clay did on the reception of Lafayette, with a
different intention but just as truthfully, that he is seated in the
midst of posterity.
SPEECH OF SENATOR ALFREDO ELLIS
The Federal Senators, representatives of the Brazilian nation,
representing the people of twenty states of the Union and of the Federal
District, here congregated to receive you, through me, salute you, and
through you, salute President Roosevelt and the whole people of the
United States of America. You are truly welcome amongst us, and you are
welcome amongst us because we know your history; we know the history of
your country; we know the history of your great men, from Washington to
Roosevelt. You are truly and sincerely welcome amongst us, because you
are the fortunate messenger, the happy harbinger of a coming
civilization that is looming already in the not-far-distant future,
bringing in your hands the snowy and brilliant credentials of
brotherhood and peace. Though you come here, Mr. Root, amid the
cannon's roar, or the din of popular acclamations, the echo in its grand
unanimity that these words awaken in the hearts of the Brazilian people
throughout all the land, from north to south, from east to west, should
convince you that we, the Brazilian people, trust that the great work
that is now being done through the delegates of the nineteen American
republics assembled here for the Third Conference of the Pan American
Congress, will bear fruit--that it will bear fruit just the same as that
of which the basis was laid a long time ago in Philadelphia, on July 4,
1776, written by Thomas Jefferson and signed by the delegates of nine
out of the thirteen colonies that had risen in arms against the
mother-country. On that eventful and never-to-be-forgotten day,
Pennsylvania's delegate--the great, the wise, the noble Benjamin
Franklin--with his heart full of sad misgivings, full of sad forebodings
about the final issue of the war, raising himself from the chair on
which he had been sitting, observed on its back, embroidered on the
tapestry, the figure of a beaming sun with its golden rays. "I do not
know," he said, "if this is the image of a rising or a setting sun;
please God Almighty that it may be that of a rising sun, enlightening
the birth of a free and prosperous people!" And it was--and it was. His
wish--his dear wish--was fulfilled; his prophecy was realized. The
country you represent, Mr. Root, is now the wonder of the world for its
greatness, for its power, for its prosperity.
What we desire--what the Brazilian people desire--what we hope, is that
in your case, the same prophecy may be made and the same prophecy may be
realized in relation to the results we expect from the Pan American
Conference, strengthening with indissoluble bonds of harmonious concord
and a very lasting peace, American brotherhood; banishing from the lands
of the New World all ambition of conquest and the bloody strife of
fratricidal wars.
To the American people, our brothers, our friends, and our companions,
the Brazilian nation, treading the same paths and controlled by the same
great desire to attain its destinies in the history of the world, sends
through you its most affectionate, its most fraternal, its most hearty
salutation.
ADDRESSES IN THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES
SPEECH OF DOCTOR PAULA GUIMARÃES
August 2, 1906
The Chamber of Deputies feels itself honored by the presence of Mr.
Elihu Root, Secretary of State of the United States of America.
The distinguished member of the Government of our great sister republic,
whose coming to this country is a mark of regard and esteem which is
very flattering to us and which will never be forgotten, has already had
opportunity to ascertain how deep and sincere are the sentiments of
sympathy which the people of Brazil feel for the North American
republic, in the extraordinary demonstrations of joy and gratitude which
have everywhere attended him, and which are an eloquent proof of the
sincerity and cordiality of our traditional friendship and disinterested
admiration.
The entrance of Brazil into the family of republics of the American
Continent has resulted in closer ties of confraternity among the nations
of the New World. As a result of the policy of approximation, happily
adopted by the Government of Brazil, we have the meeting in this capital
of the Pan American Congress, where the distinguished delegates of the
sister republics have been given a warm and hearty welcome. From the
White House, where President Roosevelt firmly maintains the traditions
of great American names, there has come to us on a mission of peace an
eminent and highly esteemed statesman, bringing us political ideas of a
new mould and the frank diplomacy of modern democracies. In words of
the highest significance, which are unsurpassed for precision and
frankness, the far-seeing statesman has revealed to us the ideal of
justice and peace to which humanity in the near future is to attain,
because the rule of force "is losing ground," and "sentiment, feeling
and affection are gathering more and more sway over the affairs of men."
The words of the distinguished American are familiar to the whole world,
but here they are firmly engraved on our loyal hearts.
Differences disappear before the great historic fact at which it is our
good fortune to be present at this moment, the beginning of a new era
which is bound to bring great benefits to our country. The students,
full of hope and enthusiasm, the orderly working people--all classes of
society, in short, unite with public officials in unanimity of approval.
Gentlemen, it is to confirm these sentiments which every Brazilian
feels, to proclaim the national aspirations of harmony, conciliation,
and union, that I arise to thank, in behalf of the Chamber of Deputies,
the representatives of the popular will, Mr. Elihu Root, for his
presence among us, and to greet in his person the great and glorious
republic of the United States of North America, greater for the example
it gives us of liberty, energy, and order than for its extraordinary
material strength. Glory to the Stars and Stripes!
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I beg you to believe in the depth of sensibility with which I have
received the honor you do me, and the honor you do my country. The
similarity of our institutions is such that I come into the presence of
this august body with full appreciation of its dignity and its
significance. I feel that I am in the presence of the great lawmaking
body to which is intrusted, by its representation of the separate states
of Brazil, the preservation of local self-government throughout this
vast empire; so that the people of each one of your twenty states, and
each one of the many states to be erected hereafter, as your population
increases, may govern itself in its local affairs without the oppression
which inevitably results from the absolute rule of a central power,
ignorant of the necessities and of the feelings of each locality; and so
that also, consistently with that local self-government, the nationality
of Brazil shall be preserved and the principle of national power, the
dignity and power of the nation that protects all local self-governments
in their liberty, shall never be decreased. I feel also that I am in the
presence of the body from which must come, not only in the present but
in the great future of Brazil, that conservative force which is so
essential to regulate the action of a democracy. By your constitution,
by the necessities of your existence, it will be your function to
prevent rash and ill-considered action, to see that all the expedients
of government, all the theories that are suggested, are submitted to the
test of practical experience and sound reason.
And so, with the deepest interest in the continued success of the
Brazilian experiment in self-government, I am most deeply impressed with
the honor you have done me. The encomiums which have been passed here
upon my country are such that to know of them must in itself be an
incentive to deserve them. I hope that every word which has been spoken
here about that dear republic from which I come, may go to the knowledge
of every citizen of the United States of America, and may lead him to
feel that it is his duty to see that this good opinion of our sister
republic is justified.
Senator Ruy Barbosa has justly interpreted the meaning of my visit. I
come not merely as the messenger of friendship; I come as that, but not
merely as that. When democratic institutions first found their place in
the protests of the New World against a colonial government that bound
us all hand and foot; when the plain people undertook to govern
themselves without any Heaven-sent superior force to control them, how
gloomy were the prognostications, how unfriendly were the wishes, how
uncomplimentary were the expressions which, upon the other side of the
Atlantic, greeted the new experiment--that we should have rule by the
mob, that disorder and anarchy would ensue, that plain men were
incapable and always would be incapable, of maintaining an orderly and
peaceful government. Lo, how the scene has changed! The conception of
man's capacity to govern himself, gaining year by year credit, belief,
demonstration, in the new fields of virgin lands, north and south, has
been carried back across the Atlantic until the old idea of a necessary
sovereign is shaken to the base. No longer is it man's conception of
government that it must be by a superior force, pressing down what is
bad; but that the pressure shall be from beneath, with all the good
impulses and capacities of human nature pressing upward what is good. I
come here not only to hold out the right hand of friendship to you from
my country, but also to assert in the most positive, the most salient
way the solidarity of republican institutions in the New World, the
similarity of results, the mutual confidence that is felt by my country
in yours, and by yours in mine; to assert before all the world that the
great experiment of free self-government is a success north and south,
the whole New World over. From the realization of this fact--this
certain and indisputable fact--that republican institutions are
successful, will come that confidence which underlies wealth, the
security of property that is the basis of our civilization, the
certainty that the fruits of enterprise will be secure, which is the
incentive to activity, the independence of the people from the hard
stress of poverty--the independence that comes from ample means of
support, and is a condition of growth and enjoyment in life. More than
wealth, more than production, more than trade, more than any material
prosperity, there will come with them learning, universal education,
literature, arts, the charms and graces of life. I would think but
little of my country if it had merely material wealth. I would think but
little of my country if the conception of its people was that we were to
live like the robber baron of the Middle Ages, who merely gathered into
his castle for his own luxury the wealth that he had taken from the
surrounding people.
A land of free institutions, in which wealth and prosperity are made the
basis upon which to build up the arts, graces, and virtues of life, and
in which there is a noble and generous sympathy with every one laboring
in the same cause--that, indeed, is a country of which one may be proud;
that is a country which is the natural result of free institutions.
So I come to you to say: Let us know each other better; let us aid each
other in the great work of advancing civilization; let the United States
of North America and the United States of Brazil join hands, not in
formal written treaties of alliance, but in the universal sympathy and
confidence and esteem of their peoples; join hands to help humanity
forward along the paths which we have been so happy as to tread. Let us
help each other to grow in wisdom and in spirit, as we have grown in
wealth and prosperity.
Mr. Chairman, my poor words are all too ineffective to express the depth
of sentiment and height of hope that I experience here. I believe this
is not an idle dream; I believe it is not merely the kindly expression
or enthusiasm of the moment, but that after this day there will remain
among both our peoples a sentiment which will be of incalculable benefit
to the great mass of mankind, which shall help these two great nations
to preserve and promote the rule of ordered liberty, of peace and
justice, and of that spirit, which underlies all our Christian
civilization, the spirit of humanity, higher than the spirit of
nationality, more precious than material wealth, indispensable to the
true fulfillment of the mission of liberty.
SÃO PAULO
SPEECH OF THEODOMIRO DE CAMARGO
At a Mass-Meeting of Students of the Law School, in front of the
Palacio Chaves, August 4, 1906
The Law School of São Paulo is the tabernacle of our proudest ideals, of
our most grateful traditions. Thence departed the first champions of
liberty for the holy crusade of the slaves' liberation; there expanded
and strengthened the republican ideas that caused the fall of the
monarchy; thence have come almost all our rulers and leading men.
It is in the name of that school, sir, that I salute you and give you
welcome, not only as the eminent statesman but also and specially as the
loyal and dedicated friend of Brazil.
I can assure you that common to all Brazilians are the sentiments of
true sympathy and great admiration for the noble country which has in
you so worthy a representative. This sympathy and this admiration,
common to all Brazilians, are well deserved by the wonderful people
which liberated Cuba with the precious blood of her sons; are well
deserved by the generous nation which contributed so much in raising in
the Orient the banner of peace, putting an end to one of the most
sanguinary struggles registered in universal history. The deep joy with
which you have been received since you set foot on Brazilian soil is
sufficient to assert what I say.
We rejoice to receive your visit because it is a proof that our feelings
are reciprocated, and also because it will be a stronger link to bind
forever the two great republics that are destined to lead their American
sisters through the wide path of progress and civilization.
President McKinley wisely said: "The wisdom and energy of all the
nations are not too great for the world's work"; so our earnest vows are
that your voyage coöperates for the true fraternity of the American
republics, that they may work together in the pursuit of the highest and
noblest endeavor of humanity, which is universal peace.
SPEECH OF MR. GALAOR NAZARETH DE ARUJO, OF THE NORMAL SCHOOL
"Be welcome, distinguished visitor!" This phrase, so often addressed to
you during your voyage in Brazil, may now be said again to express the
sincerity with which the people of São Paulo receive the visit of one of
the greatest statesmen of modern America.
Amongst the institutions of education of this city there is the Normal
School, which has always tried to follow the methods and systems in use
in your great country.
In the name of this institution and representing my colleagues, I come
before you, sir, to repeat, with all my heart, the words you have heard
so many times in Brazil: "Welcome, Mr. Root!"
SPEECH OF MR. GAMA, JR., OF THE COMMERCIAL SCHOOL
A representative of a peaceful people is always welcome to Brazil. You
know already our traditional policy. From the beginning of our existence
as a nation we have accustomed ourselves to see in your glorious country
the nation which, first of all, substituted for military imperialism the
beneficent and civilizing policy of free commercial expansion, joining
producers and consumers without any link of dependence.
We followed with ardent sympathy your liberal and eminently humane
action in the Chinese Empire, at the moment when that monarchy seemed
doomed to dismemberment.
And you, sir, were the first to make understood the need of the
maintenance of the administrative and territorial _status quo_ of that
empire, to which, as well as to other nationalities of the Far East, you
are today the securest guaranty of national integrity.
You come to us, therefore, with the credentials of a peaceful people,
and of a people that respects the autonomy of other nations, no matter
how weak they may be.
In this quality we open to you our arms, and we heartily meet your
wishes in the assurance that we contribute to the development of the
ideas of peace and steadiness, without which the evolution of a people
can only be accomplished imperfectly and at the cost of many centuries
of hard effort.
The United States of Brazil acknowledged the advantages of a perfect
communion of views in commercial matters with their great sister of
North America. They were aware that essentially opposite points of view
regarding commercial interchange separate them from some of the nations
of the Old World.
So long as on the other side of the Atlantic an almost invincible
barrier of customs duties impedes the entry of our products into markets
naturally hostile to South American productions, our country has only
two alternatives: either to continue the very irksome commercial
relations with those markets, or to look for others with evident loss of
a part of the harmony that ought to exist between nations affiliated by
origin and for so many years united by the most intimate links of
sympathy and intellectual solidarity.
Consequently, we adopted the legitimate defense of protectionism, while
remaining faithful to those friendly feelings, and very naturally we
turned to the continental nation that better understood the advantages
of a free exchange of products; we looked unsuspiciously to the friendly
people who conceived the idea of making in America, united and strong,
a large neutral area devoted to peace amidst the possible divergencies
that may perchance in time separate in aggressive antagonism a
rejuvenated and martial Orient and the nations of the West.
We understood at once the difficult task to be accomplished, in order,
by your side and with your aid, to secure the neutralization of America,
so desirable and so necessary for the final reconciliation of nations
still militarized, and for the establishment of a secure standpoint for
the general fraternization of mankind.
All the enthusiastic appreciation of the twenty-one democracies that
follow and love your deed, and all the facilities and coöperation that
they can offer for its accomplishment, you will find, sir, should you
visit them as you now do one of their number, in the corresponding
twenty-one Brazilian capitals.
The Commercial School of São Paulo, from which very likely will come
later commercial agents of Brazil, sincerely espouses your policy of
peace and solidarity on the American continent; and in the person of its
eminent chancellor salutes the noble North American nation.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I thank you, students of São Paulo, for your greeting and for your
generous sympathy.
I am here upon a mission of friendship and of appreciation. I am here in
order that my country may know more of the people of Brazil, and in
order that the people of Brazil may learn more of my country, believing
that the cause of almost all controversy between nations, the most
fertile source of weakness and of war, is national misunderstanding and
the prejudice that comes from misunderstanding.
I shall go back to my country and tell my people that I have found in
this famous city of learning, São Paulo, a great body of young men who
are gathering inspiration in the cause of learning and of human rights
from the atmosphere of liberty and independence.
I shall tell them that here, where the independence of Brazil was born,
the spirit of that independence still lives in the youth of Brazil.
I shall tell them that here in the birthplace of presidents more young
Brazilians are treading the first steps in the pathway of patriotism and
greatness, pressing on to take the place, to take up and continue the
great work of the men born in São Paulo, who have contributed so
mightily to the greatness of Brazil.
Let me say one word, young gentlemen, as to the lessons that you may
draw from your country's glorious past.
Noble and inspiring as are the victories Brazil has won in war;
remarkable, eloquent, unsurpassed as are the great things done in the
past by the Paulistas, greater and nobler victories of peace await the
people of Brazil and São Paulo.
You have, as my country had, a vast continent with savage nature to
subdue. You have, as my country had, with almost immeasurable forests
fit for human habitation, to welcome to your free land the millions of
Europe seeking to escape from hard conditions of grinding poverty. You
have before you that noblest product of our time, that chief result of
our institutions, the open path to progress and success for every youth
of Brazil. Because this is a free land, because you are a republic,
because you are a self-governing people, there is no limit to what each
one of you may accomplish by the exercise of your own knowledge,
determination, and ability. It is the free spirit that keeps open the
door of that limitless expanse, and that will conquer the wilderness and
make Brazil a refuge for the poor of other lands, and a country rich and
teeming with people, prosperous, learned, and happy in the years and
centuries to come.
SPEECH OF MR. ROOT
On Presenting a Football Trophy, São Paulo, August 4, 1906
The pleasant and honorable duty of presenting to you this prize of
success in the fine and rapid and skillful game we have just witnessed
has been delegated to me by the kindness and consideration of the
President and Government of the state of São Paulo.
It is a fitting act with which to signalize my first visit to this
historic and famous city, this ancient center of activity and manly
vigor, this state famous for centuries for its great and noble deeds,
and known now throughout the world for its successful industry and
commerce, known also as the home of great men and great patriots in the
history of Brazil.
May the generous emulation of this courteous and gentlemanly game which
you have been playing, be a symbol of activity in the commercial,
industrial, and social life of the country; above all, may it be a
symbol of your lives as patriots, as citizens of Brazil. Let the best
man ever win. Let activity and skill and pluck ever have their just
rewards. Do for your country always as you have done for your rival
teams in this game of football. Do always your best, and do it always
with good temper and kindly feeling, whatever be the game.
I congratulate you, sir, and your associates, upon being citizens of a
country and of a state--both you of Rio de Janeiro and you
Paulistas,--where the rewards of enterprise and activity are secure, and
where there is open to every youth the pathway of success by deserving
success. May this prize be an incentive to you and your comrades to
exercise every manly effort, both for yourselves and for your country.
SANTOS
SPEECH OF DOCTOR REZENDE
At the Commercial Association of Santos, August 7, 1906
On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Commercial Association of
Santos, I bid you welcome.
The men gathered in this hall to greet you are cosmopolitan in
character--Americans, Europeans, and Brazilians--men who have united
their best efforts in the great movement of distributing coffee
throughout the whole world.
Coffee is our staple product, and for many years to come is bound to be
the backbone of our financial system.
The value of this great product is, however, much greater than is shown
by the simple figures of statistics.
In order to understand its true value, we must add to it the other
articles which are produced with it, and which are unknown to the
commercial world.
Coffee also means corn, beans, rice, cattle, etc., which are abundantly
raised by our coffee planters; coffee means also all of our infant
industries, and those prosperous towns which dot the romantic shores of
the Tieté, Paranahyba, and the Mogy-Guasú. For us, sir, coffee means
plenty, prosperity, and perhaps greatness.
It is therefore easy to see how deeply we are interested in the growth
of American commerce and civilization. The American people need for
their trade nearly eleven million bags of coffee per annum, or almost
all of an average crop of the state of São Paulo.
It is not necessary to lay special stress on this main fact, production
and consumption; one is the complement of the other, and the development
of both our activities and interests are so identified that we cannot
talk of coffee without thinking of its greatest consumer, the American
people.
Seventeen years ago, in 1889, James G. Blaine, one of your most
distinguished statesmen, called together the first Pan American Congress
in Washington. It is a long time for us business men to wait. We feel,
however, that the ideals of that great statesman have not yet been
realized. The great distance which separates us is perhaps somewhat
responsible for the want of closer relations between our peoples; and
when your visit to our shores was first announced, we Brazilians all
felt that your presence in Brazil meant a new departure in
American-Brazilian relations.
We are looking forward with eagerness for the results of the sessions of
the Pan American Congress in Rio; and this interest has been greatly
augmented by the high honor you confer upon us in selecting this
opportunity to visit our people and our country, thus strengthening the
ties of friendship between Americans and Brazilians; and though we
belong to a class accustomed to consider only facts and cold figures, we
are deeply touched by this high distinction, and, representing the
Santos Board of Trade and the coffee planters of São Paulo--the greatest
coffee producers of the world--I offer most hearty greetings to you, and
through you to the great American people, the chief consumers of coffee
in the world.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
It is a great pleasure to represent here in this great commercial city
the best and largest customer you have. The United States of America
bought in the last fiscal year, the statistics of which have been made
public, from the United States of Brazil about $99,000,000 worth of
goods, and we sold to Brazil about $11,000,000 worth of goods. I should
like to see the trade more even; I should like to see the prosperity of
Brazil so increase that the purchasing power of Brazil will grow; and I
should like to see the activity of that purchasing power turned towards
the markets of the North American republic. I am well aware that the
course of trade cannot be controlled by sentiment or by governments. It
follows its own immutable laws and is drawn solely in the direction of
profit. But there are many ways in which the course of trade can be
facilitated, can be stimulated, can be induced and increased. Mutual
knowledge leads to trade. All the advertisement in the world which pays
is but the means of carrying information, knowledge, and suggestion to
the mind that reads the advertisement. Mutual knowledge as between the
people of North America and the people of Brazil--knowledge as between
the individual people--will increase the trade. Our people will buy more
coffee and more sugar and more rubber from the people they know, from
the various trading concerns that they know about, than they will from
strangers. Mutual knowledge cannot exist without mutual respect. I
believe so much in the goodness of humanity that I think no two people
can know each other without respecting each other.
There is the friendliest feeling in the United States of America for the
people of Brazil, and we believe that there is great friendliness in
this country for the people of the United States. We wish to be good
friends and ever better friends; to enlarge our mutual trade to the
advantage of both; and it is to express that feeling to you from my
people with all the kindliness and friendship possible, that I am here
in Brazil. It has been a great privilege to see something of your great
coffee production--from the coffee plant on its red platform of the
peculiar soil of São Paulo to the bags of coffee being carried to the
steamer in which it is to be transported to the markets of the world. It
is pleasing to me to see that the great commercial port of Santos has by
the improvement of its harbor facilities become more and more great, and
has done away with the unhealthiness that once existed. I congratulate
you upon the fact that you have made your port and your city so healthy
that yellow fever no longer exists.
This is probably the last word I shall utter in public before I leave
the coast of Brazil, and as I pass from among you, I shall endeavor to
make my last word an expression of grateful appreciation for all the
courtesy, the kindliness, and the friendliness which has surrounded me
every hour, from the moment I first landed at Pará three weeks ago
today. My reception and that of all my family--the attentions that have
been paid to us, the kindness that has been exhibited--far exceed
anything that I anticipated or had hoped for; and I beg you to believe
that we shall never forget it. We shall make it known to our people when
we return home. I believe that it will increase the friendship they feel
for the people of Brazil; and it is with the greatest satisfaction that
I shall feel entitled upon my return to say to the people of the United
States that I have found in the republic of Brazil a country to which
the laborers of the world may come to make new homes and to rear their
families in prosperity and in happiness; that I may say to my people
that I have found in the republic of Brazil a country where capital is
secure, where the rights of man are held sacred, and the rewards of
enterprise may be reaped without hindrance. I shall go from you with the
hope that in my weak way I may do what it is possible for one man to do
in return for all the friendship that you have shown me throughout
Brazil--may give my evidence to aid in turning towards your vast and
undeveloped resources that immigration and that capital which have been
the means of building up and developing the vast riches of my own
country. I hope that the same brilliant and prosperous success that has
blessed my own land may for many generations visit the people of Brazil.
I hope that for many a year to come the two peoples, so similar in their
laws, their institutions, their purposes, and the great task of
development that lies before them, may continue to grow in friendship
and in mutual help. And so, gentlemen, I make to you, and through you to
the people of Brazil, my grateful and appreciative farewell.
PARÁ
SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY AUGUSTO MONTENEGRO
GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF PARÁ
In the City of Pará (Belem), at a Breakfast given by him to Mr. Root
July 17, 1906
I will say but a few words in offering the health of Mr. Root, the very
illustrious Secretary of State of the United States of North America. I
regret exceedingly that Mr. Root should have only a few hours available
to remain among us; but I know that his time is limited and that he
cannot remain among us without inconvenience; however, I hope that these
few hours which His Excellency has devoted to Pará will have been
sufficient for him to carry away a good impression of this region. I
also fervently hope that Mr. Root's visit may mark the beginning of a
new era in the diplomacy of the two Americas, and that, if possible, it
may contribute still further to a strengthening of the friendly ties
which already bind the two republics together. I hope that Mr. Root will
gather the very best impressions of the whole country from his other
visits. I am certain that he will be received everywhere with that
cordiality, hospitality, and affection which we proudly proclaim as
being among the chief characteristics of the Brazilians. I drink to the
health of Mr. Root and of the great and noble President of the United
States of North America.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I thank you most sincerely for your kind expressions and for your
gracious hospitality. It is with the greatest pleasure that I have come
to the great republic of Brazil, that I might by my presence testify to
the high consideration entertained by the Republic of the North for her
sister republic; that I might testify to the strong desire of the United
States of America for the continuance of the growth of friendship
between her and the United States of Brazil. Both of us--both of our
countries,--have of recent years been growing so great and rich that we
can afford now to visit our friends, and also to entertain our friends.
Let us therefore know each other better. I am sure that the more
intimately we know each other the better friends we shall be. I know
that because I know the feelings of my countrymen, and I know it because
I experience your whole-hearted hospitality.
It has been a delight for me to see your beautiful, bright, and cheerful
city, which, with its people happy and giving evidence of well-being and
prosperity, with its comfortable homes, with its noble monuments, with
its great public buildings and institutions of beneficence, with its
beautiful flowers and noble trees, justifies all that I had dreamed of
in this august city of the great empire which reaches from the Amazon to
the Uruguay.
I thank you for your reference to the President of the United States.
His great, strong, human heart beats in unison with everything that is
noble in the heart of any nation and with every aspiration of true
manhood. Every effort tending to help a people on in civilization and in
prosperity finds a reflex and response in his desire for their
happiness. He is a true and genuine friend of all Americans, north and
south. In his name I thank you for the welcome you have given me, and in
his name I propose a toast to the President of the United States of
Brazil.
PERNAMBUCO
SUMMARY OF SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY SIGISMUNDO GONÇALVEZ
GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF PERNAMBUCO
At a Breakfast given by him to Mr. Root, in the City of Pernambuco
(Recife), July 22, 1906
His Excellency Sigismundo Gonçalvez, Governor of Pernambuco,
said that he had never felt so strong a desire to speak
English in order to express the satisfaction he felt at
receiving the distinguished visitor, and after wishing the
Secretary a very pleasant and prosperous voyage, proposed
the health of President Roosevelt.[2]
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I regret in my turn that I cannot respond to you in the language of the
great race which has made the great country of Brazil. I thank you both
for myself and in behalf of my country for your generous hospitality and
the friendship you have exhibited. It is the sincere desire of the
President and of all the people of the United States to maintain with
the people of Brazil a firm, sincere, and helpful friendship. Much as we
differ, in many respects we are alike. Like yours, our fathers fought
for their country against savage Indians. Like yours, our fathers fought
to maintain their race in their country against other European races. It
is a delight for me on these historic shores to come to this famous
place, made glorious by such centuries of heroic, free, and noble
patriotism. It is especially delightful for me to be welcomed here,
where the cause of human freedom received the powerful and
ever-memorable support of a native of Pernambuco, whose name is dear to
me, Joaquim Nabuco--a name inherited from a distinguished ancestry by my
good friend, your illustrious townsman, the present ambassador of Brazil
to the United States. It is the chief function of an ambassador from one
country to another to interpret to the people to whom he goes the
people from whom he comes; and Joaquim Nabuco has presented to the
people of the United States a conception of Brazilians, and especially
of the men of Pernambuco, admirable and worthy of all esteem. He is our
friend, and because he is our friend we wish to be your friends. I ask
you to join me now in drinking to the health of the President of the
republic of Brazil.
BAHIA
SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY SENHOR DOCTOR JOSÉ MARCELINO DE SOUZA
GOVERNOR OF BAHIA
At a Banquet given by him to Mr. Root, at Bahia, July 24, 1906
It is not without reason that the entire world is elated at the grand
spectacle exhibited in the New World congregating its free and
independent peoples in order to lay the foundations of a lasting peace.
In fact, the Old World looks on with sincere admiration at the complete
demolition of the ancient precepts of international law. Ever since the
right of the stronger has ceased to supersede the sound principles of
justice; ever since the divine philosophy of the Jews taught men
brotherly love for one another, the ancient international law underwent
profound transformations.
Notwithstanding this, however, for a long time armies and costly navies
continued to weigh down our public treasuries and the cannon continued
to decide questions arising among nations.
Now, all Europe has its eyes turned towards America, which has
noteworthily constituted itself the apostle of peace.
For a long time the American peoples have been settling their
difficulties by means of arbitration.
It is this policy that is seen to be manifesting itself since the
downfall of the ancient institute of international law which, instead
of causing the people on the other side of the Atlantic fear, ought to
fill them with joy, because it tightens the international economic and
commercial relations of this planet.
These are the aims and objects of Pan Americanism.
It does not inculcate war. Its gospel is concord. It has seen what a
little while ago was nothing more than the dream of poets, the ideal of
philosophers, develop into a reality.
Gentlemen, America must grow up, but intrenching itself with peace, and
growing not by the augmentation of the sinews of war but by
systematizing and utilizing the resources of her economic force.
This is the ideal of American nations. Therefore, although the other
continents have long feared this propaganda, it is to be hoped that she
will carry out her program of love and of fraternization, because thus
America will have established international and economic relations with
the entire world upon indestructible foundations.
The Honorable Elihu Root, the herald of the prosperous and powerful
North American republic, who brings to Brazil the assurance of his
friendship and the most hearty support of the Pan American Congress
whose third conference has just been opened at Rio, is the most
important missionary of that gospel.
The presence of His Excellency in that noteworthy assemblage is the
assurance of reconciliation, of the growth of the free people of
America.
Bahia, an important part of the Brazilian Federation, which receives
this testimonial of friendship from the great republic of the North,
through its Secretary of State, cannot help but feel the greatest joy at
foreseeing the great results of that conference and of this auspicious
visit, which assumes the proportions of an embassy, of an appeal to the
republics of the new continent for the inauguration of inseparable
bonds of mutual solidarity, for the concerted effort to compel the
disappearance of the sad note of war.
In the shadow of the solemn inauguration of Pan Americanism, three
nations of Central America found themselves in the battlefield in a
deplorable spectacle of hatred and bloodshed.
Happily, as is announced by telegraph, thanks to the good offices of the
United States and of Mexico, peace has been established among the
nations, to the honor of the Christian civilization of our continent.
This policy of concord, therefore, accomplishes good. I repeat, America
must prosper. It is necessary that the Monroe Doctrine triumph, not to
the exclusion of the civilization of the Old World, but to the benefit
of all humanity.
Nature has cut the continent from north to south without regard to its
continuity; from north to south is the same political régime; and
protecting it with two great nations, nature has not wished to isolate
us from the rest of the world, but on the contrary to endow us with
sources of wealth and to multiply the means of easy communication with
centers of civilization.
Gentlemen, in the name of Bahia, I greet the great ideal of humanity
that is treading a victorious path! I greet the republic of North
America, the efficient collaborator in this profoundly humane policy,
the principal promoter of the Pan American Conference, in the person of
its illustrious Secretary of State, Elihu Root!
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I beg to acknowledge with sincere appreciation your kindly and most
flattering expressions regarding myself. I receive with joy the
expression of sentiments regarding my country, which I hope may be
shared by every citizen of the great republic of Brazil. It is with much
sentiment that I find myself at the gateway of the south, through which
the civilization of Europe entered from the Iberian Peninsula the vast
regions of South America. I, whose fathers came through the northern
gateway, on Massachusetts Bay, thousands of miles away,--where the
winters bring ice and snow and where a rugged soil greeted the first
adventurers,--find here another people working out for themselves the
same problems of self-government, seeking the same goal of individual
liberty, of peace, of prosperity, that we have been seeking in the far
north for so many years. We are alike in that we have no concern in the
primary objects of European diplomacy; we are free from the traditions,
from the controversies, which the close neighborhood of centuries on the
continent of Europe has created--free, thank Heaven, from necessity for
the maintenance of great armies and great navies to guard our frontiers,
leaving us to give our minds to the problem of building up governments
by the people which shall give prosperity and peace and individual
opportunity to every citizen. In this great work, it is my firm belief
that we can greatly assist each other, if it be only by sympathy and
friendship, by intercourse, exchange of opinions and experience, each
giving to the other the benefits of its success, and helping the other
to find out the causes of its failures. We can aid each other by the
peaceful exchanges of trade. Our trade--yes, our trade is valuable, and
may it increase; may it increase to the wealth and prosperity of both
nations. But there is something more than trade; there is the aspiration
to make life worth living, that uplifts humanity. To accomplish success
in this is the goal we seek to attain. There is the happiness of life;
and what is trade if it does not bring happiness to life? In this the
dissimilarity of our peoples may enable us to aid each other. We of the
north are somewhat more sturdy in our efforts, and there are those who
claim we work too hard. We are too strenuous in our lives. I wish that
my people could gather some of the charm and grace of living in Bahia.
We may give to you some added strength and strenuousness; you may give
to us some of the beauty of life. I wish I could make you feel--I wish
still more that I could make my countrymen feel--what delight I
experience in visiting your city, and in observing the combination of
the bright, cheerful colors which adorn your homes and daily life, with
the beautiful tones that time has given to the century-old walls and
battlements that look down upon your noble bay. The combination has
seemed to me, as I have looked upon it today, to be most remarkable; and
these varying scenes of beauty have seemed to be suggestive of what
nations can do for each other, some giving the beauty and the tender
tones; some giving the sturdy and strenuous effort. May the intercourse
between the people of the north and the people of Brazil hereafter not
be confined to an occasional visitor. May the advance of transportation
bring new and swift steamship lines to be established between the coasts
of North and South America. May we hope by frequently visiting each
other to make our peoples strong in intercourse and friendship. May we
be of mutual advantage and help to each other along the pathway of
common prosperity, and may my people ever be mindful of the honor which
you have done to them, through the gracious and bountiful hospitality
with which you have made me happy!
SPEECH OF SENATOR RUY BARBOSA
After Mr. Root's admirable speech, after such an orator as Mr. Root, and
so inspired as he has been, nobody should have the courage to speak.
Nevertheless, I do not know how to resist the wishes of our amiable
host, our eminent Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and of those who
surround me here. This is quite an unexpected surprise for me; but it
comes in so imperious a way that I cannot but submit, hoping you will
be indulgent.
We have felt in Mr. Root's words the vibration of the American soul in
all its intensity, in all its eloquence, in all its power, in all its
trustiness. So they could not have a better answer than the applause of
so brilliant an audience as has just greeted his remarkable speech.
However, since the task of rendering the echo of Mr. Root's words in our
hearts devolves upon me, I can only perform it truthfully by thanking
him "again and still again," for his beneficent visit to Brazil.
We suppose, Mr. Root, that it does not come only from you. We are sure
that you would not take this far-reaching step unless you counted,
without a shadow of doubt, upon the sanction of American opinion. And
knowing as we do that the United States are, from every standpoint, the
most complete and dazzling success among modern nations, admiring them
as the honor and pride of our continent, we rejoice, we exult, to open
our homes, our bosoms, the arms of our modest and honest hospitality, to
the giant of the republics, to the mother of American democracies, in
the person of her own Government, one of whose strongest and noblest
functions centers in the person of her Secretary of State.
Our life as an independent nation is not yet a long one. We are, as
such, only about eighty years old, albeit this may not be a very brief
period in these days of ours, when time should not be measured by the
number of years, inasmuch as not a great deal more than a century has
been enough for the United States to become one of the greatest powers
in the world. Short as it is, however, our national existence has not
been devoid of noble dates, of fruitful and memorable events.
Amidst them, Mr. Root, this one will stand forever as a blessed
landmark, or rather as the gushing-out of a new political stream, whose
waves of peace, of freedom, of morality, shall spread by and by all over
the immensity of our continent.
This is our wish, I will not say our dream, but our hope. You must have
felt it, and will continue to feel it, at the throbbing of our national
arteries, in Recife, in Bahia, now in this capital, and tomorrow in São
Paulo.
Do not see in my words the looming of a momentous sensation. No! They do
not tell my own impressions as an individual. They convey truthfully the
voice of the people through the lips of a man who does not serve other
interests. They only anticipate, I believe, what you shall hear from our
legislative representation, in the highest demonstration of public
feeling possible under a popular government; may the historic scene of
Lafayette, the liberal French soldier, the fellow-helper in American
independence, being received in the American House of Representatives,
find a worthy imitation in the reception of the great American Minister,
the daring promoter of union in the American continent, by the two
Houses of our National Congress.
So let us raise our cup to the northern colossus, the model of liberal
republics, the United States of America, in their living and vigorous
personification, in their image visible and cherished among us, Mr.
Elihu Root.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Deuxième Conférence de la Paix_, Vol. II, p. 644.
[2] This speech was not reported and therefore cannot be reproduced.
URUGUAY
MONTEVIDEO
SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY JOSÉ ROMEU
MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS
At a Banquet given by him to Mr. Root, August 10, 1906
When, after plowing through the waters of the Caribbean Sea and running
along the eastern coast of Brazil the North American cruiser
_Charleston_ entered the magnificent bay of Rio de Janeiro, I had the
opportunity of sending to the illustrious representative of the United
States, who today is our distinguished guest, a telegraphic greeting on
the occasion of his arrival in South America and expressing the desire
that his arrival might be the beginning of an era of fraternity and
intercourse advantageous to all the nations of the American Continent.
The words of the telegram, the significant reply of the Secretary, and
the very eloquent words he delivered before the Pan American Congress at
Rio de Janeiro, are not a mere act of international courtesy; they are,
in my judgment, the expression of the popular sentiment. They constitute
the aspiration of all America. They express, at the least, the fervent
desires of the Uruguayan people and of its Government, who see in the
visit of the illustrious Secretary of State the foreshadowing of
progress, of culture, and fraternity, which will bring the peoples
closer together, contributing to their prosperity and to their
greatness, through which they may figure with honor in the concert of
civilized nations.
These sentiments, as is well known, have been increasing with the events
that have made a vigorous people of the great northern republic, capable
of preponderating in the destinies of humanity on account of the
enterprising genius of all its sons, on account of the irresistible
force of its energies and of its abundant riches; and, very especially,
on account of its redeeming influence of republican virtues, a
characteristic mark of the Puritan and the other elements which
organized the Federal Government on the immovable base of liberty,
justice, and democracy.
The pages of history show that the ideals of its own Constitution, like
every great and generous ideal, passing over the distance from the
Potomac to the banks of the River Plata, penetrated immediately to the
farthest corner of the American Continent. There soon afterwards arose a
new world of free countries where the undertakings of Solís or Pizarro
and Cortés will initiate a civilization destined to prosper in the
life-giving blast of liberty and in the vigorous impulse which democracy
infused into the old organizations of the colonial régime. The example
of the United States and its moral assistance animated the patriots.
Put to the proof in the memorable struggle for emancipation, its
fortitude and its heroism overturned all obstacles until the desired
moment of the consolidation, by its own effort, of the independence of
the American Continent. Indeed, the influence of the United States in
the diplomatic negotiations which preceded the recognition of the new
nationalities, and the chivalrous declaration which President Monroe
launched upon the world, contributed efficaciously to assure the
stability of the growing republic. Its development and its greatness
were, from that instant, intrusted to the patriotism of its sons, to the
fraternity of the American peoples, and to the fruitful labor of the
coming generations.
In spite of such social upheavals, which bring with them the ready-made
collisions of arms, the antagonism of interests, and the struggle of
ideas--inherent factors of every movement of emancipation--the nations
of the new continent should not, nor will they, ever forget that from
Spanish ground Columbus's three-masted vessel--a Homeric expedition--set
forth, founders of numerous peoples and flourishing colonies, leaving in
our land mementos, languages, customs, sentiments and traditions, which
the evolutions of the human spirit do not easily obliterate. From noble
France and its glorious revulsion against the remnants of feudalism
arose the declaration of the rights of man and equitable ideas, which
are faithfully portrayed in our democratic institutions. Italy, Germany,
and Spain send to America a valuable contingent of their emigration. The
currents of commerce and progress were at one time, and they are at the
present time, largely fomented by the shipping and the capital of Great
Britain. From the foreign office of that nation, among all the powers of
old Europe, came the first disposition toward the recognition of
American independence. All these circumstances are bonds which tie us to
the European countries, but which do not hinder, nor can they hinder,
our relations with the great northern republic, as with all those of
Latin origin, always being cordially maintained, strengthened, and
increased toward the ends of highly noble and patriotic progress,
developing a world policy of wise foresight, tending to consolidate the
destinies of the American countries.
Difficulties, soon to disappear, due to distance and lack of rapid and
direct communications, have impeded the active interchange between the
United States and this country, barring which no reason exists why their
social and commercial relations may not be extended with reciprocal
advantages.
In giving welcome to Mr. Root on his arrival in Uruguayan territory, I
consider as one of my most pleasing personal gratifications the fact of
having initiated the idea of inviting our distinguished guest to visit
the River Plata countries.
If, as I do not doubt, the visit of the distinguished member of the
Government of the United States shall make the peoples of the north and
the south know one another better; if the era of Pan American fraternity
takes the flight to which we should aspire; if these demonstrations of
courtesy are to tend, therefore, toward the progress of the nations of
the continent and the mutual respect and consideration of their
respective governments, the satisfaction of having promoted some of
these benefits and the honor of a happy initiative, deferentially
received by the illustrious Secretary of State, to whom the oriental
people today offer the testimony of their esteem and sympathy, belong,
at least in part, to the Uruguayan foreign office.
I drink, ladies and gentlemen, to Pan American fraternity, to the
greatness of the United States of North America, to the health of His
Excellency President Roosevelt, to the happiness of Mr. Elihu Root and
of his distinguished family.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I have already thanked you for that welcome message which greeted my
first advent in the harbor of Rio de Janeiro. I have now to add my
thanks, both for the gracious invitation which brings me here and for
the surpassing kindness and hospitality with which I and my family have
been welcomed to Montevideo. It is most gratifying to hear from the lips
of one of the masters of South American diplomacy, one who knows the
reality of international politics, so just an estimate of the attitude
of my own country toward her South American sisters. The great
declaration of Monroe, made in the infancy of Latin American liberty,
was an assertion to all the world of the competency of Latin Americans
to govern themselves. That assertion my country has always maintained;
and my presence here is, in part, for the purpose of giving evidence of
her belief that the truth of the assertion has been demonstrated; that,
in the progressive development which attends the course of nations, the
peoples of South America have proved that their national tendencies and
capacities are, and will be, on and ever on in the path of ordered
liberty. I am here to learn more, and also to demonstrate our belief in
the substantial similarity of interests and sympathies of the American
self-governing republics.
You have justly indicated that there is nothing in the growing
friendship between our countries which imperils the interests of those
countries in the Old World from which we have drawn our languages, our
traditions, and the bases of our customs and our laws.
I think it may be safely said that those nations who planted their
feeble colonies on these shores, from which we have spread so widely,
have profited far more from the independence of the American republics
than they would have profited if their unwise system of colonial
government had been continued. In the establishment of these free and
independent nations in this continent they have obtained a profitable
outlet for their trade, employment for their commerce, food for their
people, and refuge for their poor and their surplus population. We have
done more than that. We have tried here their experiments in government
for them. The reflex action of the American experiments in government
has been felt in every country in Europe without exception, and has been
far more effective in its influence than any good quality of the old
colonial system could have been. And now our prosperity but adds to
their prosperity. Intercourse in trade, exchange of thought in learning,
in literature, in art--all add to their power and their prosperity,
their intellectual activity, and their commercial strength. We still
draw from their stores of wealth commercially, spiritually,
intellectually, and physically, and we are beginning to return, in rich
measure, with interest, what we have got from them. We have learned
that national aggrandizement and national prosperity are to be gained
rather by national friendship than by national violence. The friendship
for your country that we from the North have is a friendship that
imperils no interest of Europe. It is a friendship that springs from a
desire to promote the common welfare of mankind by advancing the rule of
order, of justice, of humanity, and of the Christianity which makes for
the prosperity and happiness of all mankind. It is not as a messenger of
strife that I come to you; but I am here as the advocate of universal
friendship and peace.
ADDRESS OF HIS EXCELLENCY JOSÉ BATLLE Y ORDÓÑEZ
PRESIDENT OF URUGUAY
At the Banquet given by him at the Government House, August 11, 1906
We celebrate an event new to South America--the presence in the heart of
our republics of a member of the Government of the United States of the
North. That grand nation has wished thus to manifest the interest her
sisters of the South inspire in her and her purpose of strongly drawing
together the links that bind her to them.
Born on the same continent and in the same epoch, ruled by the same
institutions, animated by the same spirit of liberty and progress, and
destined alike to cause republican ideas to prevail on earth, it is
natural that the nations of all America should approach nearer and
nearer to each other, and unite more and more amongst themselves; and it
is natural, also, that the most powerful and the most advanced amongst
them should be the one to take the initiative in this union.
Your grand republic, Mr. Secretary of State, is consistent in confiding
to you this mission of fraternity and solidarity with the ideas and
intentions manifested by her at the dawn of the liberty of our
continent. The same sentiment that inspired the Monroe Doctrine brings
you to our shores as the herald of the concord and community of America.
We welcome you most cordially. You find us earnestly laboring to make
justice prevail, enamored of progress, confident in the future. Far
removed from the European continent, whence emerges the wave of humanity
that peoples the American territories and becomes the origin of nations
so glorious as yours, the growth and organization of the peoples in
these regions have been slow; and public and social order has been
frequently upset in our distant and scarcely populated prairies. But in
the midst of these disturbances that have likewise afflicted, in their
epochs of formation, almost all the present best constituted nations,
sound tendencies and true principles of order and liberty prevail,
nationalities are constituted in a definite manner, and republican
institutions are consecrated.
Your great nation, Mr. Secretary of State, is not new to this work. She
has had important participation in it. I do not refer to the Monroe
Doctrine that made the elder sister the zealous defender of the younger
ones. I speak of the radiant example of your republican virtue, your
industrial initiative, your economic development, your scientific
advances, your ardent and virile activity that has reënforced our faith
in right, in liberty, in justice, in the republic, and has animated
us--as a noble and victorious example does animate--in our dark days of
disturbance and disaster.
Yes, the epoch of internal convulsions is drawing to its close in this
part of America, and the peoples, finding themselves organized and at
peace, are dedicating themselves to all those tasks that exalt the human
mind and originate, in modern times, the greatness of nations. You tread
upon a land that has recently been watered abundantly with blood--upon
one in which, nevertheless, the love of liberty, within the limits of
order, the love of well-being, and the love of progress under legal
governments is intense; upon one in which we live earnestly dedicated,
in all branches of activity, to the labor that dignifies and fortifies,
certain that for us has commenced an honorable era of internal peace.
You have said it, Mr. Secretary of State: Out of the tumult of wars
strong and stable governments have arisen; law prevails over the will of
man; right and liberty are respected.
But this progress of public reason must be complemented. It is not
sufficient that internal peace should be assured; it is necessary to
secure external peace also. It is necessary that the American nations
should draw near to each other; should know, should love each other; it
is requisite to drive away, to suppress the danger of distrust, of
rivalry, and of international conflicts; that the same sentiment that
repudiated internal struggles should rise within as against the
struggles of people against people, and that these should also be
considered as the unfruitful shedding of the blood of brethren; that the
calamitous armed peace may never appear in our land, and that the
enormous sums used to sustain it on the European and Asiatic continents
shall be employed amongst us in the development of industries, commerce,
arts, and sciences.
The work may be realized by determination and constancy. The republican
institutions that everywhere prevail on our continent are not propitious
to the Caesars who make their glory consist in the sinister brilliancy
of battles and in the increase of their territorial domains. These same
institutions give voice and vote in the direction of public affairs to
the multitudes, whose primordial interest is ever peace, the sparing of
their own blood, so unfruitfully shed in the great catastrophes of war.
America will be, then, the continent of peace, of a just peace, founded
on respect for the rights of all nations, a respect which--as you, Mr.
Secretary of State, have said in tones that have resounded all over the
surface of the earth, deeply moving all true hearts--must be as great
for the weakest nations as for the most powerful empires. This Pan
American public opinion will be created and will be made effective, a
public opinion charged to systematize the international conduct of the
nations, to suppress injustice, and to establish among them relations
ever more and more profoundly cordial.
Your country and your Government fulfill the part, not of the false
friend that incites to anarchy and weakens her friends that she may
prevail over them and dominate them, but that of the faithful and true
friend who exerts herself to unite them; and, that they may become good
and strong, concurs with all her moral power in the realization of this
work of the Pan American Congresses, destined to become a modern
amphictyon to whose decisions all the great American questions will be
submitted, already giving prestige thereto by such words as you have
spoken to the Congress of Rio de Janeiro, which present to the American
world new and grand perspectives of peace and progress.
Mr. Secretary of State, ladies and gentlemen, in the presence of deeds
of this magnitude, inspired and filled with enthusiasm by them, let us
pour out a libation to the United States of the North, to its vigorous
President, to you and to your distinguished family, the herald of
continental friendship, and to the American fatherland, from the Bering
Straits to Cape Horn.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I thank you for the kind reference to myself, and I thank you for the
high terms in which you have spoken of my country, from which I am so
far away. Do not think, I beg you, sir, if I accept what you have said
regarding the country I love, that we, in the north, consider ourselves
so perfect as your description of us. We have virtues, we have good
qualities, and we are proud of them; but we ourselves know in our own
hearts how many faults we have. We know the mistakes we have made, the
failures we have made, the tasks that are still before us to perform.
Yet from the experiences of our efforts and our successes, and from the
experiences of our faults and our failures, we, the oldest of the
organized republics of America, say to you of Uruguay, and to all our
sisters, "Be of good cheer and confident hope."
You have said, Mr. President, in your eloquent remarks this evening,
that the progress of Uruguay has been slow. Slow as measured by our
lives, perhaps, but not slow as measured by the lives of nations. The
march of civilization is slow; it moves little during single human
lives. Through the centuries and the ages it proceeds with deliberate
and certain step. Look to England, whence came the principles embodied
in your constitution, and ours, where first were developed the
principles of free representative government. Remember through how many
generations England fought and bled in her wars of the White and the
Red--her blancos and colorados--the white rose of York and the red rose
of Lancaster, before she could win her way to the security of English
law.
Look to France, whence came the great declarations of the rights of man
and remember--I in my own time can remember--the Tuileries standing in
bright and peaceful beauty, and then in a pile of blackened ruins
bearing the inscription, "Liberty, equality, and fraternity," doing
injustice to liberty, to equality, and to fraternity. These nations have
passed through their furnaces. Every nation has had its own hard
experience in its progressive development, but a nation is certain to
progress if its tendency is right. It is so with Uruguay. You are
passing through the phases of steady development. The restless and
untiring soul of José Artigas, who made the independence of Uruguay
possible, did its work in its time, but its time is past; it is not the
day of Artigas now.
The genius of the two great men, for the love of whom your political
parties crystallized upon one side and upon the other, had its day, but
that day has passed away. Step by step Uruguay is taking its course, as
the elder nations of the earth have been taking theirs, steadily onward
and upward, seeking more perfect justice and ordered liberty.
One of the most deeply seated feelings in the human heart is love of
approbation. May we not have such relations to each other that the
desire for each other's approbation shall sustain us in the right course
and warn us away from the wrong, and help us in our development to
preserve high ideals, the ideals of justice and humanity necessary to
free self-government? It is with that hope that I am here, your guest.
It is with that desire that my people send the message of friendship to
yours.
In the name of my President, Theodore Roosevelt, I offer you, Mr.
President, the most sincere assurance of friendship and confidence.
SPEECH OF DOCTOR ZORRILLA DE SAN MARTÍN
At a Breakfast by the Reception Committee, in the Atheneum at Montevideo
August 12, 1906
Before we rise from the table I have the pleasant task of saying to you
a few words to reflect and perpetuate the sentiment which has caused us
to desire to share with you the bread of Uruguay and to drink in your
company the wine which gladdens the heart of man, according to the
expression of the Holy Book.
Yes, Mr. Secretary, we are glad and happy to have you among us, and we
wish that this repast, at which, as you see, a representative group of
the ladies of Montevidean society surrounds and bestows graceful
attention upon your most worthy spouse and your daughter, may be a
symbol of the intense affection which can be shown to a welcome guest,
that of opening to you the door of our home, that of introducing you
into the affections of our household.
Yes, we are glad, sir, not only because we have the honor of knowing you
to be a gentleman and an illustrious personage who is a glory among the
glories of our America, but because--I must be very frank with you
now,--because we are convinced that this visit of yours will redound to
the honor as well as the benefit of that which is dearest to us, of that
which we love above all else on earth, our good mother-country, Uruguay,
this good sovereign mother of ours who is the mistress of our life and
whom we cannot help believing, under pain of ceasing to be her sons, to
be the greatest, the most beautiful and the most amiable of mothers,
just as you think of yours, sir; just as you feel regarding your
excellent American land. We, sir, being perhaps carried away by an
ingenuous filial illusion, are persuaded that to know our Uruguay is to
love her; and for this reason we have desired that you should know her;
for this reason we cherish the hope that, when you have returned to your
country and recall the sum of reminiscences of your memorable voyage,
pleasant and lucid recollections will burst forth of this people which
has been the first to shake your hand upon your setting foot on the soil
of a republic of sub-tropical America, and which offers you its bread
and drinks with you the wine of friendship in a sincere transport of
enduring sympathy.
We thought, Mr. Secretary, that we saw you respectfully kiss the brow of
our mother when, in a moment which should be considered historical, you
defined at the Pan American Congress of Rio de Janeiro the object and
character of your visit to the Spanish-American republics, to these
favorite daughters who are advancing slowly but surely up the steep
mountain at whose summit the ideal of self-government, freedom, and
order, and the reign of internal justice and peace awaits them; these
are the foundation and real guaranty of the reign of international
justice and peace, to which we aspire.
Yes, Mr. Secretary, you spoke the truth in your memorable speech at Rio
de Janeiro, and your words seem like corner stones. Sovereign states are
not merely coexisting on the face of the earth, but are members of one
great palpitating organism, collective persons who, obeying the same
natural law which groups together physical persons into civil and
political society, also instinctively group themselves together in order
to form the body, the life, and the thought of the international world.
Just as social life, far from disparaging the essential attributes of
the sacred human person, constitutes the ambient medium necessary to the
life, the development, and the attainment of the inalienable destiny of
man, so this great commonwealth of nations, whose permanent
establishment in America is the earnest desire of the Congress at Rio de
Janeiro, should have as its inviolable basis and essential purpose the
life, the honor, the prosperity, and the glory of the sovereign states
which constitute it.
You have proclaimed democracy, sir, as the most powerful bond which
unites the republics of America. But democracy is nothing else than
the equality of men before the law, and is consequently above all the
triumphant vindication of the right of the weak in their relations
with the strong. Therefore, sir, in pronouncing this name of our
common mother, you did so only in order to proclaim, as the American
ideal in the relations of states, the same noble principle which
governs the relations of free men, and which is the essence of our
being; you proclaimed, then, a species of international American
democracy in the bosom of which all persons should be persons with
full self-consciousness, with an individual destiny independent of the
destiny of others, with the moral and material means to accomplish
this destiny, with freedom, with dignity, and with all the attributes
which characterize and ennoble the person and distinguish it from
inferior beings.
To elevate the moral level of this great international democracy which
you have proclaimed, and of which our America should be the prototype,
there is but one means, namely, to elevate the level of all and every
one of the units which compose it, and to stimulate in all and every one
of them a consciousness of and pride in their own destiny, an undying
love for the abstract idea of country, and a deep conviction that in the
sphere of peoples, just as in that of the orbs, there is no star, no
matter how powerful, which can perturb the gravitation of the other
stars; for over the entire body of the worlds stands the immutable law
which governs them, and over this law is the sovereign will of the
Supreme Legislator of orbs and of souls.
This was the echo in my mind, Mr. Secretary, of what you said at Rio de
Janeiro and are confirming among us. Your words were great and good
because they were yours, without any doubt; but they were so, above all,
because they were in accord with the ideal of justice in pursuit of
which humanity is slowly marching--with that solemn diapason hung
between heaven and earth which furnishes the pitch from time to time to
men and peoples and worlds, in order that they may not depart from the
universal harmony.
Your words have reverberated like a friendly voice in the depths of the
soul of this people, which has acclaimed you without reserve because it
has understood you, sir. And for this reason, because I have thought
that I interpreted all the generous intensity of your attitude and of
your speeches, I have not told you at this time, as would have appeared
natural, how much we in Uruguay love and admire your wonderful American
country, whose stars shine perhaps without precedent in the sky of human
history, but rather how much we respect and with what a passion we love
our good Uruguayan mother-country, whose sun is also a star; how glad we
are to see it honored by your visit, and how we cherish the hope that
you will bear away a remembrance of us as a sincerely friendly people--a
people very conscious of its own destinies, of its rights, and of its
duties; in a word, a people very much in accord with that grand harmony
which exists among sovereign states which respect and love one another,
and which you have proclaimed in the name of your country as the supreme
ideal of our free America.
Ladies and gentlemen, let us fill our glasses with the most generous
wine, with the wine which most gladdens and cheers the heart of
man--with the wine of hope--and let us drink to the health of our
illustrious guest and messenger who represents here the intelligence and
the thought of the heart, and to the health of his wife and daughter,
who are the amiable symbol thereof; to the greater brilliancy of the
stars of his country, our glorious friend; to the realization, on the
American continent and throughout the world, of his exalted ideas of
peace, fraternity, and justice.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I am deeply sensible of the honor you confer upon me and upon my family
by this bounteous, hospitable, and graceful festival. It is a special
honor that the banquet to which we are invited should be presided over
by a gentleman who has such high esteem in the public life of your own
country; that the flattering, the too flattering words which have been
addressed to my poor self--words of just and kindly esteem regarding my
great and noble country, should be spoken by a poet who breathes in his
verses the spirit of Uruguay wherever his own world-known literature is
found.
It is a cause of happiness to receive this distinguished consideration
here in this temple devoted to science, to literature, to the arts, to
those pursuits which dignify, ennoble, and delight mankind, which give
the charm and grace to life, which make possible the continuance of
mankind in the paths of civilization. Here in this Atheneum, in this
atmosphere of scientific and literary discussion and thought, already
exists that world-wide republic which knows no divisions of territorial
boundary, of races, or of creed. Upon the platform you have erected
here, the men of North and the men of South America can stand in
fraternal embrace.
I have been preaching for the past few weeks in many places and before
many audiences the gospel of international fraternization. I know there
are many incredulous; there are many who think practical considerations
alone rule the efforts of men--profit in trade, the almighty dollar, the
balance of bookkeeping, or the checks in the counting house. There are
many who think that this is all there is to life, and that he is an idle
dreamer and an insincere orator who talks of the constancy of
international friendship, who talks of love of country rising above the
love of material things, who talks of sentiment as controlling the
affairs of men. That may be true so far as their own short and narrow
lives are concerned; but it is not an idle dream that the world through
the course of ages is growing up from material to spiritual, to moral,
and to intellectual life. It is not an idle dream that moral influences
are gradually, steadily in the course of centuries taking the place of
brute force in the control of the affairs of men. Sentiment rules the
world today--the feelings of the great masses of mankind; the
attractions and repulsions that move the millions rule the world today;
and as generation succeeds generation progress is ever from the material
to the moral. We cannot see it in a day; we cannot see it in a single
lifetime, as we cannot see the movements of the tide. We see the waves,
but the tide moves on imperceptibly. The progress, the steady and
irresistible progress of civilization is ever onwards.
Mr. Chairman, and you, Señor Zorrilla de San Martín, in your eloquent,
your more than eloquent, your poetic words, do honor to the idea of
peace and justice and friendship and the rule of moral qualities in the
relations of nations. When you do honor to the representative of that
idea you are doing your work in your day and generation to advance the
great cause that proceeds through the ages to the better and higher life
of mankind. We are nothing; our lives are but as moments; our personal
work is inappreciable in this world; but slowly, imperceptibly, we, each
individually, add a little to or detract a little from human rights,
human liberty, human justice.
I do not know how sufficiently to thank you, to thank the people of
Montevideo, for all that you and they have done for me and my family
during our brief--our all too brief--visit here. I believe that your
kindness, your generous hospitality, will find response in the breasts
of my countrymen; I believe that it will be an example to the people of
South America and of North America; I believe that it will be evidence
to the whole world that the ideas of friendship--of international
friendship and courtesy--rule here in Uruguay; that Uruguay is a part of
the great brotherhood of man, not selfish, but heart open to the best
and brightest influences of humanity, doing her part in her time to
advance the cause of civilization. I know that when tomorrow morning we
sail away from Montevideo we shall all carry with us the most delightful
visions of a fair and bright land, of a white city and a beautiful bay;
memories of hospitality and friendship, and memories of the most
beautiful women. We can never repay you, for your hospitality has been
of the kind that asks for no payment; it has been true hospitality. We
can only thank you, and thank you we do now and thank you we shall
continue to do as long as we live.
ARGENTINA
BUENOS AYRES
ADDRESS OF HONORABLE EMILIO MITRE
In Reference to the Visit of Mr. Root, in the Chamber of Deputies
July 4, 1906
This speech, delivered before Mr. Root reached Buenos Ayres,
had an intimate relation to his reception.
Within a few weeks, Mr. President, Buenos Ayres will receive the visit
of an eminent personality of the United States, Mr. Elihu Root, who is
discharging in that country the duties of Secretary of State.
The Executive of the nation, having official knowledge of the visit of
Mr. Root, has already taken measures to entertain him and to make his
sojourn in the Argentine Republic agreeable; but it has appeared to me,
Mr. President, that the Chamber of Deputies should itself spontaneously
take an initiative in this manifestation, in view of the personality of
the man and the country he represents.
The United States are for us, as is well known, the cradle of our
democratic institutions; we are bound to them by those ties of
friendship and of interest that are known to all and which it would be
superfluous to enumerate; but apart from this, there exists between that
country and ours historic bonds that secure our profound sympathies.
It is beneficial from time to time to ascend the currents of history in
order to gather the lessons of the past which may serve us as a guide in
our constant march into the future. When we study in its annals the
action of the Government of the United States in the epoch of Argentine
independence, we encounter demonstrations of a solicitude, of an
affection, of a solidarity, of a participation in the struggles of
those heroic times, so marked that the Argentine spirit necessarily
feels itself impressed with the sentiment of intense gratitude and the
necessity of repaying in some way those manifestations now somewhat
forgotten.
It is of importance, Mr. President, that our people should know well the
other peoples with whom they exchange products, manufactures, and ideas,
especially when, in respect to the latter, those that they receive
surpass in quantity those they give. And if there is any country that
the Argentine people need to know well, any people, in its history, in
its methods, in its sentiments, and in its intentions, it is the United
States of America, the elder sister, the forerunner, and the model.
In the epoch of our independence, Mr. President, the public life of the
United States was constantly interested in the vicissitudes of the
struggle that these peoples waged for their independence on both slopes
of the Andes and in the regions of Venezuela. If you read the messages
of the Presidents of the United States you find in them, year after
year, words that prove the interest of that country in the destiny of
these countries. At a date as early as 1811, a message of President
Madison contained phrases full of sympathy for the great communities
which were struggling for their liberty in this part of the world; and
the attention of Congress was called to the necessity of being prepared
to enter into relations of government to government with them, as soon
as their independence should be sanctioned.
From the time in which Monroe, the author of the famous doctrine,
assumed the presidency of the republic, in all the messages at the
opening of Congress, there is a distinct reference to the struggle of
these nations for their independence, and in particular to the conflict
that developed in the Rio de la Plata and the victorious progress of the
arms of Buenos Ayres on this and on the other side of the mountains and
on the plateau of Bolivia.
In all these documents reference is made to independence as a probable
fact, which must necessarily at that time have exerted an influence in
favor of the cause of the patriots; and often the declaration was
repeated that, the colonies being emancipated, the United States did not
seek and would not accept from them any commercial advantage that was
not also offered to all other nations.
These manifestations which emanated from the Government and reflected
the movement of public opinion, found eloquent exponents in Congress
also.
In the records of the American Congress of 1817, one year after the
declaration of independence by the Congress of Tucuman, a famous debate
is recorded, begun by Henry Clay, the celebrated orator, who pleaded the
cause of Argentine independence in the most enthusiastic terms. In this
debate a Representative from New York also took a prominent part; this
Representative bore the same name as the envoy whom we are to receive
from the United States of America, Mr. Root.
Spain had complained of the expeditions that were fitted out in ports of
the United States to foment American revolution. The Government was
tolerant with these infractions of neutrality; popular sympathy made the
condemnation of such conspirators impossible. Spain, with whom the
United States had relations of great importance, and with whom they were
negotiating the cession of Florida, had protested to the Government
against these expeditions of its rebellious subjects. The President,
forced to do so, had sent to Congress a message requesting the enactment
of a law of neutrality. Clay and Root opposed it; and the latter said
that it was worth while to go to war with Spain if a demonstration in
favor of the liberty and independence of those countries could be made.
Later, during the administration of John Quincy Adams, these
manifestations of the American Government in favor of Argentine
independence are met with on every page of the records of Congress. In
1818, the first discussion took place in the American Congress--a
concrete discussion on the necessity of recognizing Argentine
independence. Henry Clay was, as always, the leader of this discussion,
following up the movements which, with extraordinary zeal, he had made
at reunions, in the press, and in Congress. He delivered a speech that
it is impossible for one to read without feeling his spirit moved on
observing the solicitude, the interest, with which at that early date
this apostle of democracy expressed himself in regard to the struggle of
these peoples to gain their independence.
All, without exception, pronounced themselves in favor of the
independence of these peoples, which they recognized in principle. But a
parliamentary question of privilege was raised, as to the prerogative of
the Executive, it being alleged that the initiative, proposed by Clay,
of naming a minister to these countries, encroached upon the functions
of the Executive when the latter believed it wise to send simply agents.
On this question opinion was divided, but not a single vote was cast
that did not express the warmest sympathy with the cause of the
patriots.
While such was the attitude of the American Congress, in the press and
in popular meetings manifestations of adhesion to the cause of the South
American independence appeared at every moment. But above all, the place
where traces of this determined action of the Government of the United
States in favor of Argentine independence are to be found is in the
records of the State Department at Washington, in which reference is
made to the activity of its representative in London, at that time the
famous statesman, Richard Rush. Rush was the minister of the United
States in London from the end of 1817, when he left the post of
Secretary of State. He began negotiations immediately with Lord
Castlereagh, Prime Minister of England, to induce the British Foreign
Office to enter upon a policy of frank adhesion to the emancipation of
these countries from the dominion of Spain. There we see, Mr. President,
how united the action of the United States was in this movement,
inspired by the most sincere democratic desires, by a true love of
liberty.
The Prime Minister of England received Mr. Rush's proposals coldly.
England had been appealed to by Spain to mediate between her and the
Holy Alliance, in order to obtain the submission of the rebellious
provinces; and England had indicated the advisability of acceding to
this reintegration of Spanish dominion, on the basis of the return of
these countries to a state of dependence, with the condition of a
general amnesty.
In the conference between Lord Castlereagh and Minister Rush, the latter
positively declared that the United States could never contribute to
such retrogression, and that the aims of their Government favored the
recognition of the complete independence of America. This was in 1818.
It would occupy much time, Mr. President, but would not be without
interest, to review in detail all the negotiations entered into by the
North American representative in London, from the time of Lord
Castlereagh to that of Canning, who succeeded him.
In February, 1819, Rush notified Castlereagh that the Washington
Government considered that the new South American states had established
the position obtained by the victory of their arms, and that President
Monroe had given an _exequatur_ to a consul from Buenos Ayres, and was
resolved at all hazards to recognize Argentine independence. Lord
Castlereagh declared himself openly at variance with the views of the
Government of the United States, and said that Great Britain had done
all that was possible to terminate the strife between Spain and her
colonies, but always on the basis of the restoration of the dominion of
the former. In 1819, then, the United States were the only nation that
insisted upon asserting the independence of our country.
Thanks to their attitude, all the attempts begun by the Holy Alliance to
suppress the movement for emancipation failed.
The death of Lord Castlereagh did not change the situation. Even the
acts of Canning, if examined, and if the negotiations of the then
American minister are analyzed, leave an impression of opposition,
because that great British Minister, who, according to history, clinched
as it were the independence of this country with his celebrated
declaration, was not always of the same way of thinking; and it was
necessary for the minister of the United States to inculcate in him the
policy of his country in order that he should decide to adopt a policy
openly favorable to South American independence. Such is the finding of
the most accurate of Argentine historians.
On March 8, 1882, President Monroe sent to the Congress of the United
States his celebrated message proposing the recognition of the Argentine
independence. In that message the President renewed his assurances of
sympathy for the cause of Buenos Ayres, and confirmed the entire
disinterestedness with which his Government espoused the cause of the
political integrity of the youthful nation. The House of Representatives
voted the recognition of Argentine independence unanimously, except for
one vote--that of Representative Garnett, who declared that he did not
object to the recognition, but that he considered it unnecessary, and he
cited in support of his view an opinion of Rivadavia. The United States
was, then, the first country after Portugal (which through motives of
special interest had recognized our independence), to make a similar
recognition; and England, which followed the United States, did not do
so until three years later, January 1, 1825.
Even after the recognition of Argentine independence by the United
States, conferences continued to be held in Europe to establish the
régime of the dominion of the mother country over the already
independent colonies. Then new conferences took place with Canning, in
which the minister of the United States confirmed anew the policy of his
country in the matter of the final recognition of the independence of
this republic. During that period, a document appeared that emanated
from John Quincy Adams, addressed to Rush, in which he declined to enter
into the plan for convoking a congress intended to treat of the
questions of South America, and stated that the United States would
never attend such a congress unless the South American republics were
first invited.
To accentuate the attitude of his Government, Mr. Adams adds that if the
congress were to take place, with intent hostile to the new republics,
the United States would solemnly protest against it and its calamitous
consequences.
The systematic and persistent action of the United States ended by
determining in Canning a policy favorable to South American
independence, and opposed to the intervention of any foreign power in
the destinies of the new republics.
Great Britain and the United States once in accord, after negotiations
in which Jefferson and Madison united their counsel to that of President
Monroe, these two patriots expressing themselves in terms of moving
eloquence in favor of the cause of emancipation, the question was
settled forever.
Some months afterward, December 2, 1823, President Monroe consummated
his action by sending to Congress the message that contains the
enunciation of his famous doctrine. "America for the Americans", Mr.
President, was a formula that, as I understand it, meant the final
consecration of the independence of the American nations; it was the
voice of the most powerful of them all, proclaiming to the world that
conquest in the domain of this America was at an end; it was
notification to the conquering powers of Europe that they should not
extend themselves to these continents because this extensive territory
was all occupied by free nations, outside of whose sovereignty not an
inch was vacant.
The independence of these republics having been settled on the field of
battle by the sole force of the republics, the declaration of the
American President was the culminating act of that grand epic. For the
United States it is a record of honor; for Europe it is an ultimatum.
The Monroe Doctrine exists today with all the force of a law of nations,
and no country of Europe has dared to dispute it.
It is fitting, Mr. President, to appreciate exactly the meaning of this
great act, of the splendid attitude, more fertile for the peace of the
earth and for its progress than all the conventions that European
nations have arranged from time to time in order to determine their
quarrels. The American President, in formulating this doctrine, decreed
peace between Europe and America, which seemed destined, the former to
assault always for conquest, the latter to fight always to defend its
frontiers. In short, the Monroe Doctrine has been the veto on war
between Europe and America; in its shadow these youthful nations have
grown until today they are sufficiently strong to proclaim the same
doctrine as the emblem on their shield. And the most glorious
characteristic of this doctrine is that it is a dictate of civilization,
in the nature of a magnificent hymn of peace, which can be chanted at
the same time by the European and the American nations, because it
avoided that permanent contention which would have subvened if the
system of conquest that Europe has developed in regard to certain
nations had been implanted here in the territory of South America.
Well, Mr. President, he who is coming to visit us is a conspicuous
citizen of that nation, and brings, as it is said--and I believe the
Foreign Office already is informed in regard thereto--a message of peace
and fraternity of utmost interest to our progress. We ought to take
advantage of this opportunity to give this envoy a reception worthy of
his people and worthy of himself.
I have privately communicated to the Minister for Foreign Affairs the
idea of this project, and I have had the pleasure to hear from his lips
the most complete adherence to my declaration that in addition to a bill
authorizing the expenses, there was the intention of preparing for Mr.
Root a manifestation emanating spontaneously from the Argentine
Congress. The Minister believes this demonstration to be the necessary
complement of the demonstration the national government is preparing for
this envoy from the great republic.
The historic facts I have recalled are a brief synthesis of an epoch
sufficient to warrant the Argentine people in associating themselves
with the Government and lending to the event their warm interest. I am
doubly pleased to have recalled this noble history on the Fourth of
July, the anniversary of the independence of the great republic of the
North.
I believe that for these reasons, gentlemen, you will lend your support
to this idea and fulfill the purpose for which it is presented.
BANQUET AT THE GOVERNMENT HOUSE
SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY DR. J. FIGUEROA ALCORTA
PRESIDENT OF ARGENTINA
At a Banquet given by him, August 14, 1906
The American republics are at this moment tightening their traditional
bonds at a congress of fraternity whose importance has been indicated by
the presence of our illustrious guest, who passes across the continent
as the herald of the civilization of a great people.
The world's conscience being awakened by the progress of public thought,
the members of the family of nations are trying to draw closer together
for the development of their activities, without fetters or obstacles,
under the olive branch of peace and the guaranty of reciprocal respect
for their rights.
International conferences are a happy manifestation of that tendency,
because, in the contact of representatives of the various states,
hindrances and prejudices are dissipated, and there is shown to exist in
the collective mind a common aspiration for the teachings of liberty and
justice.
America gives a recurring example of such congresses of peace and law.
As each one takes place it is evident that the attributes of sovereignty
of the nations which constitute it are displayed more clearly; that free
government is taking deeper root, that democratic solidarity is more
apparent, and that force is giving way more freely to reason as the
fundamental principle of society.
The congress of Rio de Janeiro has that lofty significance. Its
material, immediate consequences will be more or less important, but its
moral result will be forever of transcendent benefit--a new departure
and a step in advance in the development of liberal ideas in this part
of the American Continent.
Mr. Secretary of State, your country has taken gigantic strides in the
march of progress until it occupies a position in the vanguard. It has
set a proud and shining example to its sister nations.
As in the dawn of their emancipation it recognized in them the
conqueror's right to stand among the independent states of the earth, so
likewise it later stimulated the high aspiration to establish a
political system representing the popular will, now inscribed in
indelible characters in the preambles of American legislation.
The Argentine Republic, after rude trials, has completed its
constitutional régime, gathering experience and learning from the great
republic of the North.
The general lines of our organization followed those of the Philadelphia
convention, with the modifications imposed by circumstances, by the
irresistible force of tradition, and by the idiosyncrasies peculiar to
our race. The forefathers who drafted the Argentine constitution were
inspired in their work by those who, to the admiration of the world,
created the Constitution of the United States.
Many of our political doctrines are derived from the writings of
Hamilton, Madison, and Jay; the spirit of Marshall and Taney are seen in
the hearings of our tribunals; and even the children in our schools,
where they learn to personify the republican virtues, the love and
sacrifice for country, respect for the rights of man, and the
prerogatives of the citizen, speak the name of George Washington with
that of the foremost Argentines.
Our home institutions being closely united and the shadows on the
international horizon having disappeared, the Argentine Republic can
occupy itself in fraternizing with other nations; and, like the United
States, she aspires to strengthen the ties of friendship sanctioned by
history and by the ideal philanthropy common to free institutions.
Your visit will have, in this aspect, great results. We have invited you
to visit our territory in order to link the two countries more
intimately; and your presence here indicates that this noble object will
be realized, inspired as it is by the convenience of mutual interests
and the sharing of noble aims.
You are a messenger of the ideals of brotherhood, and as such you are
welcome to the Argentine Republic.
I salute you, in the name of the Government and the people who have
received you, as the genuine representative of your country, with that
sincere desire for friendship which is loyally rooted in the national
sentiment of Argentina.
Gentlemen: To the United States of America; to its illustrious
President, Theodore Roosevelt; to the Secretary of State of North
America, Honorable Elihu Root!
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I thank you, sir, for your kind welcome and for your words of
appreciation. I thank you for myself; I thank you for that true and
noble gentleman who holds in the United States of America the same
exalted office which you hold here. I thank you in behalf of the
millions of citizens in the United States. When your kind and courteous
invitation reached me, I was in doubt whether the long absence from
official duties would be justified; but I considered that your
expression of friendship imposed upon me something more than an
opportunity for personal gratification; it imposed upon me a duty. It
afforded an opportunity to say something to the Government and the
people of Argentina which would justly represent the sentiments and the
feelings of the people of the United States toward you all. We do not
know as much as we ought in the United States; we do not know as much as
I would like to feel we know; but we have a traditional right to be
interested in Argentina. I thought today, when we were all involved in
the common misfortune, at the time of my landing, that, after all, the
United States and Argentina were not simply fair-weather friends. We
inherit the right to be interested in Argentina, and to be proud of
Argentina. From the time when Richard Rush was fighting, from the day
when James Monroe threw down the gauntlet of a weak republic, as we were
then, in defense of your independence and rights--from that day to this
the interests and the friendship of the people of the United States for
the Argentine Republic have never changed. We rejoice in your
prosperity; we are proud of your achievements; we feel that you are
justifying our faith in free government, and self-government; that you
are maintaining our great thesis which demands the possession, the
enjoyment, and the control of the earth by the people who inhabit it. We
have followed the splendid persistency with which you have fought
against the obstacles that stood in your path, with the sympathy that
has come from similar struggles at home. Like you, we have had to
develop the resources of a vast unpeopled land; like you, we have had to
fight for a foothold against the savage Indians; like you, we have had
conflicts of races for the possession of territory; like you, we have
had to suffer war; like you, we have conquered nature; and like you, we
have been holding out our hands to the people of all the world, inviting
them to come and add to our development and share our riches.
We live under the same constitution in substance; we are maintaining and
attempting to perfect ourselves in the application of the same
principles of liberty and justice. So how can the people of the United
States help feeling a friendship and sympathy for the people of
Argentina? I deemed it a duty to come, in response to your kind
invitation to say this, to say that there is not a cloud in the sky of
good understanding; there are no political questions at issue between
Argentina and the United States; there is no thought of grievance by one
against the other; there are no old grudges or scores to settle. We can
rejoice in each other's prosperity; we can aid in each other's
development; we can be proud of each other's successes without hindrance
or drawback. And for the development of this sentiment in both
countries, nothing is needed but more knowledge--that we shall know each
other better; that not only the most educated and thoughtful readers of
our two countries shall become familiar with the history of the other,
but that the entire body of the people shall know what are the relations
and what are the feelings of the other country. I should be glad if the
people of Argentina--not merely you, Mr. President; not merely my
friend, the minister of foreign affairs; not merely the gentlemen
connected with the Government, but the people of Argentina--might know
that the people of the United States are their friends, as I know the
people of Argentina are friends of the United States.
I have come to South America with no more specific object than I have
stated. Our traditional policy in the United States of America is to
make no alliances. It was inculcated by Washington; it has been adhered
to by his successors ever since. But, Mr. President, the alliance that
comes from unwritten, unsealed instruments, as that from the convention,
signed and ratified with all formalities, is of vital consequence. We
make no political alliances, but we make an alliance with all our
sisters in sentiment and feeling, in the pursuit of liberty and justice,
in mutual helpfulness; and in that spirit I beg to return to you and to
your Government and the people of this splendid and wonderful country my
sincere thanks for the welcome you have given me and my country in my
person.
RECEPTION BY AMERICAN AND ENGLISH RESIDENTS
SPEECH OF MR. FRANCIS B. PURDIE
At St. George's Hall, August 16, 1906
Americans resident in Buenos Ayres and in the Argentine Republic are
sensible of the honor you have done them by accepting their invitation
for this evening, and they appreciate most highly the courtesy of the
Argentine Government, whose distinguished guest you are, in allowing
them this coveted privilege. As Americans we welcome you to Buenos
Ayres, and it is our earnest hope that your visit here will bind more
closely the ties of friendship which unite the great republics of the
North and of the South, and that the knowledge you will gain of this
great country and of its magnificent resources will lead to more
familiar intercourse and to that good understanding which should exist
between nations governed by like principles, living under constitutions
framed in a like spirit, and having similar national aims.
This gathering is the result of a public meeting called immediately
after it was learned that you had accepted the invitation of the
Argentine Government to visit this city. It was a meeting typically
American, which had no dividing line on the question that our Secretary
of State was a man whom we would all delight to honor. The executive
committee of the North American Society of the River Plata was intrusted
with the arrangements. We believe you should know something of that
society. Organized only last November, it embraces in its membership
practically every American in Buenos Ayres. For its age, I am not afraid
to say that it is the most flourishing social organization that has ever
been established in this country. What is the object of the society?
Not, I conceive, such as will arouse antagonism or jealousy in the mind
of any man. As set forth in the preamble to its constitution, it is: "To
keep alive the love of country and foster the spirit of patriotism,...
and for such other purposes as will advance the interests of our
country, encourage and maintain friendly relations with the country of
our residence, and assist in promoting closer commercial union between
the United States and the countries of the River Plata."
It is an organization framed in the spirit of our beloved Lincoln, "with
malice toward none." The society has no political aim or purpose. It
plots for nothing but the well-being of all, and wishes for nothing less
than the prosperity of the home land and the land of our residence. Its
members are imbued with that spirit which is the characteristic
American attitude toward all nations and peoples, the spirit of "live
and let live." Apart from all that your visit may mean in international
comity, it means much to us here; for you, Mr. Secretary, are the very
living embodiment of the spirit to which I have referred, that broad
Americanism which does not seek to advantage itself by intruding on the
rights of others. Every speech made by you since leaving home has been
an inspiration to us, and has strengthened us in our determination to
live up to the principles upon which our society is founded.
But it is not alone the Americans in Buenos Ayres who have come here
tonight to greet you, and who have wished to do you honor. Your kinsmen
from across the sea are here in their hundreds, for when it became known
that such a reception as this was contemplated, the requests for the
privilege of joining with us were so great in number that the sincerity
of the English-speaking people could not be questioned, and the American
society welcomed the opportunity to invite as its guests as many of the
representative British and other English-speaking residents of Buenos
Ayres as this hall can hold; and there is represented here every
important public interest and private enterprise in this republic, and I
have the honor, in their name as well as in the name of your countrymen,
to assure you that you are in the house of your friends.
I have told you, Mr. Root, what your countrymen feel about your coming
here; I have referred to the cordial sympathy shown by the
English-speaking residents; and it is with feelings of genuine pleasure
that I now make reference to the attitude of the Argentine Government
and the Argentine people. This reference will not be my personal view
alone; it is the expression of the feelings of representative Americans
in this city which has been voiced at every meeting we have held within
the past few weeks. The Argentine people are, and wish to remain, the
friends of the United States. Our committees have had the privilege of
holding interviews with high officials of the government, with various
committees of the leading citizens; and we have been convinced of the
genuine nature of the reception prepared for you. This is too proud a
nation to pretend that which it does not feel, and the history of Buenos
Ayres will convince any student that this city has never been afraid to
speak out, to applaud or condemn as its judgment dictated. The
government officials have been sincerely cordial, and they have not been
content merely to express their wish to give us every friendly help;
they have, apart from their own magnificent preparations, given the
Americans here material assistance.
The world owes much of its progress to opposing views, and the
healthiest nations have the strongest political parties taking differing
views upon questions of national policy, and these parties reach the
public by means of the newspapers. The Argentine Republic is not an
exception, but I doubt if there has ever been a theme upon which the
press of this country has been so united as that honor should be shown
to you. I speak for Americans when I say that in the Argentine Republic
we have found a home where absolute freedom is ours,--freedom in every
walk of life; freedom for conscience; freedom to live, move, and have
our being as God and our own wills may lead us. There are Argentines
here tonight who are not one whit behind us in their enthusiasm for you
and for all that you represent, and there is a group here of Argentines
who have graduated from American colleges, who wish to say to you that
next to their own country they revere the United States of America. You
now know, Mr. Root, what friends you have before you, and we all bid you
welcome, thrice welcome, to Buenos Ayres.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
Mr. Chairman, my countrymen, my countrywomen, my friends from the land
whence my fathers came, I need not say that I am glad to meet you. No
one far away from his own land needs to be told that the looks, faces,
the sound of voice, of one's own countrymen are a joy to the wanderer in
strange lands. Yet I do not find this such a strange land. I find here
so many things to remind me of home, so many things that are like our
own country, that it seems a little like coming home. Such is the
similarity in conditions, in spirit, in purpose; such is the impress of
the same institutions and the same principles, that I cannot feel
altogether a stranger; and when I meet you here at home almost I feel
the warmth of my own fireside.
I am glad to meet you because I think that perhaps to many of you who
have been long in this distant land I may bring pleasant memories of
cities and farms and homes, left behind many a year ago. But I hope that
the new home you have found, the new duties you have taken up, have made
you happy, prosperous, useful, full of the ambitions, activities, and
satisfactions of life. There have been great changes in the United
States of America--of North America, perhaps I must call it,--since most
of you left your old homes. When you, Mr. President, left us, we were a
debtor nation; we were borrowing money from Europe to develop our own
resources, to build up our own country. Most of the money was coming
from our English friends. That capital built up our railways to make
possible the wonderful development that has made the United States what
it is. We had no capital, no time, no energy, to devote to anything but
the task before us, to conquer our West and to develop our empty lands.
In that distant day, when Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams espoused the
cause of the infant republics of South America, we could have no
relations with them but those of political sympathy, because we were too
concentrated in the work that lay before us at home. Twenty years ago,
when that far-seeing and sanguine statesman, Mr. Blaine, inaugurated his
South American policy and brought about the first American Conference at
Washington, and the establishment of the Bureau of American Republics,
we were still a debtor nation, with no surplus capital, and engrossed in
doing our work at home. It was still impossible for us to have any
relations with South America, except those of political sympathy.
But since Mr. Blaine, times have changed. We have paid our debts; we
have become a creditor rather than a debtor nation. We have for the
first time within the last ten years begun to accumulate surplus
capital, and it has accumulated with a wonderful rapidity,--a surplus
capital to enable us to go out and establish new relations with the rest
of the world. We now are beginning to be in a position where we can take
the same relations towards other countries that England took towards us.
We have paid our debts to England; the use of her capital in developing
the United States has resulted in great advantage to both of us; and
with the payment of the debt there has been left a warm and, I believe,
enduring friendship between England and the United States. I should like
to see the same kind of friendship between the United States and South
America. I should like to see the great surplus capital which we are
accumulating in the United States of North America turn southwards, to
see it used to develop the vast resources of this country, with mutual
advantage to both, so that when the time comes in the future, as it will
come, when the people of Argentina, with their resources developed, with
their population increased, have accumulated all the capital they need
and paid their debts, we shall have had our share both in their
development and in their prosperity, and an enduring friendship may
exist between us.
Now it has seemed to me, sir, that possibly the opportunity afforded by
the kind and courteous invitation of the Argentine Government to visit
this country might enable me to do something to this end, just at this
juncture when a change in the attitude of the United States toward the
rest of the world is taking place, when the change from the debtor to
the creditor nation, is made; from the borrower of money to develop
resources, to a country with surplus capital to send out to the
world;--it seemed to me possible that I might by this visit help to
establish the relations which I should like to see existing. I should
like to be able to qualify myself to say in the most public way that
this is a land to which the poor of all the world, who have enterprise
without money, can come and find homes and prosperity, so that by the
thousands, by the millions, they may come from the Old World and build
up Argentina as they have built up the United States. I feel able to say
that this is a shore to which the emigrants from the Old World may come
with a certainty of finding homes, occupations, and opportunities for
prosperity; that it is a country to which the capital of the United
States may come with the certainty that it will be secure, will be
protected, and will find profitable employment. I look forward to the
time when the wonderful development that is going on here now--not
confined alone to this country, but progressing here with an amazing
rapidity,--will be as great a wonder to the world as the advance which
has taken the United States of North America, expanding from the feeble
fringe of colonists along the Atlantic shore to a great nation of eighty
millions, stretching from ocean to ocean. Argentina will take some of
our markets from us, but what are they? They will be markets she is
entitled to; and with her prosperity, and with the right understanding
and relations between the two countries, our commercial relations with
her will more than take the place of the markets she takes away from us.
We have nothing to fear in the growing prosperity of Argentina. We have
no cause but for rejoicing in her prosperity; no cause but to aid her in
every way in our power in her onward progress; and that I believe to be
the sincere desire of the whole of the people of the United States.
Mr. President, a heavy responsibility rests upon the citizen of our
country who lives in a foreign land. We can misbehave at home and it
makes little difference; but every American citizen in a foreign land,
every American citizen in the Argentine Republic, is the representative
of his country there. He needs no commission; no power can prevent his
holding a commission to represent before all the people of Argentina the
character of his own countrymen. You represent our beloved land to the
people of Argentina. What you are they will believe us to be. As they
study your character and conduct their estimate of us rises, and it is
with the greatest pleasure that I find here among this people whom I
respect so highly, whose good opinion for my country I so greatly
desire, a body of Americans, a body of my countrymen, so worthy, so
estimable, so high in reputation, so well fitted to maintain the
standard of the United States of America, high, pure, unsullied, worthy
of all honor.
BANQUET AT THE OPERA HOUSE
SPEECH OF DR. LUIS M. DRAGO
PRESIDENT OF THE RECEPTION COMMITTEE
August 17, 1906
The large gathering here assembled, representative of all that Buenos
Ayres has of the most notable in science, letters, industry, and
commerce, has conferred on me the signal honor of designating me to
offer this banquet to the eminent minister of one of the greatest
nations of the earth, a nation linked to us from the very beginning by
many and very real sentiments of moral and political solidarity. This
country has not forgotten that in the trying times of the colonial
emancipation, our fathers could rely on the sympathy and the warm and
disinterested adhesion of the American people, our predecessors and our
guides in the paths of liberty. The thrilling utterances of Henry Clay
defending our cause when everything appeared to threaten our revolution,
have never been surpassed in their noble eloquence; and it was due to
the generosity and foresight of their great statesmen that the United
States were the first to receive us with open arms as their equals in
the community of sovereign nations.
The spiritual affinity thus happily established has gone on
strengthening itself almost imperceptibly ever since by the reproduction
of institutions and legal customs.
Our charter was inspired by the American Constitution and acts through
the operation of similar laws. The great examples of the Union are also
our examples; and being sincere lovers of liberty we rejoice in the
triumphs (which in a certain sense we consider our own) of the greatest
of democratic nations.
George Washington is, for us, one of the great figures of history, the
tutelar personality, the supreme model, a prototype of abnegation,
honor, and wisdom; and there is an important region in the province of
Buenos Ayres bearing the name of Lincoln, as a homage to the austere
patriotism of that statesman and martyr. The names of Jefferson,
Madison, and Quincy Adams are household words with us; and in our
parliamentary debates and popular assemblies mention is frequently made
of the statesmen, the orators, and the judges of the great sister
republic.
There thus exist, honorable sir, a long-established friendship, an
intercommunion of thought and purpose which draw peoples together more
closely, intimately, and indissolubly than can be accomplished by the
formulae--often barren--of the foreign offices.
And the moment is certainly propitious for drawing closer the bonds of
international amity which your excellency's visit puts in relief, and
which have found such eloquent expression in the Pan American Congress
of Rio de Janeiro. Enlightened patriotism has understood at last that on
this continent, with its immense riches and vast unexplored regions,
power and wealth are not to be looked for in conquest and displacements,
but in collaboration and solidarity, which will people the wilderness
and give the soil to the plow. It has understood, moreover, that
America, by reason of the nationalities of which it is composed, of the
nature of the representative institutions which they have adopted, by
the very character of their people, separated as they have been from the
conflicts and complications of European governments, and even by the
gravitation of peculiar circumstances and events, has been constituted a
separate political factor, a new and vast theater for the development of
the human race, which will serve as a counterpoise to the great
civilizations of the other hemisphere, and so maintain the equilibrium
of the world.
It is consequently our sacred duty to preserve the integrity of America,
material and moral, against the menaces and artifices, very real and
effective, that unfortunately surround it. It is not long since one of
the most eminent of living jurisconsults of Great Britain denounced the
possibility of the danger. "The enemies of light and freedom," he said,
"are neither dead nor sleeping; they are vigilant, active, militant, and
astute." And it was in obedience to that sentiment of common defense
that in a critical moment the Argentine Republic proclaimed the
impropriety of the forcible collection of public debts by European
nations, not as an abstract principle of academic value or as a legal
rule of universal application outside of this continent (which it is
not incumbent on us to maintain), but as a principle of American
diplomacy which, whilst being founded on equity and justice, has for its
exclusive object to spare the peoples of this continent the calamities
of conquest, disguised under the mask of financial interventions, in the
same way as the traditional policy of the United States, without
accentuating superiority or seeking preponderance, condemned the
oppression of the nations of this part of the world and the control of
their destinies by the great powers of Europe. The dreams and utopias of
today are the facts and commonplaces of tomorrow and the principle
proclaimed must sooner or later prevail.
The gratitude we owe to the nations of Europe is indeed very great, and
much we still have to learn from them. We are the admirers of their
secular institutions; more than once we have been moved by their great
ideals, and under no circumstances whatsoever should we like to sever or
to weaken the links of a long-established friendship. But we want, at
the same time, and it is only just and fair, that the genius and
tendency of our democratic communities be respected. They are advancing
slowly, it is true; struggling at times and occasionally making a pause,
but none the less strong and progressive for all that, and already
showing the unequivocal signs of success in what may be called the most
considerable trial mankind has ever made of the republican system of
government.
In the meantime, to reach their ultimate greatness and have an influence
in the destinies of the world, these nations only require to come
together and have a better knowledge of each other, to break up the old
colonial isolation, and realize the contraction of America, as what is
called the contraction of the world has always been effected by the
annihilation of distance through railways, telegraphs, and the thousand
and one means of communication and interchange at the disposal of modern
civilization.
The increase of commerce and the public fortune will be brought about in
this way; but such results as concern only material prosperity will
appear unimportant when compared with the blessings of a higher order
which are sure to follow, when, realizing the inner meaning of things,
and stimulated by spiritual communion, these peoples meet each other as
rivals only in the sciences and arts, in literature and government, and
most of all in the practice of virtues, which are the best ornament of
the state and the foundation stone of all enduring grandeur of the human
race.
Gentlemen:
To the United States, the noblest and the greatest of democratic
nations!
To Mr. Roosevelt, the President of transcendental initiative and
strenuous life!
To his illustrious minister, our guest, the highest and most eloquent
representative of American solidarity, for whom I have not words
sufficiently expressive to convey all the pleasure we feel in receiving
him, and how we honor ourselves by having him in our midst.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I thank you for the kind and friendly words you have uttered. I thank
you, and all of you for your cordiality and bounteous hospitality. As I
am soon to leave this city, where I and my family have been welcomed so
warmly and have been made so happy, let me take this opportunity to
return to you and to the Government and to the people of Buenos Ayres
our most sincere and heartfelt thanks for all your kindness and goodness
to us. We do appreciate it most deeply, and we shall never forget it,
shall never forget you--your friendly faces, your kind greetings, your
beautiful homes, your noble spirit, and all that makes up the great and
splendid city of Buenos Ayres.
It is with special pleasure, Mr. Chairman, that I have listened to that
part of your speech which relates to the political philosophy of our
times, and especially to the political philosophy most interesting to
America. Upon the two subjects of special international interest to
which you have alluded, I am glad to be able to declare myself in hearty
and unreserved sympathy with you. The United States of America has never
deemed it to be suitable that she should use her army and navy for the
collection of ordinary contract debts of foreign governments to her
citizens. For more than a century the State Department, the Department
of Foreign Relations of the United States of America, has refused to
take such action, and that has become the settled policy of our country.
We deem it to be inconsistent with that respect for the sovereignty of
weaker powers which is essential to their protection against the
aggression of the strong. We deem the use of force for the collection of
ordinary contract debts to be an invitation to abuses, in their
necessary results far worse, far more baleful to humanity than that the
debts contracted by any nation should go unpaid. We consider that the
use of the army and navy of a great power to compel a weaker power to
answer to a contract with a private individual, is both an invitation to
speculation upon the necessities of weak and struggling countries and an
infringement upon the sovereignty of those countries, and we are now, as
we always have been, opposed to it; and we believe that, perhaps not
today nor tomorrow, but through the slow and certain process of the
future, the world will come to the same opinion.
It is with special gratification that I have heard from your lips so
just an estimate of the character of that traditional policy of the
United States which bears the name of President Monroe. When you say
that it was "without accentuating superiority or seeking preponderance,"
that Monroe's declaration condemned the oppression of the nations of
this part of the world and the control of their destinies by the great
powers of Europe, you speak the exact historical truth. You do but
simple justice to the purposes and the sentiments of Monroe and his
compatriots and to the country of Monroe at every hour from that time to
this.
I congratulate you upon the wonderful opportunity that lies before you.
Happier than those of us who were obliged in earlier days to conquer the
wilderness, you men of Argentina have at your hands great, new forces
for your use. Changes have come of recent years in the world which
affect the working out of your problem. One is that through the
comparative infrequency of war, of pestilence, of famine, through the
increased sanitation of the world, the decrease of infant mortality by
reason of better sanitation, the population of the world is increasing.
Those causes which reduced population are being removed and the pressure
of population is sending out wave after wave of men for the peopling of
the vacant lands of the earth. Another change is, that through the
wonderful activity of invention and discovery and organizing capacity
during our lifetime, the power of mankind to produce wealth has been
immensely increased. One man today, with machinery, with steam, with
electricity, with all the myriads of appliances that invention and
discovery have created, can produce more wealth, more of the things that
mankind desires, than twenty men could have produced years ago; and the
result is that vast accumulations of capital are massing in the world,
ready to be poured out for the building up of the vacant places of the
earth. For the utilization of these two great forces, men and money, you
in Argentina have the opportunity of incalculable potential wealth, and
you have the formative power in the spirit and the brain of your people.
I went today to one of your great flour mills and to one of your great
refrigerating plants. I viewed the myriad industries that surround the
harbor, the forests of masts, the thronged steamers. I was interested
and amazed. It far exceeded my imagination and suggested an analogy to
an incident in my past life. It was my fortune in the year when the war
broke out between Prussia and France, to be travelling in Germany.
Immediately upon the announcement of the war, maps of the seat of war
were printed and posted in every shop window. The maps were maps of
Germany, with a little stretch of France. Within a fortnight the armies
had marched off the map. It seems to be so with Argentina. I have read
books about Argentina. I have read magazine and newspaper articles; but
within the last five years you have marched off the map. The books and
magazines are all out of date. What you have done since they were
written is much more than had been done before. They are no guide to the
country. Nevertheless, with all your vast material activity, it seems to
me that the most wonderful and interesting thing to be found here is the
laboratory of life, where you are mixing the elements of the future
race. Argentine, English, German, Italian, French, and Spanish, and
American are all being welded together to make the new type. It was the
greatest satisfaction to me to go into the school and see that first and
greatest agency, the children of all races in the first and most
impressionable period of life, being brought together and acting and
reacting on each other, and all tending toward the new type, which will
embody the characteristics of all; and to know that the system of
schools in which this is being done was, by the wisdom of your great
President Sarmiento, brought from my own country through his friendship
with the great leader of education in the United States of
America--Horace Mann.
Mr. Chairman, I should have been glad to see all these wonderful things
as an inconspicuous observer. It is quite foreign to my habits and to my
nature to move through applauding throngs, accompanied by guards of
honor; yet perhaps it is well that the idea which I represent should be
applauded by crowds and accompanied by guards of honor. The pomp and
circumstance of war attract the fancy of the multitude; the armored
knight moves across the page of romance and of poetry and kindles the
imagination of youth; the shouts of the crowd, the smiles of beauty, the
admiration of youth, the gratitude of nations, the plaudits of mankind,
follow the hero about whom the glamor of military glory dims the eye to
the destruction and death and human misery that follow the path of war.
Perhaps it is well that sometimes there should go to the herdsman on his
lonely ranch, to the husbandman in his field, to the clerk in the
counting-house and the shop, to the student at his books, to the boy in
the street, the idea that there is honor to be paid to those qualities
of mankind which rest upon justice, upon mercy, upon consideration for
the rights of others, upon humanity, upon the patient and kindly spirit,
upon all those exercises of the human heart which lead to happy homes,
to prosperity, to learning, to art, to religion, to the things that
dignify life and ennoble it and give it its charm and grace.
We honor Washington as the leader of his country's forces in the war of
independence; but that supreme patience which enabled him to keep the
warring elements of his people at peace is a higher claim to the
reverence of mankind than his superb military strategy. San Martín was
great in his military achievements; his Napoleonic march across the
Andes is entitled to be preserved in the history of military affairs so
long as history is written; but the almost superhuman self-abnegation
with which he laid aside power and greatness that peace might give its
strength to his people, was greater than his military achievements. The
triumphant march of the conquering hero is admirable and to be greeted
with huzzas, but the conquering march of an idea which makes for
humanity is more admirable and more to be applauded. This is not theory;
it is practical. It has to do with our affairs today; for we are now in
an age of the world when not governors, not presidents, not congresses,
but the people determine the issues of peace or war, of controversy or
of quiet. I am an advocate of arbitration; I am an advocate of
mediation; of all the measures that tend toward bringing reasonable and
cool judgment to take the place of war; but let us never forget that
arbitration and mediation--all measures of that description--are but the
treatment of the symptoms and not the treatment of the cause of disease;
and that the real cure for war is to get into the hearts of the people
and lead them to a just sense of their rights and other people's rights,
lead them to love peace and to hate war, lead them to hold up the hands
of their governments in the friendly commerce of diplomacy, rather than
to urge them on to strife; and let there go to the herdsman and the
husbandman and the merchant and the student and the boy in the street
every influence which can tend toward that sweet reasonableness, that
kindly sentiment, that breadth of feeling for humanity, that
consideration for the rights of others, which lie at the basis of the
peace of the world.
CHILE
SANTIAGO
SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY JERMÁN RIESCO
PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC
At the Government House, September 1, 1906
I greet you and welcome you in the name of the people and of the
Government of Chile, who receive your visit with the liveliest
satisfaction.
Your attendance at the congress of fraternity which the American
republics have just held; your visit to the neighboring countries, which
we have followed with the greatest interest; and your presence amongst
us, upon the invitation which we had the honor of extending to you, are
eloquent testimony of the high-minded intentions, which will necessarily
produce much good for the progress and the development of America.
In these moments we feel a most profound gratitude toward your country,
toward your worthy President, and toward yourself for the friendship and
sympathy with which you have joined in the sorrow of Chile because of
the disaster which has wounded Valparaiso and other cities of the
republic.
I wish that your stay in this country may be agreeable to you and your
distinguished family.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I thank you, Mr. President, for your kind welcome and for your generous
expressions, and I thank you for the courteous invitation which led to
this visit on my part. After the great calamity which has befallen your
country, I should have feared to intrude upon the mourning which is in
so many Chilean homes, but I did not feel that I could pass by without
calling upon you--upon the representative of the Chilean people--to
express in person the deep sympathy and sorrow which I, and all my
people, whom I represent, feel for your country and for the stricken and
bereaved ones; and the earnest hope we have for the prompt and cheerful
recovery of spirit and of confidence and of prosperity after the great
misfortune. We know that the spirit and the strength of the people of
Chile are adequate for the recovery, even from so great a disaster. No
one in the world, Mr. President, can feel more deeply the misfortune
that you have suffered than the people of the United States, because you
know that in our country we have recently experienced just such a
calamity. I am sure that nowhere in the world will you find so keen a
sense of sympathy as is there and as I now express. It may sometimes
happen that in adversity stronger friendships arise than in prosperity;
and I hope that although I come to bring to you an expression of the
friendship of the United States of America for the republic of Chile now
while the cloud rests upon you, the effect of the exchange of kind words
and kinder feelings in this time may be greater, more permanent, and
more lasting than they could have been when all were prosperous and
happy.
BANQUET OF THE PRESIDENT
SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY ANTONIO HUNEEUS
MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS
At the Moneda, September 2, 1906
I extend to you the welcome of the people and of the Government.
Heartily do I say to you, in the name of all Chileans: Be welcome.
We were preparing to entertain you in magnificent style, but it was the
will of Providence to visit us with a bitter trial, so we are now
receiving you in a modest manner.
Come and see, sir, what we have suffered. Morally, we have suffered
much; for several thousands of our brothers perished in the catastrophe
of August 16. Materially speaking, we lose the greater part of our
principal port and of several cities of minor importance, together with
the profits which cease in consequence. Behold now, sir, what remains to
us and how we are rising. Our productive forces are alive and sound;
agriculture, mining, and manufacturing have scarcely suffered, and our
saltpeter treasures continue to exist.
Public order remained undisturbed; generally speaking, the reign of the
law was maintained; the authorities fulfilled their duty; and the navy,
glorious guardian of half our territory, which is the ocean, was saved
intact. Therefore, all we sons of Chile are of cheerful heart.
The virility of a country is worth more than the splendor of its
monuments. It does not humiliate us, therefore, to have you see houses
and towns destroyed, for it was not a civil war or a foreign enemy which
razed them to the ground, but a higher hand. It is rather a source of
pride to us to have you witness the integrity and unity of the Chileans.
The fortitude of our race and our good sense will cause us to rise again
in a short time to a greater prosperity.
You plainly see that Chile is still entire, and that our misfortune was
more painful than injurious.
We did not, therefore, think for a moment that you might postpone your
visit. On the contrary, we telegraphed to you a few hours after the
earthquake: "Our home is demolished; but come, sir, for we are safe,
calm, and diligent."
Besides, the plain dignity of your character, which we knew, and the
objects of your visit encouraged us to speak to you.
You have come, most excellent sir, to offer your over-production to our
consumers, and to ask a larger place for the Americans in the Chilean
heart.
You are going to obtain all that. But, besides this, Mr. Root, please
bear to the sons of the United States, and especially to our brothers in
misfortune at San Francisco, California, a sacred homage--the intense
gratitude of the society and Government of Chile for the generous aid to
our sufferers by which the Americans are proving to us that along with
greatness of power they have greatness of heart.
We knew of all this greatness. With a territory covering half a
continent and nourished by every kind of riches, with a firm and
impulsive character, with broad and far-reaching views along every
channel which human activity can pursue, and endowed with a clear
instinct of what is possible, the Americans have become useful and
wealthy.
They understood two essential things, namely, that government is not
merely a pleasant and covetable ideal, but a fundamental necessity, and
that the greatest value does not consist in traditions or fortune, but
in personal merit. They therefore abolished every unjustified
distinction of superiority and organized as a democracy.
The result of the combination of such rare and happy moral and material
elements has been the springing up of a nation as powerful as the most
powerful, and in freedom equaled by none.
And how well the United States know that there is no greatness without
liberty!
Since the consciousness of right has become deeper, principles of
respect and faith have become implanted in the commonwealth of nations,
whatever be the extent of their territory, their population, or their
armed forces. The inveterate abuses of force are disappearing. The
principle which, being embodied into a law of equality among all the
nations, always prevails at present in international relations is that
of liberty for the weaker side.
The American Union--the free country--years ago established its foreign
policy on the plan of equality. Its commercial flag waves throughout the
world without arrogance or spirit of intervention.
Your natural wisdom tells you, Mr. Root, that you do not need any other
than mercantile expansion, and still more that none other would be
suited to you.
You have of late repeatedly given practical and unmistakable
testimonials that this is your policy.
You have stated so yourself at Rio de Janeiro, and your presence among
us is a further proof that your purposes are friendly and frank.
Let us enter into commercial relations with the United States with
friendship and confidence. We shall proceed as far as is mutually
beneficial to us, and this will be shown us by the natural laws of
mercantile transactions.
The Government desires that American goods shall come to Chile in
abundance to facilitate living, and it earnestly desires at the same
time that Chilean products may be multiplied and that they may endeavor
to offset these importations.
Since the sixteenth of August we have been pushing more resolutely than
before the work of our restoration. We have all the moral factors,
namely, order, will, and an apt and energetic people. We also have
incalculable and extremely varied natural resources. There is only one
material factor in which we may be short, namely, capital, which is a
powerful force if well employed.
Chile will be glad to see American capital come and establish itself in
our commercial and industrial circulation. It will blend well with
Chilean honor and will prosper under the protection of our laws, which
are liberal with the foreigner, and under the shelter of our government,
which is unshakable.
We are certain that Chilean interests will meet the same respect from
the government of the Union that we cherish for American interests.
The infinite variety of articles of supply and consumption will
certainly enable the interchange of goods between Chile and America to
increase without narrowing the horizons of our commerce with friendly
markets, which today bring us capital, raw materials, workmen, and
manufactures.
The American Union has happily solved its internal and foreign problems,
has established its political and economic power on a firm basis, and
is, finally, in full enjoyment of its natural greatness and freely
exercising all its energies at the present time. We have attentively
observed that it desires to promote the progress of the world and to see
the other nations of Christendom, especially the American republics,
associated in this great work on terms of equality, friendship, and
mutual benefit.
We respond, therefore, to its affectionate call by declaring that we are
imbued with sincere faith in the friendship of the government and the
people of the United States; we utter fervent wishes that our mutual
confidence may become strengthened and be free of misgivings; and we
prophesy that the _rapprochement_ which the eminent Secretary of State
now visiting us has initiated will be of beneficent influence on our
international cordiality and bring prosperous results for our
development.
Most excellent Mr. Root, His Excellency the President of the Republic
requests you to say to the illustrious President Roosevelt and to your
fellow-citizens that the Chilean people fraternize cordially with the
American people; that our markets are free to them; that we admire your
government officials; that your most excellent minister, Mr. Hicks,
enjoys our highest esteem and good feeling; and that we have received
you and your most worthy family with open hearts.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I beg you to believe in the sincere and high appreciation which I have
for all the kindness you have shown me and my family since our arrival
in Chile. I believe that the delicacy, the sense of propriety and
fitness, that have characterized our reception, both official and
personal, have produced in our minds, under the sad circumstances of the
great misfortune that hangs over the Chilean people like a cloud, a
deeper impression than the most splendid and sumptuous display. I
believe that to be able to mourn with you in your loss, to sympathize
with you in your misfortune, draws us closer to you than to be with you
in the greatest prosperity and happiness upon which the brightest sun
has ever shone.
I thank you for your kindly expressions regarding my President,
regarding myself, and regarding my country. In the "United States of
America," as our Constitution called us many years ago--the "United
States of North America," as perhaps we should call ourselves south of
the equator--we have been for a long time, and are still trying to
reconcile individual liberty with public order, local self-government
with a strong central and national control; trying to develop the
capacity of the individuals of our people to control themselves, and
also the capacity of the people collectively for self-government; trying
to adopt sound financial methods, to promote justice--a justice
compatible with mercy--and to make progress in all that makes a people
happier, more prosperous, better educated, better able to perform their
duties as citizens and to do their part in the world to help humanity
out of the hard conditions of poverty and ignorance and along the
pathway of civilization. We have done what we could. We have committed
errors and we acknowledge them and are deeply conscious of them; but we
are justly proud of our country for the progress it has made; and we
look on every country that is engaged in that same struggle for liberty
and justice with profound sympathy and warm friendship.
I am here to say to the Chilean people that although there have been
misunderstandings in the past, they were misunderstandings such as arise
between two vigorous, proud peoples that know each other too little. Let
us know each other better and we shall have put an end to
misunderstandings. The present moment is especially propitious for
saying this, because we are upon the threshold of great events in this
western world of ours. In my own country the progress of development has
reached a point of transition. In the fifty years, from 1850 to 1900, we
received on our shores nearly twenty million immigrants from the Old
World. We borrowed from the Old World thousands of millions of dollars;
and with the strong arm of the immigrants and with the capital from the
Old World, we have threaded the country with railroads, we have
constructed great public works, we have created the phenomenal
prosperity that you all know; and now we have paid our debts to Europe;
we have returned the capital with which our country was built up; and in
the last half dozen years we have been accumulating an excess of capital
that is beginning to seek an outlet in foreign enterprises.
At the same time, there is seen in South America the dawn of a new life
which moves its people, as they have never been moved before, with the
spirit of industrial and commercial progress.
At a banquet that was given last winter to a great and distinguished
man, Lord Grey, Governor-General of Canada, he said: "The nineteenth
century was the century of the United States; the twentieth century will
be the century of Canada." I should feel surer as a prophet if I were to
say: "The twentieth century will be the century of South America." I
believe, with him, in the great development of Canada; but just as the
nineteenth century was the century of phenomenal development in North
America, I believe that no student can help seeing that the twentieth
century will be the century of phenomenal development in South America.
And so our countries will be face to face in a new attitude. We cannot
longer remain strangers to each other; our relations must be those of
intimacy, and this is the time to say that our relations will be those
of friendship.
On the other hand, before long the construction of the canal across the
Isthmus of Panama, which will fulfill the dreams of the early
navigators, which will accomplish the work projected for centuries, will
at last be completed, while the men who are today active in the business
of both countries are still on the field of action.
This, therefore, is the moment to safeguard harmony in the relations
between the two nations.
I do not believe that any one can say what changes the opening of the
Panama Canal will bring in the affairs of the world; but we do know that
great changes in the commercial routes of the world have changed the
course of history, and no one can doubt that the creation of a waterway
that will put the Pacific coast of South America in close touch with the
Atlantic coast of North America must be a factor of incalculable
importance in determining the affairs of the western hemisphere and
promoting our relations of intimacy and friendship.
Now, at this moment, at the beginning of this great commercial and
industrial awakening--I say at the beginning, notwithstanding all that
you have already done, because I believe you have only begun to realize
the great work you have before you--at this moment there falls on you
this terrible misfortune, one of those warnings that at times God sends
to his people to show them how weak they are in his hands--a misfortune
because of which the entire world mourns with you. But I believe--I
know--that the air of these mountains and of these shores, which in
another time gave its spirit to the proud and indomitable Arucanian
race, has given to the people of Chile the vigor with which to rise up
from the ashes of Valparaiso and with which to make out of the
misfortune of today the incentive for great deeds tomorrow. And in this
era of friendship, when peaceful immigration has replaced armed
invasions, when the free exchange of capital and the international
ownership of industrial and commercial enterprises, of manufactures, of
mines, have replaced rapine and plunder--in this era of commercial
conquest and industrial acquisition, of more frequent intercourse among
men, of more intimate knowledge and better understanding, there has come
to you in this your great misfortune the friendship and the sympathy of
the world.
In truth, our friends who sleep the last sleep there in Valparaiso have
brought to their country a possession of greater value than was ever won
by the soldier on the battlefield.
As I said to you yesterday, Mr. President, I feared that under the
present sad circumstances I might be intruding upon you; should I not
rather feel that the words of friendship of which I am the bearer are in
perfect harmony with the sentiment that your affliction has created in
all countries, the universal recognition of the brotherhood of man?
PERU
BANQUET AT THE GOVERNMENT PALACE, LIMA
SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY JOSÉ PARDO Y BARREDA
PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC
September 10, 1906
With the most sincere good will, I cordially welcome you in the name of
my country and of its Government, and I believe I faithfully interpret
the sentiments that rule in Peru in telling you of its sincere good will
toward the United States, their illustrious President, and toward your
own distinguished person. These feelings which unite the two countries
began in the dawn of independence, because the founders of the great
republic showed our forefathers the way to become free; and they
strengthened us from the first days of our independent life by the
safeguard which the admirable foresight of another great statesman of
your country placed around American soil.
Since then the closest friendship has united the two nations. Peru has
received from the United States proofs of a very special deference, and
has appreciated the efforts made by your government to establish
political relations between the American peoples upon the basis of right
and justice. In this most noble aspiration, worthy of the greatness of
your country, Peru, on her part, unreservedly acquiesces.
The lofty ideas which you have expressed since your arrival in South
America, the frank expressions of cordiality, the concepts of stimulus
and aid to induce us, the Americans of the South, to work in the same
way as those of the North, with earnestness and unflinching hope in the
future, have found in every breast the most pleasing echo, and they
direct toward your person the most lively sympathy.
Closely associated fellow-worker with the illustrious statesman who
rules the destinies of your country, to you belongs, in a great measure,
the acclamation with which America and the entire world would greet the
great nation that has constituted the most perfect democratic society,
that has made the most surprising progress in industrial and economic
order, and that has placed the prestige of its greatness at the service
of peace all over the world.
Gentlemen, I invite you to drink to the United States; to its President,
Mr. Roosevelt; and to its Secretary of State, Mr. Root.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I thank you sincerely, both in my own behalf and in behalf of my
country, for your kind welcome and for the words, full of friendship and
of kindly judgment, you have uttered regarding my country and regarding
her servants, the President and myself. The distinguished gentleman who
represents Peru in the capital of the United States of America, and who
shares with you, sir, the inheritance of a name great and honored, not
only in Peru but wherever the friends of constitutional freedom are
found--in his note of invitation to me, upon which I am now a visitor to
your city, used a form of expression that has dwelt in my memory,
because it was so true. He spoke of the old, sincere, and cordial
friendship of our two countries--that is indeed true of the friendship
of the United States of America and the republic of Peru. It is an old
friendship, a sincere friendship, and a cordial friendship. I have come
here not to make new friends, but to greet old ones; not to announce a
new departure in policy, but to follow old and honored lines; and I
should have thought that in coming to South America in answer to the
invitations of the different countries, all down the east and up the
west coast, to have passed by Peru would indeed be to have played
"Hamlet" with Hamlet left out. It is still a more natural and still a
stronger impulse to visit Peru at this time, as a part of a mission of
friendship and good will, when the relations between the two countries
are about to be drawn even closer.
The completion of the canal across the Isthmus of Panama will make us
near neighbors as we have never been before, so that we may take our
staterooms at the wharf at Callao or at New York, and visit each other
without change of quarters during the journey. And no one can tell what
the effect of the canal will be. We do know that nothing of the kind was
ever done before in human history without producing a most powerful
effect upon mankind. The course of civilization, the rise and fall of
nations, the development of mankind, have followed the establishment of
new trade routes. No one can now tell just what the specific effect of
the cutting of the canal across the isthmus may be; but it will be great
and momentous in the affairs of the world. Of this we may be certain,
that for the nations situated immediately to the south and immediately
to the north of the canal, there will be great changes in their
relations with the rest of the world; and it is most gratifying to know
that this great work which the United States of America is now
undertaking--the cost of which she never expects to get back--a work
which she is doing not merely for her own benefit, but because she is
moved by the belief that great things are worth doing, is going to bring
great benefits to the entire world, and to her old and her good friend,
the republic of Peru.
I thank you, Mr. President, for your kind reception, and I beg you to
permit me to ask the gentlemen here to join me in proposing in behalf of
President Roosevelt the health and long life and prosperity of the
President of Peru.
BANQUET OF THE MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS
SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY JAVIER PRADO Y UGARTECHE
MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS
At the Union Club, September 11, 1906
With the liveliest feelings of consideration and sympathy I have the
honor to offer this manifestation to His Excellency Mr. Elihu Root,
Secretary of State of the United States of America.
Yielding to the generous impulses of your American heart, and of your
brain of a thinker and of a statesman, you have felt a desire, Mr. Root,
to visit these countries, to address to them words of friendship and of
interest in their welfare, in the name of the honorable government which
you represent, and to shed over this continent the rays of the noble
ideal of American fraternity.
Your visit will undoubtedly produce fruitful results on behalf of
liberty and of justice, of peace and of progress, of order and of
improvement, which you have proclaimed as being the highest principles
inspiring the policy of the United States in the special mission for
which their peculiar virtues and energy have marked them out in the
destiny of humanity.
When those austere founders of American independence laid the
foundations of the great republic of the North, and gave it its
constitution, they were not inspired by narrow-minded ideas or by
selfish and transitory interest, but by a profound conviction of the
rights of man and a deep feeling of liberty and of justice, which, in
its irresistible consequences, would bring about the social and
political transformation which came to pass in the world at the end of
the eighteenth century, and was destined to constitute the gospel of
liberty and of democracy in our modern régime.
This same people, although still in its youth, did not hesitate, shortly
after, all alone, to guarantee the independence of all the American
countries, placing before the great powers of the world the pillars of
Hercules of the Monroe Doctrine, forming an impassable gateway to a free
and unconquerable America.
Today this same people excites the admiration of the whole world by its
grandeur. Its government brings to its level the harmony of humanity;
reëstablishes, on the one hand, peace between the empires of Europe and
of Asia, and, on the other, between the republics of Central America;
patronizes the congress of The Hague, and in it obtains the recognition
of the personality of the American nations, thus giving proof of the
interest it takes, with equal concern, in the future of the peoples
civilized for a century, as well as in that of the countries just
commencing their existence. The American Constitution, the Monroe
Doctrine, together with the policy of President Roosevelt, and of his
Secretary of State, Mr. Root, voice in this manner, through the pages of
history, the same language of liberty, of justice, humanity, and
Americanism.
How deep is the lesson to be learned from these facts!
The ancient ideas founded right upon force, the régime of the social
bodies was that of privilege, and individual efforts were tied by bonds
imposed in the name of the authorities. The modern ideas, such as the
United States proclaim, found all right upon justice, and the social
régime upon liberty and equality. The human being is not an instrument
for the display of arbitrary power, but is the whole object of social
life, the mission of which is the development of its energies, its moral
conscience, the improvement and welfare of individuals and of nations.
According to the ancient ideas, the greatness of the nations was
measured by their military power and by the limits of their conquests of
force. According to modern ideas, as represented by the United States,
the greatness of nations is measured by the conquests obtained by
individual and collective efforts, thereby creating the fruitful and
happy reign of truth, of justice, of labor, and of peace.
War was formerly a glory; nowadays it is a calamity. Later on it will be
condemned as the sad ancestral remains of barbarism and savagery.
The evolution of ideas is that which now rules the world; and if people
do not always comprehend this fact it is because the selfish and
personal prejudices, passions, and interests disturb and impair their
judgment.
In modern progress, the régime of privilege and of force can no longer
create rights nor lend security for the future or the aggrandizement of
nations; and nowadays those individuals do not render a service to their
native land who, while they sacrifice permanent interests, think they
can calculate the meridian of their country by the artificial
reflections of a moment, transitory and perishable.
The régime of force or of armed peace consumes the vital forces and the
resources of nations; and then from the abyss of inequality, of
affliction, and danger produced, bursts forth once more the social and
political problem demanding, with threats, the reform of the evil, and
laying down the maxim that only the ideal of justice, of liberty, and of
human solidarity can possibly stand forth, firm and unshaken, amidst the
ruins in which the wild ideas of greatness held by the military powers
of the world will remain buried forever.
It is not by means of a régime of force, but by that of liberty, peace,
and labor, that the United States of America has been enabled to form a
marvelous abode of vitality and human progress; and its government, with
a perfect insight into the greatness of that country and of its destiny,
today addresses the present and the future of our world, and with
special interest explains to America the only paths that will lead the
nations to the attainment of tranquillity and well-being.
Once that existence is obtained, you have said, Mr. Root, that it is
necessary to live and advance worthily and honorably,--and that this
object cannot be attained by a régime of domestic oppression and of
privilege, nor by the external one of isolation or of war, but by that
of liberty, order, justice, economical progress, moral improvement,
intellectual advance, respect for the rights of others, and a feeling of
human solidarity. You have clearly stated:
No nation can live unto itself alone and continue to live.
Each nation's growth is a part of the development of the
race.... A people whose minds are not open to the lessons of
the world's progress, whose spirits are not stirred by the
aspirations and achievements of humanity, struggling the
world over for liberty and justice, must be left behind by
civilization in its steady and beneficent advance.
In the life of nations there must always prevail an ideal and a harmony
of right, of liberty, of peace, and fraternity, although this can only
be obtained by persevering efforts, by sacrifices, and by a long and
distressing march. It is necessary to "labor more for the future than
for the present" and unite together all the nations engaged in the same
great task, inspired by a like ideal and professing similar principles.
Peru has read your words, Mr. Root, with profound attention. She is
proud to say that in the modest sphere she occupies in the concert of
nations, she accepts your ideas as her own, and declares that they also
constitute her profession of faith as regards her international policy.
With your superior judgment you have exactly comprehended the
difficulties, critical moments, and convulsions which the countries of
this continent have undergone in order to establish a republican
government, together with a régime of liberty and democracy. They are
still in the first period of their development and have yet many
problems to solve.
To develop the immense resources and wealth with which nature has so
wonderfully endowed these countries; to render their territory
accessible to labor and civilization by opening up means of
communication, granting all facilities and giving security for the life,
health, and welfare of their inhabitants; to obtain the population which
their immense territories require: to educate and instruct the people,
making them understand their liberty, their duties, and their rights; to
develop their faculties and energies, their labor forces, their
industrial and commercial capacity and power; to elevate their moral
dignity; to consolidate and strengthen the national unity; to insure
definitely the government of the people, in justice, in order, and in
peace; to attract capital and foreign immigration; to develop and give
impulse to commercial relations with other countries; to maintain a
frank and true international harmony and solidarity; to respect all
mutual and reciprocal rights and settle all disagreements by friendly,
just, and honorable means--to perform, in short, the work of human
civilization; these are undoubtedly the points which ought to occupy,
first of all, the thoughts of the administration of these countries, in
order to secure their tranquillity, their welfare, and their
aggrandizement, just as the United States have secured theirs by the
genius of their people and the power of their ideals.
If the nations of America, instead of living apart from each other and
separated by distrust, threats, and quarrels--which unsettle them,
rendering their energy and development fruitless, just as they have kept
up a state of anarchy, for a long time, in their internal
existence--would unite themselves together by the natural ties which the
community of their origin, of their civilization, of their necessities,
and their destinies clearly indicate, we should then witness the
realization of the ideal you have conceived of a great, prosperous, and
happy America; the union of sister republics, free, orderly, laborious,
lovers of justice, knowledge, sciences, and arts, coöperating, each one
and all of them worthily and effectively, for the realization of the
great work of human civilization and culture.
The standard and observance of justice should bring about the definite
disappearance of the disagreements which may have caused separation
among the South American countries, just as family quarrels are effaced
on the exhibition of a just and generous sentiment of sincere
brotherhood and harmony which vibrates throughout this continent as an
intense aspiration of the American soul, and as a noble ideal of concord
and of justice.
It is never too late to recognize what is right and to proceed with
rectitude. My memory suggests an important event some few years back in
the history of the relations between Peru and the United States,
described most correctly by the representative of your government as one
of those most worthy of note in the annals of diplomacy. I refer to the
serious question which arose in 1852 between our respective countries
relative to the Lobos guano islands, when the United States held that
they did not belong to the territory and sovereignty of Peru, and that
as they had been occupied by American citizens your country would uphold
these parties in the work of exploitation; but as soon as the Government
of the United States, after a lengthened and lively controversy, became
convinced of the right which Peru had on her side, it at once
spontaneously put an end to the question by a memorable note of its
Secretary of State, recognizing the absolute sovereignty of Peru over
those islands and declaring that "he makes this avowal with the greater
readiness, in consequence of the unintentional injustice done to Peru,
under a transient want of information as to the facts of the case."[3]
When powerful nations, laying aside the instruments of oppression and
violence which they have in their hands, rise to such a height of moral
elevation, universal respect and sympathy will form the unfading halo of
their grandeur.
And thus it happened with the United States of America; and Peru has now
the honor once more to express its thanks for the generous friendship
and constant interest with which the United States have always paid
attention to everything affecting the welfare and progress of our
country.
Peru, which is the depositary of the secrets of wondrous and unknown
civilizations; which possesses great historical traditions; which was
long ago the metropolis of this continent, and then a Spanish colony;
which has an enormous extent of territory, with the most varied and
wonderful climates and wealth; after grievous domestic and foreign
vicissitudes, has firmly taken in hand the great work of its
reorganization; has acquired the knowledge of its public and private
duties; has given vigor to its character and to its spirit of
enterprise; has founded industries and labor centers; has fostered
agriculture, mining, and commerce; is using every effort to foster
public instruction, increasing the number of schools throughout the
country and giving civic education to its children; constructing
railroads and public works of national and future interest; opening the
minds and intelligence of its people to the currents of culture and
modern progress, and endeavoring to establish a solid and well-directed
public administration; her fiscal revenues, her trade, and the general
capitalization of fortunes have reached in a few years an extraordinary
development which demonstrates the potentiality of the country. Enjoying
public peace, she is using every effort to maintain a policy of frank
understanding and friendship with all nations, and sustains the
principle of arbitration for the solution of all her international
controversies, thus giving evident proof of the rectitude of her
sentiments, and that the only settlements which she defends and to which
she aspires are the honorable settlements dictated by right.
These ideas are likewise yours, Mr. Root. And I invite you, gentlemen,
to unite with us in expressing the hope that the principles proclaimed
by our enlightened guest, to whom we today offer the homage of our
respect and sympathy, may everlastingly rule in America.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I should be insensible, indeed, were I not to feel deeply grateful for
your courtesy, your hospitality, and your kindness; nor can I fail to be
gratified by the words of praise which you, Mr. Minister, have spoken of
my beloved country, and by the hearty and unreserved approval with which
you have met my inadequate expression of the sentiments the people of my
country feel toward their sister republics of South America. The words
which you have quoted, sir, do represent the feelings of the people of
the United States. We are very far from living up to the standards which
we set for ourselves, and we know our own omissions, our failings, and
our errors; we know them, we deplore them, and we are constantly and
laboriously seeking to remedy them; but we do have underneath as the
firm foundation of constitutional freedom, the sentiments which were
expressed in the quotations which you have made.
No government in the United States could maintain itself for a moment if
it violated those principles; no act of unjust aggression by the United
States against any smaller and weaker power would be forgiven by the
people to whom the government is responsible.
Mr. Minister, my journey in South America is drawing to a close. After
many weeks of association with the distinguished men who control the
affairs of the South American republics, after much observation of the
widely different countries I have visited, it is with the greatest
satisfaction that I find, in reviewing the new records of my mind, that
the impressions with which I came to South America have been
confirmed--the impression that there is a new day dawning, a new day of
industry, of enterprise, of prosperity, of wider liberty, of more
perfect justice among the people of the southern continent.
I find that the difference between the South America of today and the
South America as the records show it to have been a generation ago, is
as wide as the difference marked by centuries in the history of Europe.
Why is it? You are the same people--not so much better than your
fathers. The same fields offered to the hand of the husbandman their
bounteous harvests then as now; the same incalculable wealth slept in
your mountains then as now; the same streams carried down from your
mountain sides the immeasurable power ready to the hand of man for the
production of wealth then as now; the same ocean washed your shores
ready to bear the commerce of the world then as now. Whence comes the
change? The change is not in material things, but in spiritual things.
The change has come because in the slow but majestic progress of
national development, the peoples of South America have been passing
through a period of progress necessary to their development, necessary
to the building of their characters, up from a stage of strife and
discord, of individual selfishness, of unrestrained ambition, of
irresponsible power, and out upon the broad platform of love for
country, of national spirit, of devotion to the ideal of justice, of
ordered liberty, of respect for the rights of others; because the
individual characters of the peoples of the South American republics
have been developed to that self-control, to that respect for justice
toward their fellowmen, to that regard for the rights and feelings of
others which inhere in true justice. The development of individual
character has made the collective character competent for
self-government and the maintenance of that justice, that ordered
liberty, which gives security to property, security to the fruits of
enterprise, security to personal liberty, to the pursuit of happiness,
to the home, to all that makes life worth living; and under the
fostering care of that character, individual and national, the hidden
wealth of the mountains is being poured out to enrich mankind; under the
fostering care of that character, individual and national, new life is
coming to the fields, to the mines, to the factories, to commerce, to
all the material interests of South America.
Mr. Minister, this is but a part of a great world movement on a wider
field. It is no idle dream that the world grows better day by day. We
cannot mark its progress by days or by years or by generations; but
marking the changes by the centuries mankind advances steadily from
brute force, from the rule of selfishness and greed toward respect for
human rights, toward desire for human happiness, toward the rule of law
and the rule of love among men. My own country has become great
materially because it has felt the influence of that majestic progress
of civilization. South America is becoming great materially because it,
too, is feeling the influence that is making humanity more human.
We can do but little in our day. We live our short lives and pass away
and are forgotten. All the wealth, prosperity, and luxury with which we
can surround ourselves is of but little benefit and little satisfaction;
but if we--if you and I--in our offices and each one of us in his
influence upon the public affairs of his day, can contribute ever so
little, but something, toward the tendency of our countries, the
tendency of our race, away from greed and force and selfishness and
wrong, toward the rule of order and love--if we can do something to
contribute to that tendency which countless millions are working out, we
shall not have lived in vain.
You were kind enough to refer to an incident in the diplomatic history
of the United States and Peru, when my own country recognized its error
in regard to the Lobos Islands and returned them freely and cheerfully
to their rightful owner. I would rather have the record of such acts of
justice for my country's fair name than the story of any battle fought
and won by her military heroes.
We cannot fail to ask ourselves sometimes the question, What will be the
end of our civilization? Will some future generation say of us, in the
words of the Persian poet, "The lion and the lizard keep the courts
where Jamshýd gloried and drank deep"? Will the palaces we build be the
problem of the antiquarians in some future century? Will all that we do
come to naught? If not--if our civilization is not to meet the fate of
all that have gone before--it will be because we have builded upon a
firm foundation, a foundation of the great body of the plain, the common
people, and upon a character formed on the principles of justice, of
liberty, and of brotherly love. Our one hope for the perpetuity of our
civilization is that quality in which it differs from all civilizations
that have gone before--its substantial basis. I find that here in Peru
you are building upon that firm rock.
I find that here individual character is being developed so that the
people of Peru are collectively developing the necessary and essential
national character.
I find that the riches of your wonderful land are in the hands of a
people who are worthy to enjoy them.
I shall take away with me from Peru not only the kindest feelings of
friendship and of gratitude but the highest and most confident hope of
a great and glorious future for the people to whom I wish so well.
Mr. Minister, will you permit me the honor of asking all to join me in
drinking to the health of His Excellency the President of Peru?
RECEPTION AT THE MUNICIPAL COUNCIL
SPEECH OF DOCTOR FEDERICO ELGUERA
MAYOR OF LIMA
September 10, 1906
The citizens of Lima welcome you and are glad to have you amongst them.
You arrive at the capital of Peru, after visiting the leading cities in
South America and receiving the greetings so justly due the great
American nation and your own personal merits.
You are an ambassador of peace, a messenger of good will, and the herald
of doctrines which sustain America's autonomy and strengthen the faith
in our future welfare.
The wake left by the vessel which has brought you hither serves as a
symbol, indicating union, fraternity, and friendship between the
northern and southern states of this continent.
You have been able to form a general opinion as to the present state of
the political, economical, and social development of Latin America. You
also know now what her resources are and to what conditions the growth
and progress of this southern continent are due.
After visiting prosperous countries, whose peaceful labor on behalf of
civilization has not been disturbed by the sorrows of war, you reach a
land where once flourished the greatest empire which ever arose in
America.
You have arrived at the ancient metropolis of Spanish America; you are
now at the heart of a nation which attracted the world's attention in
former days on account of its greatness and the treasures it
possessed--a nation which fought the final battles for independence;
and, more important than all, a country which, having been shaken and
convulsed by dissension, has risen once more to a life of well-being
through a supreme effort of will and a firm belief in its future.
The Peru you are visiting is not only the country of olden times, which
tradition has made known for its fabulous wealth, but it is a modern
country, versed in the principles of order, industry, and labor.
Nations which live exclusively on the wealth given them by nature make
no effort to become greater, nor do they consider their future welfare,
but perish, crushed by those whose envy and greed they excite.
On the other hand, those countries whose prosperity is based on the
principles of justice, trade, and peace attain success and incite others
to follow, contributing thus to the great work of universal
civilization.
Unfortunately, this peace, based on those principles, must be sustained
abroad, following the example of the Old World, by the acquisition of
elements of warfare only useful for the destruction and ruin of men and
progress, wasting the national vitality and prosperity, earned by dint
of the labors of the citizens and the products of the resources that
nature has given.
To change this system for another which will insure to our nations the
tranquil possession of what lawfully belongs to them, allowing them to
devote their efforts fearlessly to their own advancement, is the noble
work to which the endeavors of the great nation which has risen up in
the New World should be directed, just as the sun rises in the celestial
dome to give light, heat, and life; to maintain the equilibrium and
prevent the collision of lesser stars.
Such ideals of civilization and fraternity have always guided the
conduct of Peru, whose influence and predominance in other times enabled
her to watch over justice, to render assistance to the weak, to fight
oppression, and to defend the rights of America.
For this reason we heartily sympathize with the doctrines you proclaim;
for this reason we extend to you, with sincere regard, the hand of
friendship; for this reason we feel satisfaction and pride when we
behold the marvelous progress of your country.
When nations succeed in reaching the degree of prosperity at which yours
has arrived they do not excite envy, but emulation; they do not inspire
fear, but confidence.
Ere long the vigorous arm of your people will tear away the strip of
land which still keeps us apart; and in the union of the two oceans
surrounding our hemisphere may we hope that the spirits of Washington
and Bolívar will watch the maintenance of peace and justice and follow
the destinies of the republics they created.
Mr. Root, may the days you are about to spend amongst us be happy and
agreeable, and may their memory ever accompany you, as ours will ever
retain the grateful impression of your visit.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I beg you to believe that I appreciate most highly your kind welcome and
the friendly terms with which you have greeted me. I did not feel as
though I were coming among strangers when I entered Peru; I do not feel
that I am treading on unknown soil when I set foot upon the streets of
your famous and historic city. I think no city in the world, certainly
no city in the western hemisphere, is better known in the United States
of America then the city of Lima. Almost every schoolboy in the United
States has read in the books of our own historians the story of the
founding of this city. We all know the wonderful and romantic history of
your four centuries of life; we all know the charms, the graces, and the
lovable qualities of your people.
We know that you are the metropolis of a people who carry the art of
agriculture to the highest degree of efficiency, a people frugal,
industrious, and of domestic virtue. We have seen with gratification
that you are becoming also the metropolis of a people capable of winning
from your mountains the inexhaustible wealth they contain, the
metropolis of a great mining people; and within the past few years we
have rejoiced to see that you are also on the road to become the
metropolis of a great manufacturing people.
We have read, too, the story of your struggles--first for independence,
then for liberty, then for justice and order and peace; and with the
memory of our own struggles for liberty and justice, with the experience
of our own trials and difficulties, rejoicing in our own success and
prosperity, Mr. Mayor, the feeling of sympathy and rejoicing in your
success in overcoming the obstacles that have stood in your way, in your
growth in capacity for self-government, in the continuing strength of
all the principles of justice and of order and of peace, is universal in
my country and among my people.
So I come to you not to make friends, but as a friend among friends. I
thank you with all my heart, both for myself and for my people, for the
kindness of your welcome and for what I know to be the sincerity of your
friendship.
RECEPTION BY THE SENATE
SPEECH OF SENATOR BARRIOS
At an Extraordinary Session, September 13, 1906
The Senate of Peru, honored by your official visit, greets you as the
representative of a great democratic people, whose juridical methods,
founded on liberty and equality, are a model for all the American
parliaments.
I regard your visit to our young republic as one of most important and
lasting effect in the history of the continent. When these peoples have
reached the power and development which the United States of America
enjoys; when the citizens and the public authorities keep within the
bounds imposed by the legitimate demands of liberty and justice and the
requirements of order and progress; when all this is obtained by means
of social well-being, of economic strength, and the political
predominance which passes beyond the native land--then the legitimate
and noble influence exercised on the life of other peoples is based, not
on narrow schemes of national egotism, but on the broad and humane
qualities of civilization.
This your government has understood in sending a full representation to
these republics, in harmony with the American idea of union and
progress, which the illustrious statesman who today presides over the
glorious destinies of the American people--to the admiration and respect
of all--expounds and accomplishes by his thoughtful work.
In the dawn of the twentieth century may be seen in this part of the
world communities of peoples who, with analogous institutions, must
fulfill in history a single and great destiny. This part which the
future reserves for us cannot be other than an effective and true
realization of democracy at home and of justice in international
affairs.
Such is the direction in which Peru is developing her energies, after
her past and now remote vicissitudes. Such is the ideal that animates
her in pursuing her efforts for reconstruction, because a people without
an aim in the struggle are unworthy of victory. "It is no more than a
scratch on the ground", using the words of your illustrious President.
As the principal co-worker for the exalted international policy of the
present government of the United States, receive, Mr. Root, the
assurances of the highest consideration and sympathy of the Peruvian
Senate.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I feel most keenly the great honor conferred upon me by this
distinguished legislative body. I thank you for your courtesy
personally; still more I thank you for the exhibition of friendship and
sympathy for my country,--an exhibition which corresponds most perfectly
to the spirit and purpose actuating my visit to Peru.
I do not think, sir, that any one long concerned in government can fail
to come at last to a feeling of deep solicitude for the welfare of the
people whom he serves. He must come to feel toward them somewhat as the
lawyer does toward his clients, as the physician feels toward his
patients, as the clergyman feels toward his parishioners--the advocate,
the friend of the people whose interests are committed to his official
action; and, as a member of the government of a friendly republic, I
feel toward you that sympathy which comes from a common purpose, from
engagement in the same task, from being actuated by the same motive. The
work of the legislator is difficult and delicate. Governments cannot
make wealth; governments cannot produce enterprise, industry, or
prosperity; but wise government can give that security for property, for
the fruits of enterprise, for personal liberty, for justice, which opens
the door to enterprise, which stimulates industry and commercial
activity, which brings capital and immigration to the shores of the
country that is but scantily populated; and which makes it worth while
for the greatest exertions of the human mind to be applied to the
development of the resources of the country. How difficult is the task!
As the engineer controlling a great and complicated machine does not
himself furnish the motive power or do the work, yet by a wrong turn of
the lever may send the machine to ruin; so the legislative body cannot
itself do the work that the people must do, yet by ill-advised,
inconsiderate, and unwise legislation, it may produce incalculable
misery and ruin. The wisdom that is necessary, the unselfishness that is
necessary, the subordination of personal and selfish interests that is
necessary, has always seemed to me to consecrate a legislative body
seeking to do its duty by its country and make it worthy not only of
respect but of reverence.
Mr. President and Senators, in your deliberations and your actions, so
fraught with results of happiness or disaster for the people of your
beloved country, we of the North, the people of a republic long bound to
Peru by ties of real and sincere friendship, follow you with sympathy;
with earnest, sincere desire that you may be guided by wisdom; that you
may work in simplicity and sincerity of heart for the good of your
people; and that your labors may be crowned by those blessings which God
gives to those who serve His children faithfully and well.
INSTALLATION OF MR. ROOT AS A MEMBER OF THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL AND
ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SAN MARCOS, LIMA
SEPTEMBER 14, 1906
SPEECH OF DOCTOR LUIS F. VILLARÁN
RECTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY
The University of San Marcos of Lima heartily shares in the national
rejoicing consequent on your visit to us, and greets you as the
representative of the great republic which holds so many claims to the
high esteem and consideration of the Spanish-American states of this
continent.
Your country, indeed, furnished valuable coöperation to the Spanish
colonies in the establishment of their independence. With the example of
your own emancipation, forming one of the greatest events of history,
the longing for liberty deepened in their breasts. It gave them courage
in the struggle by frank declarations of friendship and sympathy;
bestowed prestige on their cause by recognizing them as free states at
a time when their emancipation was not entirely accomplished; and
finally added strength to their victory by declaring before the whole
world that the independence and integrity of these republics would be
maintained at all costs.
You, the Americans of the North, were the founders and defenders of the
international and political liberty of these states. Washington, whose
greatness has alone been given worthy expression in the inspired words
of Byron--Washington, "the first, the last, the best of men", and the
glorious group of illustrious citizens who aided him in his work, were
the apostles of democracy and of the republic. The American Constitution
is an admirable structure, built on the immovable foundations of justice
and the national will, which will never be overthrown by social or
political upheavals.
Half a century ago, Laboulaye, the illustrious professor of the College
of France, said:
Washington has founded a wise and well-organized republic
and has bequeathed to history, not the fatal spectacle of
crime triumphant, but a beneficent example of patriotism and
virtue. In less than fifty years, thanks to the powerful
influence of Liberty, an empire has been raised which before
the end of the century will be the greatest state of the
civilized world, and which, if it remain true to the ideals
of its founders, if ambition does not check the era of its
fortune, will furnish the world the spectacle of a republic
of one hundred million men, richer, happier, and more
glorious than the monarchies of the Old World. This is the
work of Washington!
This prophecy has been fulfilled; that half-century has passed by, and
the great republic goes on its career of greatness, and no eye can
discern the ultimate reach of its magnificence.
Today, with the kind name of sister, it sends to us, through you, its
worthy messenger, fresh words of encouragement, and invites us in a
gracious manner to exert ourselves to greater efforts in the work of
peace, of labor, and of the aggrandizement of the American continent.
You tell us that--
Nowhere in the world has this progress been more marked than
in Latin America. Out of the wrack of Indian fighting and
race conflicts and civil wars, strong and stable governments
have arisen. Peaceful succession in accord with the people's
will has replaced the forcible seizure of power permitted by
the people's indifference. Loyalty to country, its peace,
its dignity, its honor, has arisen above partizanship for
individual leaders.
You add:
We wish to increase our prosperity, to expand our trade, to
grow in wealth, in wisdom, and in spirit, but our conception
of the true way to accomplish this is not to pull down
others and profit by their ruin, but to help all friends to
a common prosperity and a common growth, that we may all
become greater and stronger together.
The University of Lima, an important factor in our national life,
accepts on its part, and in harmony with public thought, your noble
invitation.
This University, the distinguished creation of the great Spanish
monarchs, proud of its noble lineage of five centuries, jealous of its
glories, believes it to be its duty and considers it a special honor to
offer you, the illustrious messenger, the deep thinker, and the highest
co-worker in the government of Theodore Roosevelt, the peacemaker of the
world, a post of honor.
The Faculty of Political and Administrative Sciences, founded thirty
years ago by the distinguished President Manuel Pardo, and organized by
the eminent public writer Pradier Fodéré--this Faculty, which professes,
without limitations, the doctrines of international and political law as
proclaimed in your country, is the one which with just right offers you
this University emblem, which I am pleased to place in the hands of Your
Excellency [addressing the President of Peru, and handing him the medal
of the University] that you may kindly deliver it to our illustrious
guest.
SPEECH OF DOCTOR RAMÓN RIBEYRO
DEAN OF THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCES
September 14, 1906
The presence among us of the eminent statesman, the Secretary of State
of the United States, is indeed of great significance and surpassing
importance in the course of our political life, as a singular and
unmistakable token of friendship offered by that powerful republic, and
as a generous effort to create between the nations of America a stable
régime of true understanding and concord.
This work of peace, which is linked with an unvarying respect for the
rights of all without regard to the extent of their power, with the
close union of their interests, and with a political unity of purpose
which springs from the historical origin of the republics of America and
the analogy of their institutions, is outlined in a masterly manner in
the address which our illustrious guest recently delivered before the
congress of American delegates convened at Rio de Janeiro.
The general idea he has expressed therein of the principles of
democratic régime, of its severe trials and accidental mistakes, of the
virtues which sustain popular government, and of the public education
that must prepare and secure it, reveals to us the secret of the
prosperity and welfare of the freest and most flourishing republic that
has ever existed, and how it has reached the preponderant rank it now
occupies among nations.
The noble purpose of our powerful sister of the North, who with a
persevering and ever steadfast persistency presses on, is the endeavor
to combine continental interests lacking sufficient cohesion, and to
promote their common development, thus seeking to reach "the complete
rule of justice and peace among nations in lieu of force and war."
These words of Mr. Root contain, in their severe simplicity, a complete
statement of his mission of friendship and advice. He seeks to stimulate
the common aim of harmonizing the several interests on a permanent basis
upon which is to be established the uniform rule of our common
existence, the rule of justice never subservient to private and selfish
convenience; a barrier against the arbitrary and brutal decisions of
force, nearly always dissembled under plausible forms and motives of
international tradition.
There exists a fundamental sentiment which opposes the cumulus of
violence and usurpation, which in a great degree constitutes historic
international law and corrects the deductions made from purely
speculative theories,--a sentiment we accept without demur, and which is
asserted like the axioms that serve as the basis and foundation of all
reasoning and as a rule inspiring human actions.
This concept is that of a law of coexistence, an intuition of the
universal conscience, which all human society upholds by reason of the
sole fact of its existence.
But the completely empiric and egotistical manner in which nations have
understood and applied the right of sovereign independence in their
outward dealings, has, up to the present time, been the almost
insuperable obstacle to the universal establishment of a rule of justice
which governs, in a permanent and uniform manner, the concourse of
interests; each state following one of its own modeling, in accordance
with the power it holds and the ambitions it is thereby enabled to
pursue.
This tendency, whether open or covert, hardly restrained by the
formalities of modern civilization, which seldom succeeds in masking the
painful reality, has created the singular spectacle witnessed at the
present time,--that is, the undefined aggravation of a military
situation which absorbs the greater part of the resources of nations,
wrung from the labor of humanity.
The constant fear of armed aggression has brought about political
alliances of a purely transitory character, which assure nothing and, in
truth, mean nothing but the mutual imputation of violence and outrage,
unhappily but too well demonstrated as justifiable motives for
apprehension, by reason of the ominous antecedents of an international
régime founded on the supremacy of power.
This precarious guaranty, the fruit of an unsteady and purely political
combination which may undergo the most unexpected alterations, cannot
assure a stable situation, because it is not in itself the constitution
of a common, strong, and commanding law; but, on the contrary, is the
distrust of the efficacy of the latter and a certain traditional disdain
for a humane and peaceful solution of international affairs.
When the anxiety of danger or an unforeseen obstacle does not prevent
recourse to arms, war breaks out if the motive is simply the securing of
an advantage sustained by a military power which the country chosen as
the object of aggression cannot forcibly check.
True it is that at the present time wars are less frequent and more
humane in the manner they are conducted than heretofore; but their
causes are ever the same, and the intervals between them are only due to
the increasing number of military powers, and to the fear of consequent
complications of political interests which it is hazardous to provoke.
Treaties of peace since the seventeenth century, which recorded the
birth of the modern law of nations, have on some occasions passed
through real transformation in obedience to the law of evolution of
human societies, which favor equilibrium, not as established by frail or
artificial alliances, nor by combinations of the powerful, but by its
ethnical factors and the amplitude of the national life based primarily
on the progress of its institutions, in the ever-increasing intervention
of the people in their own affairs and the reality and soundness of its
political and civil liberty.
The definite establishment of an international juridical organ,
sufficiently authorized and efficacious in its action, is yet a future
event. Law in this respect has not as yet gone beyond the limits of a
sphere that is at most one of pure speculation,--a worthy ideal, it is
true, but one which in actuality has only succeeded in modifying the
forms of violence by recording in the customary code of nations a few
rules to lessen the brutality of the action, without eliminating the
arbitrariness inherent in the sovereignty of arms.
In the work of common security and prosperity that involves the future
of this continent, and once carried into effect, will signalize the most
effective advance in the law of nations, a prominent part belongs to the
great republic that has staked her power and fortune on peace. In this
work we have endeavored to coöperate in good faith and without reserve,
and in it, also, the ardent sympathy and the boundless confidence of the
Peruvian people will follow.
And since the unmerited honor has fallen to my lot to address myself on
this memorable occasion to the distinguished personage, to the high
dignitary of the nation which represents the greatest intensity of
national life on account of the unrestricted development of the human
faculties and the most certain and practical evolution of law among
nations, I believe that I interpret the unanimous sentiment of my
colleagues and of my country, in furnishing him the complete evidence of
our cordial adherence and of our faith in the work intrusted to his
talents and to his high character.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I am deeply sensible of the great honor which you confer upon me, an
honor coming from this primate of the universities of the New World; an
honor which receives me into the company of men learned, devoted to
science, the disciples of truth, men eminent in the republic of letters.
I am the more appreciative of this emblem because I am myself the son of
a college professor, born within the precincts of a learned institution,
and all my life closely associated with higher education in the United
States of America. But I realize, sir, that my personality plays no
considerable part in the ceremony of today. Happy is he who comes, by
whatever chance, to stand as the representative of a great cause; as the
representative of ideas which conciliate the feelings and arouse the
enthusiasm of men; for the cause sheds light upon his person, however
small, and the honor of his purpose reflects honor on him.
With the greatest satisfaction I have heard from the lips of the learned
rector and professor of this university so just and high an estimate of
the contributions made by my country to the cause of ordered liberty and
justice in the world. I feel that what has been said here today is of
far greater weight than any ordinary compliment, because it comes from
men who speak under the grave responsibility of their high station as
instructors of their countrymen, and after deliberate study, resulting
in definite and certain conclusions.
It is a matter of most interesting reflection that after the nations of
the Old World, from which we took our being, had sought for many years
to gain wealth and strength and profit by the enforcement of a narrow
and mistaken colonial policy, the revolt of the colonies of the New
World brought to the mother nations infinitely greater blessings even
than they were seeking. The reflex action of the working of the spirit
of freedom on these shores of the new hemisphere upon the welfare of
the countless millions of the Old World, has been of a value
incalculable and inconceivable to the minds against whose mistaken
policy we revolted.
I have always thought, sir, that the chief contribution of the United
States of America to political science, was the device of incorporating
in written constitutions an expression of the great principles which
underlie human freedom and human justice, and putting it in the power of
the judicial branch of the government to pass judgment upon the
conformity of political action to those principles.
When in the fullness of time the hour had come for the new experiment in
government among men, and it was the fate of the young and feeble
colonies upon the coast of the North Atlantic to make the experiment,
the Old World was full of the most dismal forebodings as to the result.
The world was told that the experiment of democratic government meant
the rule of the mob; that it might work well today, but that tomorrow
the mob which had had but half a breakfast and could expect no dinner,
would take control; and that the tyranny of the mob was worse than the
tyranny of any individual.
The provisions of our constitutions guard against the tyranny of the
mob, for at the time when men can deal in harmony with the principles of
justice, when no selfish motive exists, when no excited passions exist,
the constitution declares the great principles of justice--that no man
shall be deprived of his property without due process of the law; that
private property shall not be taken for public use without just
compensation; that a person accused of crime shall be entitled to be
informed of the charge against him, and given opportunity to defend
himself. These provisions are essential to the preservation of liberty;
and in the hands of judicial power rests the prerogative of declaring
that whenever a congress, or a president, or a general, or whatever
officer of whatever rank or dignity infringes, by a hair's breadth, upon
any one of these great impersonal declarations of human rights, his acts
cease to have official effect. The substitution of the divine quality of
judgment, of the judicial quality in man, that quality which is bound by
all that honor, by all that respect for human rights, by all that
self-respect can accomplish, to lay aside all fear or favor and decide
justly--the substitution of that quality for the fevered passions of the
hour, for political favor and political hope, for political ambition,
for personal selfishness and personal greed,--that is the contribution,
the great contribution, of the American Constitution to the political
science of the world.
If we pass to the field most ably and interestingly discussed in the
paper to which we have just listened, to the field of international
justice, we find the same principle less fully developed. I had almost
said we find the need for the application of the same principle. All
international law and international justice depend upon national law and
national justice. No assemblage of nations can be expected to establish
and maintain any higher standard in their dealings with one another than
that which each maintains within its own borders. Just as the standard
of justice and civilization in a community depends upon the individual
character of the elements of the community, so the standard of justice
among nations depends upon the standard established in each individual
nation. Now, in the field of international arbitration we find a less
fully developed sense of impersonal justice than we find in our
municipal jurisprudence. Many years ago the Marquis of Salisbury, in a
very able note, pointed out the extreme difficulty which lies in the way
of international arbitration, arising from the difficulty of securing
arbitrators who will act impartially, the trouble being that the world
has not yet passed, in general, out of that stage of development in
which men, even if they be arbitrators, act diplomatically instead of
acting judicially. Arbitrations are too apt, therefore, to lead to
diplomatic compromises rather than to judicial decisions. The remedy is
not in abandoning the principle of arbitration, but it is by pressing on
in every country and among all countries the quickened conscience, the
higher standard, the judicial idea, the sense of the responsibility for
impartial judgment in international affairs, as distinguished from the
opportunity for negotiation in international affairs. We are too apt,
both those who are despondent about the progress of civilization and
those who are cynical about the unselfishness of mankind, to be
impatient in our judgment, and to forget how long the life of a nation
is, and how slow the processes of civilization are; how long it takes to
change character and to educate whole peoples up to different standards
of moral law. The principle of arbitration requires not merely
declarations by governments, by congresses; it requires that education
of the people of all civilized countries up to the same standard which
now exists regarding the sacredness of judicial functions exercised in
our courts.
It does not follow from this that the declaration of the principle of
arbitration is not of value; it does not follow that governments and
congresses are not advancing the cause of international justice; a
principle recognized and declared always gains fresh strength and force;
but for the accomplishment of the results which all of us desire in the
substitution of arbitration for war, we must not be content with the
declaration of principles; we must carry on an active campaign of
universal national and international education, elevating the idea of
the sacredness of the exercise of the judicial function in arbitration
as well as in litigation between individuals. Still deeper than that
goes the duty that rests upon us. Arbitration is but the method of
preventing war after nations have been drawn up in opposition to each
other with serious differences and excited feelings. The true, the
permanent, and the final method of preventing war, is to educate the
people who make war or peace, the people who control parliaments and
congresses, to a love for justice and regard for the rights of others.
So we come to the duty that rests here--not in the whims or the
preference or the policy of a monarch, but here, in this university, in
every institution of learning throughout the civilized world, with every
teacher--the responsibility of determining the great issues of peace and
war through the responsibility of teaching the people of our countries
the love of justice, teaching them to seek the victories of peace rather
than the glories of war; to regard more highly an act of justice and of
generosity than even an act of courage or an act of heroism. In this
great work of educating the people of the American republics to peace,
there are no political divisions. As there is, and has been since the
dawn of civilization, but one republic of science, but one republic of
letters, let there be but one republic of the politics of peace, one
great university of the professors and instructors of justice, of
respect for human rights, of consideration for others, and of the peace
of the world.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Mr. Everett to Señor Osma, November 16, 1852.
PANAMA
THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY RICARDO ARIAS
SECRETARY OF GOVERNMENT AND FOREIGN RELATIONS
In the National Assembly, at Panama, September 21, 1906
You have just visited the wealthiest capitals of South America, real
emporiums of its richness; there you have been received with great
magnificence. Our outward manifestations of joy on the occasion of your
visit may, therefore, appear to you very humble; but you can rest
assured that none of them will surpass us in the intensity of
sympathetic feeling toward your person and toward the noble American
people that you so worthily represent.
We Panamanians always remember with gratitude the interest we inspired
in you from the very first days of our national existence, and we bear
in mind very specially your timely speech delivered before the Union
League Club of Chicago,[4] when our destiny was pending on the scales of
a decision of your Senate; and therefore we avail ourselves of this
joyful opportunity to receive you with the cordiality due to an old and
good friend.
It has been, and it is yet, the vehement desire of your country to bring
into closer ties, as far as possible, its political and commercial
relations with the Latin American countries. The similarity of
traditions and institutions, the vicinity and continuity of their
territories, and the vast field of commercial expansion which they
offer, fully justify that natural, legitimate desire, which is also
mutually beneficial; but there being between yours and the latter
countries essential differences of language, race, disposition, and
education, there is bound to exist in them the suspicion which is
naturally engendered by the unknown, and thus it is that the first steps
taken toward the accomplishment of your desire should have been the
removal of that suspicion by means of friendly intercourse and mutual
acquaintance.
With the tact brought forth by your vast intelligence and learning, you
fully understood that those do not love each other well who are not
intimately acquainted; and it is owing to this fact that you decided to
come in person to visit and to know the Latin Americans by your own
observation and study. No doubt you carry with you a joyful impression
of the progress and nobleness of disposition of our southern brothers,
together with the assurance that your mission will achieve a new and
splendid triumph for that American diplomacy whereof you are the skilled
director, and the principal object of which is the accomplishment of the
desire of which I have already spoken.
Being desirous to coöperate in the aims you have in view and with the
hope of dispelling certain existing misunderstandings concerning the
motives and intentions which originated our present pleasant relations,
in a statement which I recently addressed to your government through its
minister plenipotentiary here, I recounted the historical events which
engendered our national existence and those special relations which link
us to your country, in order that when the seal of diplomatic silence is
removed, and that statement becomes public property, the world may know,
through the unimpeachable testimony of history, that only ideals of the
highest altruism served as a guide to the foundation of our republic and
to the celebration of the treaty concerning the construction of the
interoceanic canal for our benefit and _pro mundi beneficio_.
Panama offers you a splendid field to promote the wise international
policy which animates your mind. We being of similar conditions to our
Latin American brothers, being linked to your country by the closest
ties that can exist between two independent nations, you having the
means of exerting decisive influence upon our future life and we being
situated in the constant path of universal transit, shall be an evident,
shining example of the benefit which your country can confer upon the
countries of our race.
The fruits of your influence are already felt and seen. Peace, which we
consider a blessing, is a permanent fact. Under its shelter, and under
the assurances given us by your illustrious President in his famous
letter of October 18, 1904, addressed to the Secretary of War, Panama
has entered with firm step upon the path of material, intellectual, and
moral development. Those who knew us a little over two years ago,
disheartened and ruined by bad government and civil war, and see today
the change that has taken place in such a short time, carry to the north
and south the gratifying news of our regeneration and thereby contribute
to dispel unfounded suspicions regarding yourselves.
These good results are the forerunners of greater benefits in the
future, and of the effect of the coöperation of the agents of your
government in the progress of the country in general, of their friendly
and timely advice, and of their decided moral support whenever there has
been need thereof.
I will profit by this opportunity to convey to you the gratitude of the
government and people of Panama for the special consideration which has
been extended to them by the government of your country. This has been
evidenced principally by the diplomatic staff sent to us, from the very
able Honorable William I. Buchanan, your first minister plenipotentiary,
to the popular Honorable Charles E. Magoon, who can hardly be replaced,
and whose separation from the post he occupies with general
satisfaction has caused great regret in the country; and later you sent
us, doing us an unmerited honor, in the first place, by special order of
your very noble President, your Secretary of War, Honorable William H.
Taft, who established the relations between our two countries on the
happy basis of mutual cordiality and justice, on which they are now
established; and now, Mr. Secretary, you do us the great honor of coming
yourself on a visit, placing us on a level with the powerful Brazil,
Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay; and, furthermore, which appears to
be the extreme limit of what is possible, you allow us to look forward
to the coming visit of your great President, the most distinguished of
existing rulers--a special honor which has not been vouchsafed even to
the most powerful nations of the world. Panama, overwhelmed with so many
marks of appreciation, will preserve them as an everlasting remembrance
of gratitude toward your noble country; and in return, though it be but
partial, we will follow your advice, we will coöperate without reserve
and with enthusiasm in the great work of the interoceanic canal, which
is bound to be the most magnificent monument of the grandeur of your
people; and we will likewise support you in the mission of American
brotherhood which you have undertaken, founding a nation which shall
distinguish itself by its love of work, of honor, of order, and of
justice.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I thank you for your kind welcome to me and for the friendship to my
country expressed in that welcome, and I thank you for the honor
conferred upon me by this reception in the legislative body which is
charged with the government of this republic. You have truly said, sir,
that I am deeply interested in the affairs of the people of Panama. At
the time of the events which led to your independence, I studied your
history carefully and thoroughly from original documents, in order to
determine in my own mind what the course of my country ought to be. From
that study have resulted a keen sense of the manifold injuries and
injustices under which the people of Panama have suffered in years past,
a strong sympathy with you in your efforts and aspirations toward a
better condition, a fervent hope for your prosperity and welfare.
It is with the greatest pleasure that I have heard the expressions of
friendship for my country, because of my feeling toward you and because
of the special relations which exist between the two countries. We are
engaged together in the prosecution of a great, a momentous
enterprise--an enterprise which has been the dream not only of the early
navigators who first colonized your coasts, but of the most progressive
of mankind for four centuries. Its successful accomplishment will make
Panama the very center of the world's trade; you will stand upon the
greatest highway of commerce; more than the ancient glories of the
isthmus will be restored; and there lies before you in the future of
this successful enterprise wealth, prosperity, the opportunity for
education, for cultivation, and for intercourse with all the world such
as has never before been brought to any people. The success of the
enterprise will unite the far-separated Atlantic and Pacific coasts in
my country; it will give to us the credit of great deeds done, and make
the Atlantic and Pacific for us as but one ocean; and the success of
this enterprise will give to the world a new highway of commerce and the
possibility of a distinct and enormous advance in that communication
between nations which is the surest guaranty of peace and civilization.
The achievement of this work is to be accomplished by us jointly. You
furnish the country, the place, the soil, the atmosphere, the
surrounding population among which the people who do the work are to
live and where the work is to be maintained. We furnish the capital and
the trained constructive ability which has grown up in the course of
centuries of development of the northern continent. The work is
difficult and delicate; the two peoples, the Anglo-American and the
Spanish-American, are widely different in their traditions, their laws,
their customs, their methods of thinking and speaking and doing
business. It often happens that we misunderstand each other; it often
happens that we fail to appreciate your good qualities and that you fail
to appreciate ours; and that with perfectly good intentions, with the
best of purposes and kindliest of feelings, we clash, we fail to
understand each other, we get at cross purposes, and misconception and
discord are liable to arise. Let us remember this in all our
intercourse; let us be patient with each other; let us believe in the
sincerity of our mutual good purposes and kindly feelings, and be
patient and forbearing each with the other, so that we may go on
together in the accomplishment of this great enterprise; together bring
it to a successful conclusion; together share in the glory of the great
work done and in the prosperity that will come from the result.
Mr. President and gentlemen, let me assure you that in the share which
the United States is taking and is to take in this work, there is and
can be but one feeling and one desire toward the people of Panama. It is
a feeling of friendship sincere and lasting; it is a feeling of strong
desire that wisdom may control the deliberations of this assembly; that
judgment and prudence and love of country may rule in all your councils
and may control all your actions; it is a desire and a firm purpose that
so far as in us lies, there shall be preserved for you the precious boon
of free self-government. We do not wish to govern you or interfere in
your government, because we are larger and stronger; we believe that the
principle of liberty and the rights of men are more important than the
size of armies or the number of battleships. Your independence which we
recognized first among the nations of the earth, it is our desire to
have maintained inviolate. Believe this, be patient with us, as we will
be patient with you; and I hope, I believe, that at some future day we
shall all be sailing through the canal together, congratulating each
other upon our share in that great and beneficent work.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] "The Ethics of the Panama Question"; address before the Union League
Club of Chicago, February 22, 1904--see _Addresses on International
Subjects_, pp. 175-206, published by the Harvard University Press.
COLOMBIA
CARTAGENA
ADDRESS OF THE MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS, HIS EXCELLENCY
VÁSQUEZ-COBO
At a Breakfast given to Mr. Root, September 24, 1906
Upon receiving your excellency within the confines of our heroic and
glorious Cartagena, I present to you a cordial greeting of welcome, in
the name of Colombia, of his excellency the President of the Republic,
and in my own.
You return to your own country to enjoy merited honors and laurels after
a long tour, giving a hearty embrace of friendship to our sisters, the
republics of the South; and in breaking your journey upon our burning
shores we receive you as the herald of peace, of justice, and of concord
with which the great republic of the North greets the American
continent. I trust to God that these walls, the austere witnesses of our
glory, will serve as a monument whereby this visit may be noted in
history.
The honorable Minister Barrett, the worthy and estimable representative
of your excellency's Government, has just completed a journey through a
large part of our vast territory; he, better than any one, will be able
to tell your excellency what he has seen in our beautiful and fertile
valleys and mountains, in our flourishing cities and fields, and among
our five millions of lusty, high-minded, peace-loving, and hard-working
inhabitants, who today think only of peace and useful and honest toil.
This is the nation that greets you today and with loyalty and frankness
clasps the hand of her sister of the North.
Mr. Secretary, upon thanking you for the honor of this visit, I
fervently pray that a happy outcome may crown your efforts in the great
work of American fraternity, and I drink to the prosperity and greatness
of the United States, to its President, and especially to your
excellency.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
Believe, I beg you, in the sincerity of my appreciation and my thanks
for the courtesy with which you have received me, and for the honor
which you have shown me. When the suggestion was made that upon my
return from a voyage encircling the continent of South America, I should
stop at Cartagena for an interview with you, sir, before returning to my
own country, I accepted with alacrity and with pleasure, because it was
most grateful to me to testify by my presence upon your shores to my
high respect for your great country, the country of Bolívar; to my
sincere desire that all questions which exist between the United States
of Colombia and the United States of America may be settled peacefully,
in the spirit of friendship, of mutual esteem, and with honor to both
countries. Especially, also, I was glad to come to Colombia as an
evidence of my esteem and regard for that noble and great man whom it is
the privilege of Colombia to call her President today--General Reyes. I
have had the privilege of personal acquaintance with him, and I look
upon his conduct of affairs in the chief magistracy of your republic
with the twofold interest of one who loves his fellowmen and desires the
prosperity and happiness of the people of Colombia, and of a personal
regard and friendship for the President himself.
I have been much gratified during my visit to so many of the republics
of South America to find universally the spirit of a new industrial and
commercial awakening, to find a new era of enterprise and prosperity
dawning in the southern continent.
Mr. Minister and gentlemen, it will be the cause of sincere happiness to
me if through the present friendly relations, based upon personal
knowledge acquired here, I may do something toward helping the republic
of Colombia forward along the pathway of the new development of South
America. With your vast agricultural and mineral wealth, with the
incalculable richness of your domain, the wealth and prosperity of
Colombia are sure to come some time. Let us hope that they will come
while we are yet living, in order that you may transfer to your children
not the possibility but the realization of the increased greatness of
your country. Let us hope that some advance of this new era of progress
may come from the pleasant friendships formed today. While I return my
thanks to you for your courtesy, let me assure you that there is nothing
that could give greater pleasure to the President and to the people of
the United States of America than to feel that they may have some part
in promoting the prosperity and the happiness of this sister republic.
I ask you to join me in drinking to the peace, the prosperity, the
order, the justice, the liberty of the republic of Colombia, and long
life and a prosperous career in office to its President--General
Reyes.
THE VISIT TO MEXICO
Following Secretary Root's visit to South America, with its
auspicious results, the President of Mexico, Porfirio Díaz,
extended an official invitation to visit the republic
immediately to the south of us, in the belief that such a
visit would have equally happy results in strengthening and
increasing the "steadfast friendship" existing between the
two neighboring nations.
Mr. Root, together with his wife and daughter, started for
Mexico by special train, arriving in San Antonio on
September 28, 1907. On the evening of the day of his arrival
in San Antonio, a banquet was tendered to Mr. Root and the
Mexican Committee which had come to San Antonio to welcome
him and escort him into their country.
On Sunday the 29th, the Root party, together with the
Mexican Committee, proceeded across the boundary into
Mexico, and were met at the station of Nuevo Laredo by a
Mexican delegation. Thence they continued to Mexico City,
where the honors extended to Mr. Root were in keeping with
the traditional hospitality of the ancient capital of the
Montezumas. During his stay the degree of honorary member of
the Mexican Academy of Legislation and Jurisprudence was
conferred upon him.
A Mexican publication of 314 pages, entitled _El Señor Root
en Mexico_, contains in parallel Spanish and English columns
a detailed account of the visit, which extended from
September 28 to October 16. It is to be regretted that this
volume is defective in that many of the speeches made during
the visit are not fully reported. It is possible, however,
to gather from those which have been preserved, a keen sense
of the cordial reception accorded him by the officials and
representative citizens of the republic, and the earnest and
eloquent terms in which he reciprocated the expressions of
regard for his country and of appreciation of his own
services to his country and the world.
The most progressive epoch in Mexico's history was the
thirty years of Díaz's supremacy; and it was in the heyday
of that period that Mr. Root made his visit to Mexico and
paid to President Díaz the tributes which appear in the
following pages. During these thirty years, he was always a
firm friend of the United States, and no diplomatic
misunderstandings arose which were not peaceably adjusted in
a spirit of neighborly friendship. Díaz shares with
President Roosevelt the honor of submitting the first
international controversy to the Hague Tribunal of
Arbitration for determination, in what is known as "The
Pious Fund of the Californias."
THE VISIT TO MEXICO
SAN ANTONIO
SPEECH OF MR. ROOT
At a Banquet of the International Club in Honor of Mr. Root and the
Mexican Envoys, September 28, 1907
Upon his arrival in San Antonio, Texas, on his way to
Mexico, Mr. Root was met by a reception committee designated
by President Díaz, which had come to San Antonio to welcome
him and to escort him to the national capital. While in San
Antonio, Mr. Root and the Mexican Reception Committee were
the guests of the International Club of that city; and on
the evening of the day of their arrival, a banquet was
tendered them by that club. At this banquet Mr. Root made
what may be called the first address of his Mexican visit.
The opening remarks of this speech were not reported in full
in the volume entitled _El Señor Root en Mexico_, or
elsewhere; nor were the speeches of the members of the
Mexican Reception Committee. Mr. Root began by a reference
to the ideals adopted by men and by nations, declaring his
opinion that a nation has a right to exist only in so far as
it shows its ability to care for the welfare of other
nations and the relations of every man with his fellowmen.
He spoke of the rising tide of American business which is
powerfully spreading towards the south by reason of the
financial conditions in the east of the United States, every
day becoming more stringent through the volume and
accumulation of resources. After this introduction, he spoke
at some length about the Panama Canal, the construction of
which already was in its opening stage. On this subject he
said:
The Panama Canal is now an unquestionable certainty. Relations between
the United States and the different nations which are grouped around the
Caribbean Sea, are becoming every day closer. It is impossible to
anticipate at present the tonnage which will pass through that waterway,
nor can we predict the number of vessels which will be required for its
transportation; but we do already know, that never in the world has a
new and universal trade route been opened, without bringing about a
change in the history of the entire world. And it is for this reason I
feel that upon us has fallen the mission of assisting all those nations
which will find themselves involved in the new influence. At present we
are doing everything within our power to assist Cuba in establishing
self-government. We have endeavored to stretch out our hand to unhappy
Santo Domingo, ruined by its civil wars, so that it may rise and also
govern itself. We have plunged into a discussion which really has no
further object than that of settling the disputes and the differences
which have arisen between the United States and the republic of
Colombia. And all this we do, not only through the new interest which
the prosperity of all those countries develops in ourselves, but
principally through a profound comprehension of the truth contained in
the principle above enunciated, that a nation only lives as far as it
demonstrates its right to existence by its usefulness to humanity. And
one of the most conclusive guarantees of the success of this effort is
found in the solid and loyal friendship which exists between the United
States and Mexico, with which nation, day after day, and year after
year, we are working within the limits of a peaceful and humanitarian
national policy, which at the same time is wise and intelligent. Our two
republics, now so prosperous, harmoniously work to promote a similar
prosperity amongst their sister republics to the south; and I sincerely
hope that this happy state of affairs may be prolonged for a long time
to come, and that success may finally crown our united efforts. In this
manner the two republics will fully prove their right to live, and will
show the world that their citizens are able and competent to govern
themselves without the assistance of either kings or aristocracies,
seeing that they can fill the highest mission of man, which consists in
the maintenance of law, order, justice, liberty, and peace....
I also desire to say how greatly I appreciate the distinguished courtesy
shown to myself and to the Government of the United States, by the long
journey which has been undertaken by the committee charged with the
representation of President Díaz and the Mexican Government, crossing
the frontier of their country into the state of Texas, in order to give
me welcome on the occasion of the visit I am about to make. Indeed, it
causes me the greatest satisfaction to be able to declare, without any
reserve whatever, that this action is entirely in accordance with the
conduct observed by Mexico in all international matters which have
arisen between the two countries, since I have taken any part in the
government of our own. With an immense boundary line which is only
marked by the changeable and capricious currents of the Río Grande; with
the constant traffic across our common frontier; with thousands of
Americans residing in that country; with the countless number of
enterprises in which Americans are interested on the other side of the
Río Grande, and with the resources of the two countries, there are
always a number of questions to be solved by the representatives of one
and the other, and there can be no doubt that they will always be solved
with the same good-will and courtesy of which such evident proof has
been given by General Rincón Gallardo, by Mr. Limantour and by their
travelling companions in coming here tonight.[5]
RECEPTION BY THE MEXICAN DELEGATION AT NUEVO LAREDO
SPEECH OF WELCOME BY GENERAL PEDRO RINCÓN GALLARDO
September 29, 1907
Especially appointed for this purpose by the President, in behalf of the
government of the republic, we have the honor to tender to your
excellency the most cordial welcome on your happy arrival in Mexico,
whose people, of whom we must consider ourselves the faithful echo,
pledge the continued good relations with the people of the United
States. The reception is an homage to your well-known merits, and the
people are anxious to receive your excellency as their illustrious guest
and highly esteemed friend. The people of Mexico, during your
excellency's brief sojourn amongst us, will show how true is their
esteem for you and how proud they will feel on the occasion of this
visit of your excellency, accompanied by Mrs. and Miss Root; an event
the memory of which will remain forever engraved on our hearts.
MR. ROOT'S REPLY
I beg you to believe that I am highly appreciative of the cordial and
hospitable greeting with which I have been received by you on the
threshold of your beautiful and wonderful country. I hope that the visit
which now begins will not merely give me personally the opportunity I
have long desired, to see this great country and its marvels, to meet
its public men, and especially to see its illustrious President. I hope
that it will also serve, as it is intended to serve, as evidence of the
desire of the government and people of the United States to strengthen
and increase the steadfast friendship which they have long felt for the
people and government of Mexico.
CITY OF MEXICO
SPEECH OF PORFIRIO DÍAZ
PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC
At a Banquet at the National Palace, October 2, 1907
In the name of the Mexican people and of their government I tender you
this banquet, acknowledging thereby those sentiments of sympathy which
are felt and which distinguish one and another, the people of the
United States, the great citizen who presides over its high destinies,
and the illustrious statesman who honors us with his interesting and
very welcome visit. Bonds of sympathy and fellow-feeling, Mr. Secretary,
which are not new, but which germinated in the breasts of our fathers at
the inception of the independence of our country, our fathers who
contemplated with patriotic enthusiasm the daring exploits in war and
imitated the political examples set by your heroic liberators;
sentiments which we, of subsequent generations, have also cultivated;
because, in studying the causes which produce the prodigious national
prosperity with which your country has astounded the world, we become
accustomed to admire, to magnify perhaps, the indomitable will, energy,
labor, and civic and patriotic solidarity which constitute the energetic
and abundantly productive type of your countrymen.
The Mexican people, Mr. Secretary, are honored as well as pleased to
have you in their midst--honored, because you are the fountain of honor
as a noted statesman of our century, and highly pleased because your
clear and rapid conception promises us that, seeing with your own eyes
the kind and well-merited feelings with which we harbor your countrymen
who seek in our land the generous treatment proportionate to their
intelligence, perseverance, and indefatigable labor, you may affirm that
in Mexico we profess ideas which, carried out in cordial reciprocity,
must make happy and loyal friends the two nations which are united by
contiguity.
In conclusion, gentlemen, I extend my thanks to the distinguished ladies
who have had the kindness to honor and embellish our tables with their
presence; and permit me to invite you to drink with them and with me,
hoping that the national harmonizing of individual rights and just
liberties, which is called the United States of America, may be
perpetuated in its increasing moral and material progress, which has
given prestige throughout the world to government by popular
representation.
I drink also to the personal happiness of that great friend of universal
peace, president of the grand republic, the Honorable Theodore
Roosevelt, and to the hope that our illustrious guest and his lovable
family may find in Mexico a reception as pleasing as their interesting
visit is to the Mexican people.
MR. ROOT'S REPLY
I thank you most sincerely for the kind and gracious words which you
have used regarding my poor self, regarding my President, from whom I
bring to you and to the Mexican people a message of deep and warm
friendship and good wishes, and regarding my country, which I believe is
fitly represented by this brief visit of friendship, made with the
purpose, not of creating, for they are already created, but of
increasing and advancing the ideas of amity and mutual helpfulness
between two great republics.
I cannot keep my mind from reverting to a former visit by an American
Secretary of State to the republic of Mexico. Thirty-eight years ago,
Mr. Seward, a really great American Secretary of State, visited your
country. How vast the difference between what he found and what I find!
Then was a country torn by a civil war, sunk in poverty, in distress.
Now I find a country great in its prosperity, in its wealth, in its
activity and enterprise, in the moral strength of its just and equal
laws, and unalterable purpose to advance its people steadily along the
pathway of progress.
Mr. President, the people of the United States feel that the world owes
this great change chiefly to you. They are grateful to you for it, for
they rejoice in the prosperity and happiness of Mexico. We believe, sir,
that we are richer and happier because you are richer and happier, and
we rejoice that you are no longer a poor and struggling nation needing
assistance, but that you are strong and vigorous, so that we can go with
you side by side in demonstrating to the world that republics are able
to govern themselves wisely; side by side in helping to carry to our
less fortunate sisters the blessing of peace.
Mr. President, I have said that we need not create, but wish to
strengthen, the ties of friendship. It is my hope that through more
perfect understanding, through personal intercourse, through the more
complete unity of action to be acquired by the individual intercourse of
the men of Mexico and the men of the United States, not only may our
friendship be increased, but our power for usefulness--for that
usefulness which demonstrates the right of nations to be
perpetuated--may be enlarged.
For the generous hospitality, for the spirit of friendship with which
you and the people of Mexico have welcomed me as a representative of the
United States, I thank you and them, and I hope that there may be found
in this visit and in this welcome not merely the pleasure of a holiday,
but a step along the pathway of two great nations in their service to
humanity.
RECEPTION AT THE MUNICIPAL PALACE
SPEECH OF GOVERNOR GUILLERMO DE LANDA Y ESCANDÓN
October 3, 1907
Last year, in accordance with the wishes of your President, you
undertook to visit and become acquainted with Latin America, and for
that purpose you made an extended voyage which was fruitful in happy
results.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century adventurous Spanish and
Portuguese navigators sailed from the Atlantic into the Pacific,
effecting important discoveries of which the object was to rescue from
darkness populous regions which, since then, have become part of the
civilized world. You have sailed over nearly the same route four
centuries later, proclaiming a message of peace and concord in all those
regions whose inhabitants greeted you with acclamations from the
northern ports of Brazil around to those of Colombia and Panama.
You are now crowning your mission by visiting the Mexican Republic, and
you arrive at this capital animated by the same aspirations which
actuated you when you set foot on the cruiser _Charleston_ in the port
of New York on July 4, 1906.
Your aims are so noble and great that they cannot but be sincere. The
course you have set before yourself would not be possible for one whose
head did not harbor the loftiest ideals, and whose heart did not quicken
to the finest sentiments.
Your President is a great man; rectitude and loyalty are the dominant
features of his character. A soldier, and a brave one, he knows what war
is, and therefore he abhors it with all the force of his large heart;
the war which engages his thoughts is war upon war itself.
It would not befit me at this moment, much as I should wish to do so, to
extol the character of the supreme magistrate of my country. But I may
say that, though a soldier like your own President, he detests war in
the same degree, and that the ideals and aims of both these great men
are alike directed toward an object sublime and desired of all
men--peace.
The nations which both statesmen govern follow their lead in this
respect with energetic unanimity; and it is safe to augur the happiest
results from a concert so auspicious.
You, sir, second the purposes of both of those leaders with a zeal which
nothing can cool; your mind has been formed at the bar--in the school
of justice; and, like our two Presidents, you abominate injustice and
insincerity.
You also know what war is, and you share the aversion of the two great
American statesmen who are the standard bearers of peace in the new
world.
Welcome, excellency, to this ancient capital of the empire of Montezuma.
She opens her gates to you and to your family, and offers you the
sincerest hospitality, hoping you may preserve of her recollections as
lasting as will be her memory of the visit of one whose happy mission it
has been to carry everywhere the spirit of peace, good-will, and
fraternity.
MR. ROOT'S REPLY
Governor Landa, your welcome now is as it has been from the first
instant of my visit, both graceful and grateful. I have been most
delighted by the many interesting things I have seen here.
Above all things, I feel impelled to say that the most interesting thing
in Mexico, so far as my knowledge goes, is your President. It has seemed
to me that of all the men now living, Porfirio Díaz, of Mexico, is best
worth seeing. Whether one considers the adventurous, daring, chivalric
incidents of his early career; whether one considers the vast work of
government which his wisdom and courage and commanding character have
accomplished; whether one considers his singularly attractive
personality, no one lives today whom I would rather see than President
Díaz. If I were a poet, I would write poetry; if I were a musician, I
would compose triumphal marches; if I were a Mexican, I should feel that
the steadfast loyalty of a lifetime could not be too much in return for
the blessings that he had brought to my country. As I am neither poet,
musician, nor Mexican, but only an American who loves justice and
liberty and hopes to see their reign among mankind progress and
strengthen and become perpetual, I look to Porfirio Díaz, the President
of Mexico, as one of the great men to be held up for the hero worship of
mankind.
RECEPTION BY THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES
SPEECH OF LICENTIATE MANUEL CALERO
PRESIDENT OF THE CHAMBER
October 3, 1907
Honorable Secretary of State, welcome; the national representation, the
chamber that constitutionally symbolizes that people which in this
section of the western hemisphere, is ever striving, ever struggling to
attain a higher civilization, to win for itself a respected name among
nations, feels pleasure in welcoming you to its midst. You are at the
present moment the symbolical representation of a great and friendly
people and the personification of its brotherly feelings toward us. You,
honored sir, are our guest; and were the traditional chivalry of our
people not sufficient justification for our cordiality toward you, the
high character of your office, the luster encircling your name, and the
mission of peace which brings you to this land, would all move us to
open our arms to you, to show you what we are and what we would be, so
that, on returning to your country, you may tell the millions of your
fellow-citizens who will hang upon your words with rapt attention, that
Mexico is not that mythical land, which legends shroud in the mists of
the adventurous romance of the old Latin countries, restless,
mistrustful, dreamy; nay rather, you will tell them, that it is a sturdy
young nation, starting out, aye, already started, on the highroad of
civilization and industrialism; that it pursues lofty ideals and strives
to attain them, that its heart beats at the thought of universal
solidarity, that it sees in the foreigner a friend, that it answers your
brotherly message with a frank and kindly greeting, free from
resentment for the past, and trusting in the omens of the future.
Your name is not unknown to us. We have followed the trail of your
labors and triumphs for the last decade. We know, too, the people from
whom you have come; and setting aside all false modesty, can truly say
we know them better than they know us. The last thirty years of free
intercourse between this country and yours have seen an overflow of men
and money from north to south; we have dashed the mist from our eyes and
have endeavored to wring from you, more fortunate and wiser than
ourselves, the secrets of your greatness and the causes of your
astounding prosperity.
That you once wronged us, that, when burning political, economic, and
humane problems beset you, the course of justice was momentarily
hampered, we have not forgotten; we have not. But as the years have
rolled on you have won back, inch by inch, your place in our affections;
the intercourse every day has become closer and closer between your
people and ours, stepping over the bounds set by race and tongue,
infusing new life into this feeling of mutual good will and friendship,
which tends to establish harmony of ideals and close similarity of
destiny.
So it is happening and so should it be. Offsprings of the same
continent, your institutions point out the path for the development of
ours, your mental and moral advance fires the vigor of our spirit, your
tireless activity excites us to action; in a word, your progress uplifts
our noblest ambitions. We are both marching on to the victories of
civilization, although your lot, in the course of history, shall have
been that of forerunners.
One of your scholars has said that the American nation has rendered five
eminent services to the world's civilization. True are his words. For
the American nation has, in the first place, sustained by word and by
deed, the principle that the medium of bringing differences between
nations to an end, is arbitration; it has accepted and practised
religious toleration as has no other nation; it has known how to raise
the dignity of man, by giving to the political vote the development
which a true democracy calls for; it has thrown open its doors to all
such as seek progress and liberty in your country, and it has taken them
in to form part of one and the same great soul; and lastly, it has
known, as no other nation has, how to scatter abroad material benefits,
the very basis of the moral and mental perfection of the individual. To
these factors and to others derived from the conditions of its
privileged soil, is due the great importance of the American people as a
powerful force in the progress of humanity.
I shall not attempt to analyze in their essence these five glorious
victories of civilization. My mind is dazed by the victory of democracy
through the true action of the suffrage. This is the germ, the primary
origin of your greatness as a people, which makes you the beacon for the
eager gaze of all those who, down-trodden by power or by poverty, seek
under the shelter of your wise laws, the guarantee of life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness, to quote the sacred formula of your
Declaration of Independence; this it is which explains why neither the
difference of race and language, nor the morbid influence produced in
the mind by secular despotism, nor the infinite diversity of religion,
is an obstacle to the hundreds of thousands of helpless beings whom year
by year the Old World is casting on your shores, to be transformed into
citizens and become identified with the new fatherland, as if the
national spirit had breathed into the souls of these new arrivals love
for your glorious traditions and your lofty ideals of liberty, justice,
and progress. The American fatherland is not hemmed in by battlements;
it is the redeemer of all miseries, it is the refuge of all those who,
in their flight from tyranny, like your illustrious Carl Schurz,
exclaim: _ubi libertas, ibi patria!_
We, less blessed by fortune, but no whit less rich in ideals and lofty
aspirations, find pleasure in studying your people. We shall endeavor to
reap benefits from the lessons of your success, and we shall try to
avert the great evils which are born of a prosperity such as yours, and
which would undermine the walls of your civilization, did there not
arise from out of your midst men of great virtue and indomitable
strength of will, armed for the fray against guilt, combating evil, true
apostles of right. Theodore Roosevelt is such a man, the most
conspicuous of our times, the ardent devotee of justice, who claims for
good citizens, for the rich and the poor, the proud and the humble,
perfect equality and liberty unrestrained, without which lawful energies
may not expand; and demands alike for all equal justice, equal
treatment, "a square deal"--to use his own concise and vigorous phrase.
This it is which explains the whole-hearted prestige won by your Chief
Executive within the limits of your own country, and which has passed
the bounds of your territory and been merged in the international
prestige accorded to him by all cultured nations. And, in no small
measure, did you with your knowledge, your ceaseless labor and your
delicate tact contribute to this happy end. Thus the world has seen how
the voice of Theodore Roosevelt, outreaching the roar of the cannons of
Mukden, put an end to the war which in shame to human culture heralded
the dawn of the twentieth century; it has seen how, in deference to his
initiative, the cultured nations of the world hastened to meet at The
Hague Conference, and how, as a reward for his constant efforts, united
with those of the glorious Chief Executive of this republic, who now
receives you with every mark of honor, the disorders in the neighboring
republics to the south were pacified, and these are now making ready
for a work of peace and harmony,--the beginning of that longed-for era
of prosperity.
The international importance achieved by your government and your
country had its beginning when President Monroe gave to the world his
famous doctrine, so debated, so misunderstood, and perhaps so dangerous,
if--as has sometimes been thought--it might be used as a means of
illegitimate preponderance at the expense of the sovereignty of other
nations. The Monroe Doctrine embodies, nevertheless, and we should not
hesitate to say so, the first principle of international law of a great
part of this continent, if not the whole. This it means for us Mexicans,
ever since the President of the Republic announced it to Congress in his
memorable message of April, 1896, received with general acclamation by
the national representatives, and later by the whole country. The
integrity of the nations of this continent is of vital interest to all,
collectively, and not alone to the country immediately affected. Any
attack on this integrity should constitute an offense in the eyes of the
other nations of America. Accordingly, one of our great thinkers and
statesmen has wisely said: "America for Americans means each country for
its own people, to the exclusion of all foreign interference, whether
this comes from other countries of this continent or whether it comes
from any other nation whatsoever. And we in our trying struggles of the
past have given ample proof to the whole world of our homage to
independence and our hatred of all foreign intervention"--to use
President Díaz's own words.
From among the various formulas adopted by the interpreters of the
Monroe Doctrine, we Latin American nations should gather and keep as a
precious pledge, that which Theodore Roosevelt embodied in his famous
speech delivered on the occasion of the opening of the Buffalo
Exposition. Addressing the republics of the New World, the illustrious
statesman, then Vice-President of the United States of America, said:
I believe with all my heart in the Monroe Doctrine. This
doctrine is not to be invoked for the aggrandizement of any
one of us here on this continent at the expense of any one
else on this continent. It should be regarded simply as a
great international Pan American policy, vital to the
interests of all of us. The United States has and ought to
have, and must ever have, only the desire to see her sister
commonwealths in the western hemisphere continue to
flourish, and the determination that no Old World power
shall acquire new territory here on this western continent.
We of the two Americas must be left to work out our own
salvation along our own lines; and if we are wise we will
make it understood as a cardinal feature of our joint
foreign policy that, on the one hand, we will not submit to
territorial aggrandizement on this continent by any Old
World power, and that, on the other hand, among ourselves
each nation must scrupulously regard the rights and
interests of the others, so that, instead of any one of us
committing the criminal folly of trying to rise at the
expense of our neighbors, we shall all strive upward in
honest and manly brotherhood, shoulder to shoulder.
And you, honored sir, have not been less explicit. Your words,
pronounced on a memorable occasion during your recent visit to South
America, before all the free peoples of this continent gathered together
at the third Pan American Conference, should be disclosed, should reach
the ears of my fellow-citizens, for these very words of yours, as
President Roosevelt solemnly declared in his last message to the
Congress of the United States, have revealed to all who doubted the
spirit of complete equality which inspired the Monroe Doctrine, what is
the attitude of the United States towards the other American republics,
and what its purposes. You declared then:
We wish for no victories but those of peace; for no
territory except our own; for no sovereignty except the
sovereignty over ourselves. We deem the independence and
equal rights of the smallest and weakest member of the
family of nations entitled to as much respect as those of
the greatest empire; and we deem the observance of that
respect the chief guaranty of the weak against the
oppression of the strong. We neither claim nor desire any
rights or privileges or powers that we do not freely concede
to every American republic. We wish to increase our
prosperity, to expand our trade, to grow in wealth, in
wisdom, and in spirit; but our conception of the true way to
accomplish this is not to pull down others and profit by
their ruin, but to help all friends to a common prosperity
and a common growth, that we may all become greater and
stronger together.
You spoke words of truth, and know, honored sir, that those are also our
aspirations, those our aims; and thither we wend our way, with the
constant steadiness which the Mexican people showed in its struggles for
liberty and the attainment of the great principles already embodied in
our constitution and laws. Deign to believe it, and when you return to
the fatherland, pray do not ever forget that, if we have showered on you
the hospitality such as is only offered to a friend, it is because your
ideals are ours, because we citizens of this land, no less than those of
yours, accept as the supreme dogma of our political religion the
immortal words of President Lincoln, that "government of the people, by
the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."
MR. ROOT'S REPLY
I am doubly sensible of the high honor which you have conferred upon me
by this audience today. I am sensible also of the great mark of
friendship to my country involved in the reception of one of her
officers in this distinguished manner by the lawmaking--the popular
lawmaking--body of this great republic. I sincerely hope, not merely
that I personally may never do aught to show myself unworthy of your
consideration, but that my country may forever, in its attitude and
conduct toward the people of Mexico, justify your kindness.
You will gather from my words, which your president has been good enough
to quote in the admirable and graceful address he has just made, that I
am one of those who believe that the old days when nations sought to
enrich themselves by taking away the wealth of others by force, ought to
pass and are passing. I believe, and I am happy to know that the great
mass of my countrymen believe, that it is not only more Christian, not
only more honorable, but also more useful and beneficial for all
nations, and especially all neighboring nations, to unite in helping
each other create more wealth, so that all may be rich and prosperous,
rather than to seek to take it away from each other.
I find here in this sanctuary of laws, in this body charged with making
the laws, the most interesting, the most important, and the most sacred
thing in the republic of Mexico. I am not unmindful of the difficulties
which confront you, gentlemen of the Chamber of Deputies, in the task
that you perform for your country. The discussion of public questions,
the reconciliation of differing opinions, the adjustment of different
local interests all over this vast country, the reaching of just
conclusions, the compromises necessary so often between different
interests, present to the members of a legislative body of a republic
difficulties little understood by the people at large and requiring for
their solution the highest order of ability, self-denial, and love of
country. I beg you to take my testimony, coming from another land long
engaged in grappling with the same kind of difficulties; I beg you to
take my testimony that the troubles of your body in legislating for your
country, and those which you are to encounter in the future, are not
peculiar to your country, to your race, to your institutions, to your
customs. They inhere in the task before every legislative body
representing the vastly differing interests, opinions, sentiments, and
desires of a people.
Mr. President and gentlemen of the Chamber of Deputies, it is my sincere
desire and the desire of my countrymen, that in the performance of this
task for the republic of Mexico you may be guided in wisdom and in
peace. May you possess that self-restraint which is so necessary to the
preservation and security for property, for enterprise, and for life,
guarding you always from unwise extremes, leading you always to test
every question of legislation by sound principles taught by history. May
you always, and every one of you, be so inspired by love of country,
that you may be able to sink all personal ambitions and interests, to do
only that which is for the benefit of your country; so that through your
actions and inspired by your example the spirit of nationality which I
see growing among the people of Mexico, may continue to increase until
it is the living and controlling spirit of all the people from the Gulf
to the Pacific. May you have in your deliberations and your action
something of the self-sacrificing spirit of the humble priest Hidalgo,
which, without ambition on his part, with no other motive but the love
of his country, has written his name among the great benefactors of
humanity. May you have something of the patriotism and genius of Benito
Juárez, which enabled him with his strong hand to take Mexico out of the
conditions of warring factions when individual ambition rose above the
love of country. May you have something of that constancy and high
courage which has made for the soldier and the statesman who now sits in
the chair of the chief magistrate of Mexico, a place in history above
scores and hundreds of emperors and kings with high-sounding title and
no record in life but the desire for personal advancement.
And so, members of the Chamber of Deputies--may I say, my
friends--brothers in the work of seeking by law to advance the peace and
prosperity of mankind--may you be able to bring in the rule of justice,
of ordered liberty, of peace, of happy homes, of opportunity for
children to rise, of opportunity for old age to pass its days in peace.
My brother workers in the cause of popular government, of human rights
and human happiness, I thank you for the opportunity to say, "God bless
you in your labors", which will always have my sympathy and the sympathy
of my people.
LUNCHEON BY THE AMERICAN COLONY
SPEECH OF GENERAL C. H. M. Y AGRAMONTE
At the Mexican Country Club, October 4, 1907
As chairman of a committee of the American colony, the pleasant duty
devolves upon me to welcome, in behalf of the colony, an illustrious
countryman, and a prominent member of the official family of the
President of the United States, the Secretary of State.
The opportunity has been afforded us through one of those many acts of
exquisite courtesy for which the Government of Mexico is noted in its
intercourse with those of us from north of the Río Grande, and to which
unfailing courtesy we can all bear witness.
For the kindly spirit that actuated the Mexican Government in breaking
in upon the official program for the entertainment of its guest--our
countryman--and placing him in our hands for this occasion, we are
extremely grateful. For the graceful act of the Mexican Country Club in
permitting us the use of this magnificent building in which to entertain
our guest there is no lack of appreciation.
As Americans, knowing our own people and our own country as we do, and
keenly alive to everything that may obtain for its weal or its woe, our
very absence from it making our hearts grow fonder of it, the joy we
feel in welcoming one who has held the bright banner of our country full
high advanced, is greater than any words of mine can express.
We love our country; we love it as the blessed consummation of human
hopes. The world has been full of sorrow. The tearful eyes of humanity
have never been dry; but in this western world, on this new continent,
stretching from ocean to ocean, in the maturity of the ages has come
forth a nation whose institutions and example shall aid in lifting the
nations of the world into the sunlight of God's glorious liberty.
We have no king, no royal family upon which can be centered the loyal
emotions of a great people. To us the only representative of the whole
people is the glorious banner "thick sprinkled" with stars and striped
with vivid red and white.
You, sir, have held aloft that banner. You have added to the glory of
our country.
On the sacred field of Gettysburg, ground consecrated by torrents of
American blood, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, gave to
us a classic which will live while our country exists. You, sir, in your
exposition of the attitude of the United States toward other countries,
have enunciated a classic that also will live and be a bond of
friendship between us and all the nations of this hemisphere.
Gentlemen, I will read to you that classic:
We wish for no victories but those of peace; for no
territory except our own; for no sovereignty except the
sovereignty over ourselves. We deem the independence and
equal rights of the smallest and weakest member of the
family of nations entitled to as much respect as those of
the greatest empire; and we deem the observance of that
respect the chief guaranty of the weak against the
oppression of the strong. We neither claim nor desire any
rights or privileges or powers that we do not freely concede
to every American republic.
With such dignified sentiments resounding in our ears, have we not
reason to be proud of our guest?
And now, sir, in the name of the American colony of Mexico, I bid you
welcome. Yes, thrice welcome! May every choice blessing attend upon you
and those you hold dear.
MR. ROOT'S REPLY
It is a long way from the Bowery, but I feel quite at home! It is
delightful to feel that my country is represented in this land of beauty
by so many handsome and cheerful-looking men; it is delightful to see
the evidences of prosperity in every American here, and it is delightful
to see that that subtle, indefinable quickening of spirit that comes
from separation has given to each of you, exiles in a foreign land, a
new significance in every star and stripe and every reference to the old
flag and the old home.
Your welcome is very grateful to me; your kind expressions I most
heartily reciprocate. I do not wish to return evil for good by
preaching, but it occurs to me that you have--I will not say that you
have left your country for your country's good--you have not abandoned
your opportunities to serve her; you have rather reached the position
where you have new opportunities for service as American citizens. One
serious fault which formerly existed to a very great extent among
Americans, and which has been growing less, was a certain provincial and
narrow way of looking at foreigners. There was a good deal of truth
underlying the observations and characterizations of Mr. Dickens which
made our people so angry sixty or seventy years ago. One of our American
humorists refers to the people of a western mining camp as looking upon
a newcomer with the idea that he had the defective moral quality of
being a foreigner. Now the residuum of that old feeling stands in the
way of American trade and American intercourse generally with other
nations. No one can do more to hasten the disappearance of that attitude
than you who have experienced the friendship and kindliness of the
people of this foreign country; you who have learned by your personal
experience how many and how noble are the characteristics of this
foreign people; you who have been able to see how much we Americans may
well learn from them; you can, each one of you, be a teacher of your
countrymen in your continued intercourse with your homes and your home
associates in the gospel of courtesy and kindliness toward all mankind.
There is one other thought that comes naturally to my mind. You not only
have not abandoned your duties toward your country by coming to this
foreign land, but you have acquired new duties toward the community and
the nation which has given you welcome and shelter and prosperity. There
is underlying all the materialism and the hard practical sense of the
American people regulating its own government for its own
interests--there is underlying that a certain idealism which carries a
conception of a missionary calling to spread through the length and
breadth of the world the blessing of justice and liberty and of the
institutions which we believe make for human happiness and human
progress. That mission is to be fulfilled, not by making speeches and
the giving of advice, the writing of books, or even the publication of
newspapers; it can best be fulfilled by personal influence and
intercourse of men one with another. No American who is in a foreign
land can help representing his country; its honor and its good name rest
upon each one of us the moment we cross the border. You not only
represent your country, but you have a duty to perform toward the
country in which you live, giving to her and to her people through your
efforts and all your association the best contribution that your
training as American citizens, that the traditions of centuries of
American life enable you to give, toward the maintenance of law and
order, toward the promotion of all ideas that you have been taught in
your youth to consider sacred, toward holding up the hands of authority,
toward the inculcation of the sentiment of loyalty, toward the
perpetuity of the government which gives you security for your lives
and your property in your new home.
I have one prominent thought in meeting you today; it is, while you
continue to be good, loyal American citizens, you should be good and
loyal Mexican residents. I can no better voice the sentiment of all of
my countrymen here I know, and I can no better represent the feelings of
our friends who remain at home, than by asking you to rise and join me
in drinking to the long continuance of life, strength, and usefulness
for the man who, more than any other, or all others, has given you the
opportunities that you now enjoy, President Porfirio Díaz.
MEXICAN ACADEMY OF LEGISLATION AND JURISPRUDENCE
SPEECH OF LICENTIATE LUIS MÉNDEZ
PRESIDENT OF THE ACADEMY
At the Installation of Mr. Root as an Honorary Member, October 4, 1907
Honored Sir: Because of the office I am temporarily holding, I am given
the unexpected honor of placing in your hands the diploma that entitles
you to honorary membership in the Mexican Academy of Legislation and
Jurisprudence.
You have come to the country of snowy mountains and flowering valleys
which perfume our tropical breezes, preceded by the meritorious fame of
having preserved always, unblemished during the course of your fruitful
life, the reputation and profession of a lawyer, of having penetrated
the secrets of the juridical science and of consecrating today all your
energies and abilities to the service of your country.
By a happy coincidence, you will find engraved in this parchment as our
motto: "Professional Honor, Science, and Country"--the same great ends
that have consecrated your life. Never was the diploma bearing this
motto conferred upon a more meritorious or greater man.
In science, you have not been the selfish investigator nor in the
service of your country have you confined yourself to directing from
your place in the Cabinet the important matters of the foreign relations
of a world-power.
Knowing that the time has passed for studies merely speculative, and
that at the present day every scientific truth cannot be such unless it
is applicable, you have most happily found time to scatter the treasures
of your studies, either when carrying them as the apostle of peace and
concord to other countries, or through your invaluable publications.
The Academy could hardly be indifferent to this phase of your labors, as
we owe to it the great satisfaction of knowing you intellectually and
personally; and we pay you our profound respect.
Therefore, selecting from among your works the last you have published,
entitled _The Citizen's Part in Government_,[6] it was agreed that we
should offer you a translation of the same, in the hope that it may
please you as it comes from the able and learned pen of an Academician
for whom you have shown particular friendship prior to this time, and
who feels for you the just admiration expressed in the eloquent words of
welcome that we have all seconded.
We find in this illuminating work of yours the double revelation of the
genius that pursues the development of a great idea, and of the generous
heart that instills it with an ardor that will make it successful.
I will not take the liberty, Mr. Secretary, of commenting on the
selection made by the Academy; but I can assure you that the collection
of your lectures at Yale University, appear to me worthy, for the clear
observation and teaching they contain, to be designated as the text-book
to be read in all schools by youths preparing to exercise the rights of
citizenship. Therefore, I beg you, kindly to accept the special copy of
this translation presented by the Academy.
Among those who devote themselves to the study of science in general,
Mr. Secretary, and more particularly among those who cultivate one
special branch, is formed a sort of fraternity of feelings and
affections--the fruit of the communion of ideas--and also of respect
caused in every really broad man, for the talents and learning of
others.
This fraternal feeling has always existed among the jurists of all
nations, and in every language there is a word to describe it:
_compañero_, in our Castilian tongue; _confrère_, in French; and in
yours, the most virile and the most expressive, you use the word
_brother_.
As a brother, therefore, this Academy has the honor to receive you in
its midst. Foreign though it is by virtue of its by-laws to all matters
of militant politics, the Academy hopes and desires that, forgetting for
a moment the high official functions with which you are vested and
recalling the happy times when you were simply a lawyer, you may come to
us to aid with your vast knowledge and generosity of character, in the
success of this ideal: "Justice among men and justice among nations."
We hope, sir, that when once more in the calm of your honored home, far
from the madding crowd and the cares of business, in the company of the
two beings most dear to you, who as a blessing may come to your side to
fill your affections and to venerate your white head; when in that
tranquillity of the soul you may recall the incidents of your busy life,
we hope that the recollection of the brief days you are passing among us
may be pleasing, and that in the depths of your heart you may be able to
say: "I went to Mexico in search of friends, and I found brothers...."
Members of the Academy, and Committees of Scientific Societies, and all
you who have kindly contributed with your presence to enhance the
solemnity of this function in honor of an illustrious lawyer: this is a
time when he who gives gains more than those who receive. Let us all
greet the reception of the new Academician!
SPEECH OF LICENTIATE JOAQUÍN D. CASASUS
The Mexican Academy of Legislation and Jurisprudence has intrusted me
with the most gratifying task of expressing in its name its good wishes
for your safe arrival in our midst, and of voicing the joy it
experiences at being afforded the opportunity of publicly testifying to
the high respect and esteem in which it holds the great statesman, the
eminent jurisconsult, and the illustrious orator who in his position as
Secretary of State of the United States of America is now amongst us,
the distinguished guest of the Mexican nation.
Had I taken into account solely my own merits, notably deficient,
especially when measured by the side of those possessed by the other
members composing our academy, I should have refused such a high
distinction. I thought, however, I could discern in its resolution the
marked purpose that its homage should reach your ears through the echoes
of a friend's voice, and so be all the more welcome to you. With this
reason, therefore, in mind, I did not hesitate to accept it. Nay, more;
this has made me think once and again that the abundant proofs of your
good-will--for which I shall ever remain indebted to you--the very base
and foundation of our friendship, were those which you earnestly desired
to convey to Mexico in the person of him who was then its representative
in Washington.
The Mexican people, from the very moment in which you set foot on their
soil, and our Government from the time it tendered you the invitation
that your visit to Latin America should have in Mexico its fitting end
and crowning point, have proved to you, in abundant measure, by
manifestations of every kind, that their earnest desire is that the ties
which have for so many years bound us to your country, united by common
interests and strengthened by common ideals, should every day grow
closer and closer. They have also applauded the constant zeal shown by
your Government in fostering relations more and more cordial with the
republics of America, so that, inspired by the same spirit and guided by
the same policy, they should make this western continent of ours the
arena of the peaceful struggle of human effort. Nor do we deny you the
enthusiastic and universal praise of which your labor as Secretary of
State of the United States of America is deserving, since the program of
your international policy, later incorporated by President Roosevelt
into his last message to Congress, found a sympathizing echo in every
Mexican heart; that program which you made known to the world when,
having the Pan American conference for your tribune and the whole of
America grouped around you for your audience, we were all welcomed on
the hospitable soil of the noble and heroic Brazilian people.
Nevertheless, the Mexican Academy of Legislation and Jurisprudence,
while recognizing your merits as a statesman, has desired to confine
itself to honoring the lawyer who has brought fame and glory to the
American bar, the jurisconsult who has won the unstinted admiration of
all the nations ruled by democratic institutions, and the orator whose
eloquence takes us back to the times of the Latins, be his voice
resounding in the courts of justice, or heard in the academies and
universities, or pealing forth clear and inspired in the popular
tribune.
You, honored sir, we regard as the perfect type of the lawyer who has
known how to perform the sacred task commended to him by modern society.
The lawyer is a priest whose duty it is, in the bitter battles of life
waged by human conflicting interests, to fulfill a mission of peace and
harmony. He is indeed, the champion of homes when persecuted by human
cruelty; he who strengthens the bonds of love which maintain the family
union untainted, when the depravity of customs threatens its downfall.
In stretching out a helping hand to the toiler he is ever a master; in
carrying out an equitable distribution of fortunes made, an adviser; in
proclaiming the respect due to the law, an example and an authority in
maintaining its prestige in the social community. His knowledge should
be an arsenal from which to arm the weak and a shield with which to
protect the powerful; his voice should be beseeching in its pleading for
pardon from society for those who by their crimes undermine its
foundations, but inexorable in its demand when in the name of society he
calls for punishment. To the poor who strive to defend the bread earned
for their children, he is a stay; to the rich who worry over productive
investment for their fortunes, a guide; and if, in the errors committed
by both sides and which ever tend to separate them, he should be equity;
then to put an end to the struggles into which they will irreparably be
drawn, he must ever be justice itself.
And you have been all this in your exemplary life of lawyer; this is
what has won for you the love of the poor, the confidence of the rich,
and the respect of the whole of society; which has placed you in the
fore rank of the distinguished men of the American bar, from which only
the pressing need of serving the greater political interests of your
country could draw you.
Your important labors as a statesman and jurisconsult do not call forth
our admiration any the less.
The jurisconsult of our days is not only he who in the Roman Forum _ex
solio tanquam ex tripode_ solved the conflicts which arose from the
applying of the law; because now the part taken by the people in
governmental affairs and the ever-increasing necessities of democratic
life have widened his sphere of influence, and he has become to society
what the lawyer has been to the individual and the family. The
jurisconsult is a mentor of nations; in the midst of our eagerness to
achieve greater prosperity and in our constant wrestle as citizens to
form part of the public administration, he it is who points out the path
of our social and political life, and has to dictate the laws which
should conform to our customs as well as those which should be necessary
to determine its evolution. He it is who, standing in the prow, with
gaze fixed on the distant horizon, steers the ship through the paths
which guide nations to the haven of greater prosperity.
And you belong to the assembly of jurisconsults who are the glory and
pride of the American continent.
Still fresh in men's minds are the honors you reaped in Yale University
with the course of lectures you delivered on the part to be taken by
citizens in the government. Your lessons have taught what are the rights
to be exercised by citizens in nations ruled by democratic institutions
and what their duties in order that governments should be the true
representatives of the people's will.
But again, the academy deems it but just to accord all honor to the
great orator whose voice all America has been heeding with universal
approval for more than a year; heeding, because that voice has ever been
the expression of the lofty ideals which America has been pursuing from
the earliest days of her freedom and independence.
Nor is your eloquence the fruit of meditation and study; it savors not,
like that of Demosthenes, of the midnight oil. It is fresh and
spontaneous, such as ought to be at the command of men ever ready to
speak to the people of their rights and duties in democracies. It
abounds always in that cold reasoning and that inflexible logic which
alone can persuade and convince.
But your eloquence contains, besides, all the warmth, all the majesty,
and all the sparkle of the Latin eloquence.
Plutarch relates, in his life of Cicero, that when the great orator
thrilled the inhabitants of Rhodes with his speeches, Apollonius Molon,
after listening to him one day, showed no sign of admiration, but that
when Cicero had finished he said: "Cicero, I, no less than the others,
praise and admire thee; but I weep for the fate of Greece, for thou hast
taken to Rome the best that was left to Greece--wisdom and eloquence."
We in Latin America, less selfish than Apollonius Molon, do not weep;
rather do we cheer and reward the orator from whose lips we have heard
resound the accents of the Latin eloquence.
The Mexican Academy of Legislation and Jurisprudence, on presenting you
today with the diploma which confers upon you the degree of honorary
member, has desired to make known to the whole country your undoubted
merits as lawyer, jurisconsult, and orator, and on this solemn occasion
to bestow upon you its highest possible distinction.
Welcome to our midst. May your visit to Mexico be fruitful in good
results to both countries; may it be, above all, one more tie to bind
the sincere and unshaken friendship which unites them both; and, since
it is the end of your triumphal journey to Latin America, may it add, in
your great career as a statesman, fresh fame to your labor and glory to
your illustrious name.
MR. ROOT'S REPLY
I am highly appreciative of the very great honor which you have now
conferred upon me. It is all the more grateful to me that in the
ceremony which makes me an associate of this distinguished body, so
prominent a part should be taken by a gentleman who, as the
representative of Mexico in the capital of the United States, has not
only taught me to admire his rare intellectual ability, but has won from
me, by the grace and purity of his character, the warmth of friendship
which adds especial pleasure to every new association with him into
which I can enter. I feel, sir, that the compliment which you have paid
to this little work of mine, produced without any idea that it should
receive so distinguished an honor or find its way so far from home, I
must ascribe rather to friendship than to any intrinsic merit of the
work; but I thank you, and I am most appreciative of the honor that you
do me in causing it to be translated into Spanish and making it the
subject of your resolution.
Circumstances have not permitted, and do not permit, that I should
present to the Academy any thesis or discussion adequate to be
associated with the admirable and well-considered papers which have been
read by Mr. Casasus and yourself. I wish, however, in addition to
expressing my thanks, to indicate in a few words the special
significance which this academy and my new association with it seem to
me to have. We are passing, undoubtedly, into a new era of international
communication. We have turned our backs upon the old days of armed
invasion, and the people of every civilized country are constantly
engaged in the peaceable invasion of every other civilized country. The
sciences, the literature, the customs, the lessons of experience, the
skill, the spirit of every country, exercise an influence upon every
other. In this peaceful interchange of the products of the intellect, in
this constant passing to and fro of the people of different countries of
the civilized world, we find in each land a system of law peculiar to
the country itself, and answering to what I believe to be a just
description of all laws which regulate the relations of individuals to
each other, in being a formulation of the custom of the civil
community. These systems of law differ from each other as the
conditions, the customs of each people differ from those of every other
people. But there has arisen in recent years quite a new and distinct
influence, producing legal enactment and furnishing occasion for legal
development. That is the entrance into the minds of men of the
comparatively new idea of individual freedom and individual equality.
The idea that all men are born equal, that every man is entitled to his
life, his liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; the great declarations
of principle designed to give effect to the fundamental ideas of liberty
and equality, are not the outcome of the conditions or customs of any
particular people, but they are common to all mankind.
Before the jurists and lawyers of the world there lies the task of
adapting each special system of municipal law to the enforcement of the
general principles which have come into the life of mankind within so
recent a time, and which are cosmopolitan and world-wide and belong in
no country especially. These principles have to be fitted to your laws
in Mexico and our laws in the United States and to the French laws in
France and the German laws in Germany; and the task before the jurists
and lawyers of the world is to formulate, to elaborate, to secure the
enactment and the enforcement of such practical provisions as will weld
together in each land the old system of municipal law, which regulates
the relations of individuals with each other in accordance with the
time-honored traditions and customs of the race and country, and these
new principles of universal human freedom.
Now, that task is something that cannot be accomplished except by
scientific processes, by the study of comparative jurisprudence, by the
application of minds of the highest order in the most painstaking and
practical way. In the adaptation of these new ideas common to all free
people, the best minds of every people should assist every other people
and receive assistance from every other people. The study of comparative
jurisprudence, apparently dry, purely scientific, is as important to the
well-being of the citizen in the streets of Mexico or Washington, as
those scientific observations and calculations which seem to be purely
abstract have proved to be to the mariner on the ocean or the engineer
of the great works of construction which are of such practical value;
and we ought to promote by the existence of societies of this character
in every civilized land and the free intercourse and intercommunication
of such societies, the existence of such a spirit of comradeship between
them that they can freely give and take the results of their labors, of
their experience, and of their skill.
This is of immense practical importance in the administration of
government and the progress of ordered liberty in the world; for, after
all, the declaration of political principles is of no value unless laws
are framed adequate to bring principles down to the practical use of
every citizen, and the framing of such laws in every land is the work of
the jurists of the land. It is because I may be associated with you in
doing what little a lawyer can do toward helping to the accomplishment
of this great, beneficent, and necessary work for civilization, that I
find the greatest pleasure in accepting your election as a member of
this Academy, and find cause for gratification beyond that of mere
personal vanity or personal feeling.
Permit me to express the warmest good wishes for the continued activity,
prosperity, and usefulness of this distinguished body which has so
greatly honored me by this election.
BANQUET OF THE AMERICAN AMBASSADOR
SPEECH OF AMBASSADOR THOMPSON
October 5, 1907
Probably not before has there been such a gathering of distinguished men
as are tonight seated at this table at the foot of the famous Castle of
Chapultepec. The honored Secretary of State of the American nation is
here, the guest of the great Mexican Republic, with such honors showered
upon him as should not and will not soon be forgotten by a friendly and
appreciative people, nor by the immediate recipient of Mexico's
greeting.
Personally, I feel, I am sure, no less satisfaction than Mr. Root on
this occasion, a dinner given by me in honor of chiefs of the Mexican
nation and other distinguished Mexicans, for the purpose of
demonstrating, as best I can, my regard for them, not only because of
the very great honor Mexico is doing my country and my chief, but in
part for many kindly and friendly acts of the past. That the chiefs of
staff of the Mexican President, and many other high officials of nation
and state, have responded to an invitation with their presence on this
occasion, thus further honoring my country, Mr. Root, and myself, calls
for an expression of good-will that I offer as a toast to Mexico and its
illustrious President, General Díaz.
RESPONSE OF VICE-PRESIDENT CORRAL
In the name of my colleagues in the Mexican Cabinet and other national
functionaries, invited to this banquet, I thank you for this very
gracious distinction.
I consider myself very fortunate to address such a distinguished
gathering in these memorable moments, when the Mexican public offers its
hospitality to the honorable Secretary of State of the United States,
Mr. Elihu Root, one of the most eminent men in the world, both for his
wisdom and his political works, as a defender of the rights of nations,
and as the courageous knight of American democracy and universal peace.
It is very satisfactory for Mexico to demonstrate her sympathy to a
guest of such high merit; and I assure you, Mr. Ambassador, that his
visit to this country will create new and stronger bonds of durable
friendship between the two sister republics of North America, and will
be a new element of the highest value, in the mission of concord you
have accomplished with such great ability, and which is a profound cause
of satisfaction to us.
I thank you once more for your good wishes for Mexico and the President
of our republic; and, in my turn, I have the honor to invite all present
to raise their cups to the powerful nation, the United States, and to
its great President, Theodore Roosevelt.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I appreciate the high honor conferred upon me by the presence of the
Vice-President, the members of the Cabinet, and so many representatives
of foreign nations, so many of whom are old acquaintances of mine. It is
very pleasing to me to find myself among you, as the guest of the
official representative of the United States in Mexico.
I beg you to join me in a sentiment which is not personal--the economic
coöperation of Mexico and the United States. This is a sentiment which
will be concurred in by all those present, as it will redound to the
benefit of all civilized countries who are engaged in commercial
pursuits. I hope that the development of progress may follow its course
to the end that the two countries adjoining each other for thousands of
miles, may, by means of mutual commerce, interchange of capital, labor,
and the fruits of intelligence and experience, attain the results
reached by the states of the American Union, regardless of the distance
between us, because of our mutual coöperation. The signs of the times,
as I understand them, show a possibility of an increase in the relations
between the two countries, situated so closely on this continent. The
whole world has reached a state of progress which renders possible
better economic, political, and social relations. A repetition of the
war of 1846 between Mexico and the United States would be impossible
today;--it would be impossible because the progress of each country, the
experience, the prudence of their governments, the knowledge of the
business of Mexico would prevent it; general public sentiment in the
United States would also be opposed to it.
The European invasion of Mexico, in the year 1861, would be impossible
today; no one of the three nations would have any thought of attempting
it today. An attempt to establish an empire here neither would nor could
be thought of as possible.
The whole world has advanced to a degree when international relations
and interchange of courtesies between nations have facilitated the
establishment of peaceful correspondence, which would not have been
possible before, because of the want of a stability in their relations.
The desire to advance a degree towards the assurance of intimate
relations and greater friendship has caused us to accept with pleasure
the kindly and gracious invitation of President Díaz to visit Mexico--a
visit which shall remain a source of pleasure during all of my life, and
during which I have received proofs of friendship and kindness and
generous hospitality beyond anything I expected, and for which I beg
you, citizens of Mexico, to kindly accept my sincerest gratitude.
RESPONSE OF SEÑOR LICENCIADO DON JOSÉ IVES LIMANTOUR
MINISTER OF FINANCE
You have come to this country with the assurance, often reiterated and
always received with applause, of close and sincere brotherly feeling
between our two countries, the permanence of which is guaranteed by our
common ideals and our mutual respect.
Your mission challenges our warmest sympathy. Voices more authoritative
than mine have informed you of this fact, and the attitude of the
Mexican people is its corroboration. You have been the apostle of a
grand idea, the most vital, perhaps, of any affecting the international
politics of this continent and assuredly the only one capable of
harmonizing the interests and the hearts of all the inhabitants of the
New World. This idea consists in laying down, as the invariable basis
for the relations of the countries of America with one another, the
sacred principles of justice, and the territorial integrity of each one
of them.
Such being the pledge which we have from your lips, and feeling
confident that the immense majority of your countrymen endorse the
declaration to that effect made by you during your memorable journey of
last year, and during the journey that is now in progress, we welcome
you as one welcomes a loyal and disinterested friend, without the mental
reservation that one sometimes feels in clasping the hand of the great,
and moved by the hope of thus contributing, in the best manner possible,
to us, towards the realization of an aim that is commended by a high and
enlightened patriotism.
Mexico's course for the future is clearly marked out, at any rate as far
as human foresight can safely reach. Her geographical situation and the
conditions governing the international politics of America assure her,
as long as the views which you have proclaimed with a conviction so
sincere, predominate in your country, the tranquillity in her
international relations which she needs in order to devote herself to
intellectual culture and to the development of her abundant and varied
natural resources, while at the same time offering hospitality to all
well-meaning persons who bring here their contingent of industry and
civilization. With a program such as this, it has been easy--and will be
still more easy in the future--to regulate our conduct towards you, the
citizens of the great nation beyond the Río Grande. You will always be
welcome, as it is right and proper that useful and agreeable neighbors
who give proofs of their desire to be on good terms and to coöperate in
all of the works of progress, should be; and I believe that you are
quite convinced that both out of interest and good-will, the Mexican
people will offer you every facility that may enable you to take an
active part in the social and economic development of this republic.
It is far from my thoughts, at the present moment, to extol the virtues
and the good qualities of my countrymen. I may be permitted, however, as
a minister of finance, to say a few words in regard to one or two
economic facts that have an important bearing on business relations.
Mexico, at the present time, as you well know, is not a country
exclusively engaged in mining and farming, but also carries on an
extensive commerce and possesses fairly prosperous manufacturing
industries. There are many lines of activity demanding industry,
intelligence, and capital, and there is an ample field for the
utilization of all elements of that nature coming to us from abroad. But
a point which all persons interested in Mexico's business affairs will
do well to realize is the honesty and prudent habits which characterize
mercantile transactions in this country. "Booms" and "bluffs" are exotic
plants which can with difficulty be acclimatized here, and speculative
combinations rarely enter into the calculations of the merchant.
A single example will suffice to illustrate the characteristics to which
I am referring. In that period of stress from 1892 to 1894 when the
country, after suffering the loss of several harvests in succession and
the ravages of a severe epidemic, was further tried by sudden
depreciation of silver, which in the course of a few months cut the gold
value of our currency in half, every one thought that the economic
constitution of the nation would not be able to withstand shocks so
repeated and formidable; and yet we continued to meet our debts with
religious punctuality and it was noted with surprise that not a single
failure of importance occurred in any part of the republic.
We may be charged with undue timidity, with slender experience, in
certain methods that are common elsewhere in the initiation of business
undertaking. But these deficiencies and others which no doubt are ours
will not debar us, let us hope, from being permitted to join the grand
onward march of humanity, and particularly of that portion of the human
family inhabiting the New World, towards higher conditions of physical
and moral welfare.
Gentlemen, let us raise our glasses to the health and happiness of our
distinguished guest and his most estimable family. Let us drink to the
hope that his countrymen, taking to heart the gospel which he has
proclaimed throughout the length and width of America, may become the
firmest guarantors of lasting peace between the two nations,
consolidated by warmth of mutual regard and the continued growth of
common interests.
BANQUET OF THE MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS
SPEECH OF LICENTIATE IGNACIO MARISCAL
October 7, 1907
Your presence amongst us as our illustrious guest is an event which will
leave a mark in the history of Mexico, for yours is not only the visit
of a most distinguished American, but also of the best representative,
without the usual credentials, of a great government and a great people.
The fact that your visit aims at no diplomatic business, except the
tightening of the bonds of friendship between our two countries, has
made it the more important and congenial to all Mexicans. Some years ago
we had here other prominent and representative Americans, such as
General Grant and the Honorable William H. Seward, who came as friendly
visitors wanting to know Mexico personally and be known by us. Their
flying visits did a great deal of good in promoting official and popular
relations, for they tended to a real sisterhood between the two
republics of North America. Yours, sir, will complete that most
important international work, since your high personality is eminently
qualified, especially under the present circumstances, to increase the
admiration and respect of all my thinking fellow-citizens for the
country of Washington, Lincoln, and Grant.
We know, sir, as the whole world knows, the considerable part you have
taken in the peace-promoting, civilizing foreign policy of President
Roosevelt, and we fully appreciate your frequent, unequivocal
demonstrations of amicable feeling toward our government and our people.
For that reason you have been cordially welcomed by us as a friend
coming among true friends. May your brief sojourn in this country leave
you a souvenir as pleasant as the one it has already engraved in our
memory and our hearts.
Seeking to show you our sincere esteem and regard, I propose a toast to
your honor, not as a ceremonious courtesy, but as a really heartfelt
sentiment:
"Brindemos, Señores, por nuestro ilustre huésped, el Honorable Señor
Elihu Root."
MR. ROOT'S REPLY
It is my happy fortune to reap where others have sown and enter into the
fruits of others' labors. When Mr. Seward and General Grant visited
Mexico, your people, sir, were little known to the people of the United
States. The shadow of a war still recent in the memory of men hung over
the relations that existed between the two countries, the shadow of a
war which, thank Heaven, would now be impossible. The commanding
personality of General Grant made his warm friendship for Mexico the
beginning of a new era of feeling and appreciation on the part of the
people of the United States; and now I come in response to the kind and
hospitable invitation of your distinguished President, not to mark out
the pathway to friendship, but as the representative of an existing
feeling of friendship on the part of my countrymen.
I have been deeply appreciative of all the delicate courtesy, the warmth
of friendship and hospitality which have welcomed me and my family here.
But I was not surprised. It is but in conformity with all the relations
which have existed between the department of foreign affairs of Mexico
and the department of foreign affairs of the United States, since you,
sir, have held your present eminent position.
I wish not merely to express grateful appreciation for the kindness I
have received here, but to express the same sentiment for all that you
have done and all you have been in the relations between the two
countries. The unvarying courtesy, the genuine and sincere desire for
the reasonable and friendly disposal of all questions that have arisen
between the two countries, which have characterized the office of
foreign affairs of Mexico have been a great factor in bringing about the
happy relations that now exist. And we may say, with gratification, that
there are no questions between Mexico and the United States which can
give the slightest apprehension or cause the slightest concern as to
their easy and satisfactory adjustment.
Of course, between two countries with so long a common boundary, whose
citizens are passing to and fro, whose citizens are investing money,
each in the country of the other, questions are continually arising; but
the all-important element for the decision of every question, the good
understanding, kindly feeling, and the habit of conducting relations
upon the basis of reason and friendship, practically disposes in advance
of all questions which can arise.
I suppose it is impossible to read the history of any country without
feeling that the mistakes in its history have been the result of a
shortsighted, narrow view on the part of its statesmen, its rulers, its
legislators, under the influence at a particular time of particular
local conditions.
We can all of us look back in the history of our own country and of
other countries and see how we now, with a broader view and free from
the prejudices of the hour, would settle questions and solve
difficulties in a far more satisfactory way.
I suppose that the true object which should be held before every
statesman is so to deal with the questions of the present that the
spirit in which they are solved will commend itself to the generations
of the future.
I think, sir, that the government of Mexico has attained that high
standard of statesmanship to an extraordinary degree. It certainly has
done so in its relations with the government of the United States; and
as a result of the reasonable and kindly way in which we have been
treating each other for these past years we behold not merely the fact
that of your $240,000,000 of foreign trade, two-thirds of your exports
are purchased by the United States and two-thirds of your imports are
purchased from the United States; not merely that of your vast exports
to the United States, notwithstanding our high protective policy,
nine-tenths are free from all duty; not merely that $700,000,000 of
capital of the United States has been invested in your thriving and
progressive enterprises, so that, while for three centuries and a half
the people of Mexico were hiding their wealth under the ground to keep
it from being taken away from them, now for a quarter of a century you
have been taking out from under the ground a wealth far surpassing any
dreams of avarice in the days of old. But more than all that, there has
grown up and is continually developing between the people of the two
countries a knowledge of each other, an appreciation of each other, a
kindly feeling toward each other, which make for the perpetuity of good
government in both countries and for the development of all the finer
and better qualities of citizenship in both countries; which will help
both of us to advance along the pathway of progress; which will make
every school in Mexico in which the future government and rulers of this
vast land are being trained a better school, and make every school in
the United States a better school; which will make every officer
conscious of being one of a community of nations, conscious of having in
his charge the good name of the country which is known to the people of
the whole continent, a better officer than he would be if he were
responsible only to his narrow community. As the result of these kindly
relations we see two happy, progressive, prosperous nations; and, sir,
it is my sincere hope that following the footsteps of the great
Americans you have named, through your kindness and hospitality I may be
able to add my little contribution toward this great work of national
benefit and of international advancement in the cause of liberty,
justice, and humanity.
FAREWELL SUPPER GIVEN BY MR. ROOT
SPEECH OF MR. ROOT
October 7, 1907
On the evening of the day of the banquet of the Minister for
Foreign Affairs, on the lower terrace of the castle where a
series of apartments had been assigned to his party, Mr.
Root gave a farewell supper to the members of the
Government, the diplomatic corps, the Entertainment
Committee, and numerous other Mexican notables.
This is the last opportunity I shall have in the City of Mexico to
express to you my gratitude and keen appreciation for all your very
great kindness to us during our visit to Mexico.
I came here with my mind filled by the idea of two countries, the United
States of America and the United Mexican States, rather an abstract and
cold conception. Gradually there has emerged from the sea of faces that
I looked upon on entering Mexico, one by one, a group of lovely women
and of fine and noble gentlemen, and beside the conception of two
countries becoming more and more friendly to each other, there has come
a realization that I have gained new friends--a most grateful and most
delightful thing. I shall never forget you, my friends; I shall never
forget your courtesy and your kindness, and I know I can say the same
for Mrs. Root, and I beg to offer a toast to the personnel of the
administration of President Díaz, a personnel which is more delightful
and will be met with more pleasure than it was possible for me to
conceive before coming here, and as I leave you I shall feel that with
my limited Spanish, which consists of not more than a half a dozen
words, I have, however, the most valuable words in the language in being
able to say: "Hasta luego."
RESPONSE OF SEÑOR CORRAL
Señor Ramón Corral, Vice-President of the Republic, made the
following response to this farewell address:
Since you have set foot on our soil we have had occasion to observe the
high and well-merited opinion which you entertain of our president,
General Porfirio Díaz, and of his splendid and statesmanlike
achievements, and if to this be added your own well-known merits, your
lofty character, and the sagacious, yet kindly notice you have taken of
all that you have seen, no wonder that you have won, not our admiration,
not our respect, not our good-will, for all these were yours already,
but something more intimate, something that dwells deeper in the
recesses of the heart--our affection.
Henceforth, sir, in addition to your high claims as an illustrious
statesman and wise administrator, you have from us the endearing title
of friend, a friend who appreciates us with fairness, who will rejoice
at our future triumphs in the arena of progress, who will lament our
misfortunes, who will applaud our victories and will encourage us in our
discomfitures.
For some time past, especially since you undertook the noble task of
proclaiming justice and righteousness as the basis for the relations of
the republics of America with one another, we have followed with the
liveliest interest your glorious career, of which the goal is the
promotion of ideals of human fraternity. We have admired you, we have
applauded you as one applauds the eloquence of wise and good men. But
henceforth a current of profound sympathy will flow between you and us,
and our admiration and applause will reach you, quickened by the
vibrations of our enthusiasm.
Soon you will return to your own country, that splendid country where
everything is great from the cataclysms of nature to the manifestations
of freedom. Our most fervent desire is that you may take away an
impression of Mexico and of her people as agreeable and affectionate as
that which you leave behind, and that, in justice toward us, you will
tell those among your countrymen who do not yet know us, that ours is a
civilized nation, working out its greater welfare, educating itself
intellectually, living and desiring to remain in peace with itself and
in peace with all who respect its rights,--in a word, living up to its
mission as a free and honorable community. Tell your President that in
Mexico we appreciate and applaud his great and noble efforts in behalf
of his country and in behalf of the peace of other nations, and that
when his name is pronounced by us, it is pronounced with expressions of
respect and homage for his good qualities.
Receive, sir, these words, which are the expression of sentiments that
are sincere, as a new demonstration to yourself and to your
distinguished family of our feelings of esteem and our desire for your
happiness.
PUEBLA
SPEECH OF GENERAL MUCIO P. MARTÍNEZ
GOVERNOR OF PUEBLA
At a Banquet at the Municipal Palace, October 9, 1907
A poetic tradition of our aborigines has been kept, and still
lives--transmitted from generation to generation of the races that
people our wooded mountains and smiling plains; this tradition teaches
us that to illustrious guests, above all to those who come like you as
messengers of peace on earth and good-will to men, should be offered as
an emblem of sincere and respectful affection, the richest of fruits,
the handsomest of flowers, and the most delicious of dishes.
A reception such as the one now being given to your excellency and those
nearest and dearest to your heart, must be, no doubt, inferior in
magnificence to the welcome tendered to such illustrious guests in other
countries; but believe me, none has ever surpassed our sincerity,
because Mexico, as it is the first to admire brilliant careers in
politics, in science, in art, in industry, and in commerce, takes
pleasure in offering you its most cordial attentions with no other
desire than to make your stay in this republic as pleasing as possible
and to show you that this country is an ardent admirer of yours and
takes pleasure in calling itself a sister of the United States not only
because of geographical contiguity, but also because of the liberty and
freedom of its institutions.
I therefore pray that your excellency accept this humble repast as a
token of the most affectionate hospitality tendered you by me in the
name of the people of Puebla, and I beg you to convey to the illustrious
President of the American Union the brotherly regard we all have for
him.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I am greatly pleased by this delicate hospitality which is like the
traditional hospitality of the Mexican nation. I shall personally convey
to President Roosevelt the message of cordial welcome and good-will
shown by this city, and it will undoubtedly contribute to further the
good work undertaken by President Roosevelt to uphold justice and
protect the rights of humanity. I shall also bring to President
Roosevelt's attention the assurances of this country to protect the
happiness and prosperity of the people. I cannot help remembering that
when foreigners came to Puebla in hostile manner they were shown that
Puebla knows how to defend its rights. It is also pleasing to me to see
the ability of the Mexican people to govern themselves: nations like
Mexico and the United States which have given proof of this ability may
well boast that they belong to those which form the vanguard of modern
civilization.
ORIZABA
SPEECH OF SEÑOR D. TEODORO A. DEHESA
GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF VERA CRUZ
At a Luncheon at the Cocolopan Factory, October 10, 1907
In your honor, and as a testimony to your personal worth and sterling
character, as a representative of the great American people, I take
particular pleasure in tendering to you this lunch. The occasion gives
rise to the thought that your Washington and our Hidalgo were the
instruments chosen for planting the sacred tree of national independence
now so deeply rooted in our respective countries, and which has brought
forth the fruit of liberty to nourish the people of the United States
and Mexico.
Here in Orizaba you have seen, Mr. Secretary, some evidences of the
material advances made by our country, which to a man of your broad
views and lofty ideals I must believe are pleasing. These are blessings
that we owe to peace. Those two great statesmen and lovers of
peace--Roosevelt and Díaz--are one in desire and endeavor to preserve
peace, not only to secure its benefits for their own people, but to
extend its beneficent sway over the whole American continent.
Such a purpose commands the respect and admiration of the world. I
invite all present to join me in drinking to our illustrious and most
welcome guest, whom we all so much admire for his many distinguished
qualities--extending to him and to his charming family our best wishes
for health and happiness.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
This cordial welcome has not been a surprise to me, as I already knew of
the qualities of the Governor of Vera Cruz. By this time, I have become
accustomed to the hospitable character of the Mexicans; but
notwithstanding this, it has been very pleasing and gratifying to me to
receive these demonstrations from the people of Vera Cruz whose
frankness of disposition is well known. I appreciate your words very
highly, Mr. Governor, and I thank you for them as I do the residents of
Orizaba.
It is but right for you Mexicans to remember Washington, as it is for us
Americans to remember Hidalgo and the other heroes of Mexican history
together with our own. I firmly believe that Mexico has passed beyond
the state in which civil dissensions devastated this fortunate country,
and that in the future there will be no door open to internal strife,
thanks to the wise administration and foresight of the great statesman
Porfirio Díaz.
How true it is that the beautiful and the useful can be combined: here
in Orizaba I find the proof of this truth, as in the midst of the
natural beauty of the scenery offered by the exuberant vegetation and
the lovely peak crowned with snow--the proud sentinel of the state of
Vera Cruz--stand as signs of progress the important factories we have
just visited.
Mr. Governor, I feel grateful for the frank reception of which I have
been the object, and I hope that Mexico will continue to progress and
develop as well as the United States, and that both nations will render
mutual assistance to each other and avail themselves of the prosperous
or unprosperous occurrences adopting the one or the other as lessons of
experience for humanity in order to demonstrate to natives and
foreigners the excellences of the republican form of government.
GUADALAJARA
SPEECH OF GOVERNOR AHUMADA
October 14, 1907
Although our president, General Porfirio Díaz, with the high
international representation awarded him by our institutions, and by the
personal adherence of all federal and state authorities, as well as by
the love of the Mexican people in general, has already given a cordial
welcome in the name of all of us, allow me, in the name of the state
which I govern, to express to you the kind feelings of sympathy which
exist in all hearts beating within this important section of our
country. Jalisco, Mr. Secretary, has always been a land that loves all
that is great and useful for the country, and as during the time when we
fought for independence and liberty it did not spare its sons, in the
same way we want to join our voice to the voice of the people that from
the _bravo_ to the _usumacinta_ praise and bless you, to take our share
in the work for peace which you initiated during the Third Pan American
Conference in Rio de Janeiro, which you continued by your visit to the
main republics of South America, and which you are carrying to an end
now by tokens of friendship you are giving to Mexico and the people of
the state of Jalisco. The people of this state believe that the best way
to take part in this labor is to tell you through me: "Welcome be the
noble emissary who, like the dove of the ark, brings the symbolic olive
branch which announces that clouds have been dissipated and the sun of
friendship is rising between the peoples of the new continent."
We should have been pleased to have you among us a longer time, to give
you better tokens of our esteem and to show you the high appreciation we
feel for the people of the United States and her great ruler, President
Roosevelt. But inasmuch as this is impossible, owing to your important
and urgent labors at home, allow me, Mr. Secretary, to state that if
our demonstrations of friendship are short, they are made in the land of
traditional frankness and true friendship.
Let us drink, ladies and gentlemen, to the health of his excellency, Mr.
Root, his distinguished wife, and his "simpatica" daughter, and wishing
for all of them all kinds of happiness, let us prove that we have shaken
their hands in the spirit that sons of Jalisco always shake hands--our
heart is our hand.
MR. ROOT'S REPLY
I thank you very heartily for your kind words, for your flattering
description of myself, and for the spirit of friendship for my country
which you exhibit. I am highly appreciative of all the hospitality, the
warm welcome, and the graceful and most agreeable entertainment which
you and your people of Guadalajara and of the state of Jalisco have
given to my family and to myself.
I think it is perhaps fitting that I should make the last extended visit
of all I have been making in Mexico, to the city of Guadalajara. The
most striking feature of Mexican life to a stranger is that rare
combination of history and progress which one finds. The two eras of
history, the Spanish, and before that the Indian civilization, which has
to so great an extent passed away, and beside that the modern
development, the spirit of modern enterprise, the active progress of
mining and agriculture and manufactures, the stimulus of sound finance,
and the general determination of the people to take rank with the great
productive nations of the earth,--nowhere have I found that combination
more marked and distinct than I find it here in Guadalajara. As I said
to you a short time ago, your excellency, the things that impressed me
most on entering this city were, first, that it was clean; secondly,
that there were many fine-looking people; thirdly, that it was
cheerful; and, fourthly, that it had many beautiful buildings. I can add
to that a fifth, that it is bright with the rainbow of hope for the
fruits of its many enterprises.
This may be the last time I rise to speak to any audience in Mexico
before my departure for my own country, and there are two things that I
wish to say; one is, that nothing could have been more generous, more
tactful, and more grateful to us than the hospitality and friendship
which my family and I have received during the entire time since we
crossed the border at Laredo. We are grateful for it, we are deeply
appreciative of it. The other thing that I wish to say is that I have
all the time since I came to Mexico been thinking about the question of
the permanence of your new prosperity. I go back to my home encouraged
and cheered by having found, as I believe, evidence, substantial
evidence, that the new prosperity of Mexico is not evanescent and
temporary, but is permanent. I do not believe that Mexico will ever
again return to the disorder of the condition which characterized the
first sixty years of her independence. I believe that during this long
period of peace and order which has been secured for your people by your
great, wise, strong President Díaz, there has grown up a new spirit
among Mexicans and a new appreciation of individual duty to civilization
in the maintenance of peace and order.
So I go back, not only charmed with the beauty of your country, not only
delighted with the opportunity to see the wonderful historic monuments
you possess, not only delighted with the hospitality of your homes and
charmed with the character of your people, but I go back with the
feeling that the Mexican people have joined forever the ranks of the
great, orderly, self-controlled, self-governing republics of the world.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] This address was answered in appropriate terms by General Rincón
Gallardo as the representative of President Díaz, and among other things
he congratulated himself on the fact that the Mexican Committee had been
granted the pleasing privilege of continuing to San Antonio in order to
give there a welcome to the distinguished visitors. Lieutenant-Colonel
Samuel García Cuellar also made an address. Neither of these addresses
were preserved.
[6] Yale lectures on the Responsibilities of Citizenship, 1907. See
also: _Addresses on Government and Citizenship_, by ELIHU ROOT; pp.
3-76. Harvard University Press, 1916.
ADDRESSES IN THE UNITED STATES ON LATIN AMERICAN RELATIONS
THE CENTRAL AMERICAN PEACE CONFERENCE
In December, 1907, a Central American Peace Conference was
held at Washington, between delegates representing the five
Central American republics--Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras,
Nicaragua, and Salvador. Mexico and the United States were
invited to participate in a friendly capacity and accepted
the invitation. The conference grew out of the initiative
taken during the previous summer by the presidents of the
United States and Mexico, in an endeavor to secure an
adjustment of then pending disputes between several of these
republics, in some form that would secure permanent peace
among them and foster their development. The conference was
called together by the following note of the Secretary of
State, addressed to the delegates:
DEPARTMENT OF STATE,
WASHINGTON, November 11, 1907.
EXCELLENCIES: The plenipotentiaries of the five
Central American republics of Costa Rica, Guatemala,
Honduras, Nicaragua, and Salvador, appointed by their
respective Governments in pursuance of the protocol
signed in Washington on September 17, 1907, having
arrived in the city of Washington for the purposes
of the conference contemplated in the said protocol, I
have the honor to request that the said plenipotentiaries,
together with the representatives of the United Mexican
States and of the United States of America, appointed
pursuant to the second article of said protocol, convene
in the building of the Bureau of American Republics in
the city of Washington, on the fourteenth day of
November, instant, at half past two in the afternoon.
I avail myself of this opportunity to offer to Your
Excellencies the assurances of my highest consideration.
ELIHU ROOT.
The formal sessions of the conference began December 13, and
closed December 20. During this period nine treaties and
conventions were concluded between the five republics, as
follows:
1. A general treaty of peace and amity.
2. A convention additional to the general treaty of peace
and amity.
3. A convention for the establishment of a Central American
court of justice.
4. A protocol additional to the convention for the
establishment of a Central American court of justice.
5. An extradition convention.
6. A convention for the establishment of an International
Central American Bureau.
7. A convention for the establishment of a Central American
pedagogical institute.
8. A convention concerning future Central American
Conferences.
9. A convention concerning railway communications.
The most important were the general treaty of peace and
amity, and the convention for the establishment of a Central
American court of justice. The texts of these various
conventions are found in Malloy's _Treaties and Conventions
of the United States_, Volume II, pp. 2391-2420.
The Mexican Government was represented by His Excellency
Señor Don Enrique C. Creel, ambassador at Washington, and
the United States by Honorable William I. Buchanan.
At the opening session of the conference Mr. Root made the
following address:
ADDRESS OPENING THE CENTRAL AMERICAN PEACE CONFERENCE, DECEMBER 13, 1907
Usage devolves upon me as the head of the Foreign Office of the country
in which you are assembled to call this meeting together; to call it to
order and to preside during the formation of your organization. I wish
to express to you, at the outset, the high appreciation of the
Government of the United States of the compliment you pay to us in
selecting the city of Washington as the field of your labors in behalf
of the rule of peace and order and brotherhood among the peoples of
Central America. It is most gratifying to the people of the United
States that you should feel that you will find here an atmosphere
favorable to the development of the ideas of peace and unity, of
progress and mutual helpfulness, in place of war and revolution and the
retardation of the principles of liberty and justice.
So far as a sincere and friendly desire for success in your labors may
furnish a favorable atmosphere, you certainly will have it here. The
people of the United States are sincere believers in the principles that
you are seeking to apply to the conduct of your international affairs in
Central America. They sincerely desire the triumph and the control of
the principles of liberty and order everywhere in the world. They
especially desire that the blessings which follow the control of those
principles may be enjoyed by all the people of our sister republics on
the western hemisphere, and we further believe that it will be, from the
most selfish point of view, for our interests to have peaceful,
prosperous, and progressive republics in Central America.
The people of the United Mexican States and of the United States of
America are now enjoying great benefits from the mutual interchange of
commerce and friendly intercourse between the two countries of Mexico
and the United States. Prosperity, the increase of wealth, the success
of enterprise--all the results that come from the intelligent use of
wealth--are being enjoyed by the people of both countries, through the
friendly intercourse that utilizes for the people of each country the
prosperity of the other. We in the United States should be most happy if
the states of Central America might move with greater rapidity along the
pathway of such prosperity, of such progress; to the end that we may
share, through commerce and friendly intercourse, in your new
prosperity, and aid you by our prosperity.
We cannot fail, gentlemen, to be admonished by the many failures which
have been made by the people of Central America to establish agreement
among themselves which would be lasting, that the task you have before
you is no easy one. The trial has often been made and the agreements
which have been elaborated, signed, ratified, seem to have been written
in water. Yet I cannot resist the impression that we have at last come
to the threshold of a happier day for Central America. Time is necessary
to political development. I have great confidence in the judgment that
in the long course of time, through successive steps of failure, through
the accompanying education of your people, through the encouraging
examples which now, more than ever before, surround you, success will be
attained in securing unity and progress in other countries of the new
hemisphere. Through the combination of all these, you are at a point in
your history where it is possible for you to take a forward step that
will remain.
It would ill become me to attempt to propose or suggest the steps which
you should take; but I will venture to observe that the all-important
thing for you to accomplish is that while you enter into agreements
which will, I am sure, be framed in consonance with the most peaceful
aspirations and the most rigid sense of justice, you shall devise also
some practical methods under which it will be possible to secure the
performance of those agreements. The mere declaration of general
principles, the mere agreement upon lines of policy and of conduct, are
of little value unless there be practical and definite methods provided
by which the responsibility for failing to keep the agreement may be
fixed upon some definite person, and the public sentiment of Central
America brought to bear to prevent the violation. The declaration that a
man is entitled to his liberty would be of little value with us in this
country, were it not for the writ of habeas corpus that makes it the
duty of a specific judge, when applied to, to inquire into the cause of
a man's detention, and set him at liberty if he is unjustly detained.
The provision which declares that a man should not be deprived of his
property without due process of law would be of little value were it not
for the practical provision which imposes on specific officers the duty
of nullifying every attempt to take away a man's property without due
process of law.
To find practical definite methods by which you shall make it somebody's
duty to see that the great principles you declare are not violated, by
which if an attempt be made to violate them the responsibility may be
fixed upon the guilty individual--those, in my judgment, are the
problems to which you should specifically and most earnestly address
yourselves.
I have confidence in your success because I have confidence in your
sincerity of purpose, and because I believe that your people have
developed to the point where they are ready to receive and to utilize
such results as you may work out. Why should you not live in peace and
harmony? You are one people in fact; your citizenship is
interchangeable--your race, your religion, your customs, your laws, your
lineage, your consanguinity and relations, your social connections, your
sympathies, your aspirations, and your hopes for the future are the
same.
It can be nothing but the ambition of individuals who care more for
their selfish purposes than for the good of their country, that can
prevent the people of the Central American states from living together
in peace and unity.
It is my most earnest hope, it is the hope of the American Government
and people, that from this conference may come the specific and
practical measures which will enable the people of Central America to
march on with equal step abreast of the most progressive nations of
modern civilization; to fulfill their great destinies in that
brotherhood which nature has intended them to preserve; to exile forever
from that land of beauty and of wealth incalculable the fraternal strife
which has hitherto held you back in the development of your
civilization.
ADDRESS CLOSING THE CENTRAL AMERICAN PEACE CONFERENCE, DECEMBER 20, 1907
I beg you, gentlemen, to accept my hearty and sincere congratulations.
The people of Central America, withdrawn to a great distance from the
scene of your labors, may not know, but I wish that my voice might reach
each one of them to tell them that during the month that has passed
their loyal representatives have been doing for them in sincerity and in
the discharge of patriotic duty a service which stands upon the highest
level of the achievements of the most advanced modern civilization. You
have each one of you been faithful to the protection of the interests of
your several countries; you have each one of you exhibited patience,
kindly consideration, regard for the rights and feelings of others, and
a willingness to meet with open mind the opinions and wishes of your
fellow-countrymen; you have pursued the true method by which law, order,
peace, and justice are substituted for the unrestrained dominion of the
strong over the weak, and you have reached conclusions which I believe
are wise and are well adapted to advance the progress of each and all of
the Central American republics toward that much-to-be-desired
consummation in the future of one great, strong, and happy Central
American republic.
May the poor husbandman who cultivates the fields of your five
republics, may the miner who is wearing out his weary life in the hard
labors of your mines, may the mothers who are caring for the infant
children who are to make the peoples of Central America in the future,
may the millions whose prosperity and happiness you have sought to
advance here, may the unborn generations of the future in your beloved
countries, have reason to look back to this day with blessings upon the
self-devotion and the self-restraint with which you have endeavored to
serve their interests and to secure their prosperity and peace.
With this hope the entire body of my countrymen will join, and with the
expression of this hope I declare the Peace Conference of the Republics
of Central America, convened in the city of Washington in this year
nineteen hundred and seven, to be now adjourned.
THE PAN AMERICAN CAUSE
RESPONSE TO THE TOAST OF THE AMBASSADOR OF BRAZIL AT A DINNER IN HONOR
OF REAR-ADMIRAL HUET DE BACELLAR AND THE CAPTAINS OF THE BRAZILIAN SHIPS
ON A VISIT TO THE JAMESTOWN EXPOSITION, WASHINGTON, D.C., MAY 18, 1907
THE BRAZILIAN AMBASSADOR, HIS EXCELLENCY MR. NABUCO
This is the second time that I have the honor and the good fortune of
meeting in this room the representatives of the American nations in
Washington, including the Secretary of State of the United States. These
are the great Pan American festivals of the Brazilian Embassy. But what
a great stride our common cause has made since we met here last year!
All of that progress is principally due to Mr. Root's devotion to the
cause that he made his own and which I have no doubt he will make also a
national one.
I drink to the progress of the Pan American cause in the person of its
great leader, the Secretary of State.
MR. ROOT
I thank you, Mr. Ambassador, for the too flattering expression with
which you have characterized the efforts that, by the accident of
position, I have been enabled to make in the interpretation of that
spirit which in the fullness of time has ripened, developed and become
ready for universal expression and influence.
It is a great pleasure for me to look again into the tropical forests of
Brazil; to come under the magic influence of your part of the solar
spectrum; and to be introduced again to the delightful influences of
your language through the words of the representative of King Carlos of
Portugal.
I think any one who is trying to do something is at times--perhaps most
of the time--inclined to become despondent, because any single man can
do so little. But if the little that one man can do happens to be in the
line of national or world tendencies, he may count himself happy in
helping forward the great work.
How many thousands of men, born out of time, give their lives to causes
which are not ripe for action! I think that we, my friends, are doing
our little; happy in contributing to a cause that has fully ripened. I
confess that in passing from the courts to diplomacy; from the argument
of causes, the conclusion of which would be enforced by the power of the
marshal or the sheriff, having behind him the irresistible power of the
nation--passing from such arguments to the discussion that proceeds
between the foreign offices of independent powers, I found myself
groping about to find some sanction for the rules of right conduct which
we endeavor to assert and maintain.
It has long been a widely accepted theory that the only sanction for the
right conduct of nations, for those rules of conduct which nations seek
to enforce upon each other, is the exercise of force; that behind their
diplomatic argument rests, as the ultimate argument, the possibility of
war. But I think there has been developing in the later years of
progress in civilization that other sanction, of the constraining effect
of the public opinion of mankind, which rests upon the desire for the
approval of one's fellowmen. The progress of which you have spoken, Mr.
Ambassador, in American international relations, is a progress along the
pathway that leads from the rule of force as the ultimate sanction of
argument to the rule of public opinion, which enforces its decrees by an
appeal to the desire for approbation among men.
That progress is towards the independence, the freedom, the dignity, the
happiness of every small and weak nation. It tends to realize the
theory of international law, the real national equality. The process is
one of attrition. Isolation among nations leaves no appeal for the
enforcement of rules of right conduct, but the appeal to force.
Communication, intercourse, friendship, the desire for good opinion, the
exercise of all the qualities that adorn, that elevate, that refine
human nature, bring to the defense of the smaller nation the appeal to
the other sanction, the sanction of public opinion.
What we are doing now, because the time has come for it to be done, is
to help in our day and generation in the creation of a public opinion in
America which shall approve all that is good in national character and
national conduct and punish all that is wrong with that most terrible
penalty, the disapproval of all America. As that process approaches its
perfection, the work of our friends, of the armies and navies of
America, will have been accomplished.
It is not a work of selfishness; it is a work for universal
civilization. It is a work by which we will repay to France and Portugal
and to Sweden--to all our mother lands across the Atlantic--all the
gifts of civilization, of literature, of art, of the results of their
long struggles upward from barbarism to light, with which they have
endowed us. For in the vast fields of incalculable wealth that the
American continents offer to the enterprise and the cultivation of the
world, the older nations of Europe will find their wealth, and
opportunity for the exercise of their powers in peace and with equality.
It was a great pleasure to me--it was a cause of pride to me--to hear so
distinguished an English scholar as the Ambassador from France speak the
beautiful language of France so perfectly tonight. It is a great
pleasure for me to find that throughout the United States the young men
are in constantly increasing numbers learning to speak not only French,
but Spanish and Portuguese. It was a great pleasure to find throughout
South America last summer so many, not merely of the most distinguished
and highly cultivated men, speaking English, but so large a number of
the people in the cities that I visited.
It all makes for that attrition, that practical intercourse, which is
the process of civilization; and in destroying the isolation, the
separation of American states from each other, in building up an
American public opinion, we are preparing ourselves the more perfectly
to unite with our friends of Europe in a world public opinion, which
shall establish the reign of justice and liberty and humanity throughout
the world by slow, practical, untiring processes of intercourse and
friendship in place of the rules of brutal force.
THE PAN AMERICAN UNION
There has been, especially in recent years, a very strong feeling that
the points which the American republics have in common greatly exceed
their differences and that stated conferences of the American republics
would not only tend to accentuate the points in common but would enable
them to take common action in matters of common interest, remove
unwarranted suspicions which often exist between and among peoples which
do not come into contact, and tend to lessen the very differences.
In 1881, the Honorable James G. Blaine, then secretary of state of the
United States, stated that in the opinion of the President of the United
States "the time is ripe for a proposal that shall enlist the good-will
and active coöperation of all the states of the western hemisphere, both
north and south, in the interest of humanity and for the common weal of
nations."[7] Mr. Blaine proposed on behalf of the President, that a
congress meet in the city of Washington. The congress or conference
actually took place in that city in 1889-1890, during the secretaryship
of state of Mr. Blaine. This is commonly called the International
American Conference. All of the American countries, with the exception
of Santo Domingo, were represented, and they agreed upon "the
establishment of an American International Bureau for the collection,
tabulation, and publication, in the English, Spanish, and Portuguese
languages, of information as to the productions and commerce, and as to
the customs laws and regulations of their respective countries; such
bureau to be maintained in one of the countries for the common benefit
and at the common expense, and to furnish to all the other countries
such commercial statistics and other useful information as may be
contributed to it by any of the American republics."[8]
This was the origin of the International Bureau of the American
Republics, out of which has grown the Pan American Union, "a voluntary
organization of the twenty-one American republics, including the United
States, maintained by their annual contributions, controlled by a
governing board composed of the diplomatic representatives in Washington
of the other twenty governments and the secretary of state of the United
States, who is chairman _ex officio_, and devoted to the development and
conservation of peace, friendship, and commerce between them all."[9]
Modestly housed at first, the success of the Union required larger
quarters for the performance of its work. Advantage was taken of this
need to erect the building which was to be the visible and worthy symbol
of Pan Americanism. Mr. Andrew Carnegie, a delegate on behalf of the
United States to the first Pan American Conference in Washington,
contributed $950,000 towards the construction of this building, the
United States contributed the land, and the other American republics
their respective quotas.
The circumstances under which the funds for the erection of this
building were obtained appear in the records of the Governing Board of
the Pan American Union, from which the following resolutions and
correspondence have been obtained:
_Resolution of the Third International Conference at Rio de Janeiro,
adopted August 13, 1906_
The undersigned, Delegates of the Republics represented in the Third
International American Conference, duly authorized by their Governments,
have approved the following Resolution:
The Third International American Conference _Resolves_:
1. To express its gratification that the project to establish a
permanent centre of information and of interchange of ideas among the
Republics of this Continent, as well as the erection of a building
suitable for the Library in memory of Columbus has been realized.
2. To express the hope that, before the meeting of the next
International American Conference the International Bureau of American
Republics will be housed in such a way as to permit it to properly
fulfil the important functions assigned to it by this Conference.
Made and signed in the City of Rio de Janeiro, on the thirteenth day of
the month of August, nineteen hundred and six, in English, Portuguese
and Spanish, and deposited in the Department of Foreign Relations of the
Government of the United States of Brazil, in order that certified
copies thereof be made, and forwarded through diplomatic channels to
each one of the Signatory States.
For Ecuador.--Emilio Arévalo, Olmedo Alfaro.
For Paraguay.--Manoel Gondra, Arsenio López Decoud, Gualberto Cardús y
Huerta.
For Bolivia.--Alberto Gutiérrez, Carlos V. Romero.
For Colombia.--Rafael Urìbe Urìbe, Guillermo Valencia.
For Honduras.--Fausto Dávila.
For Panama.--José Domingo de Obaldía.
For Cuba.--Gonzalo de Quesada, Rafael Montoro, Antonio González Lanuza.
For the Dominican Republic.--Emilio C. Joubert.
For Peru.--Eugenio Larabure y Unánue, Antonio Miró Quesada, Mariano
Cornejo.
For El Salvador.--Francisco A. Reyes.
For Costa Rica.--Ascensión Esquivel.
For the United States of Mexico.--Francisco León de La Barra, Ricardo
Molina-Hübbe, Ricardo García Granados.
For Guatemala.--Antonio Batres Jáuregui.
For Uruguay.--Luis Melian Lafinur, Antonio María Rodríguez, Gonzalo
Ramírez.
For the Argentine Republic.--J. V. González, José A. Terry, Eduardo L.
Bidau.
For Nicaragua.--Luis F. Corea.
For the United States of Brazil.--Joaquim Aurelio Nabuco de Araujo,
Joaquim Francisco de Assis Brasil, Gastão de Cunha, Alfredo de Moraes
Gomes Ferreira, João Pandiá Calogeras, Amaro Cavalcanti, Joaquim Xavier
da Silveira, José P. da Graça Aranha, Antonio da Fontoura Xavier.
For the United States of America.--William I. Buchanan, L. S. Rowe, A.
J. Montague, Tulio Larrinaga, Paul S. Reinsch, Van Leer Polk.
For Chile.--Anselmo Hevia Riquelme, Joaquín Walker Martínez, Luis
Antonio Vergara, Adolfo Guerrero.
_Resolution of the Governing Board and letter of the Secretary of State,
Mr. Elihu Root, to Mr. Andrew Carnegie, approved at the meeting of
December 19, 1906_
Whereas, the Chairman of the Governing Board of the International Bureau
of the American Republics has laid before this, the said Board, the
following letter sent by him as chairman to Mr. Andrew Carnegie and has
asked for the approval thereof by the Board--that is to say:
DEPARTMENT OF STATE,
WASHINGTON, December 4, 1906.
MR DEAR MR. CARNEGIE: Your active and effective
coöperation in promoting better communication between the
countries of America as a member of the commission
authorized by the Second Pan American Conference held in
Mexico, your patriotic citizenship in the greatest of
American Republics, your earnest and weighty advocacy of
peace and good will among the nations of the earth, and your
action in providing a suitable building for the
International Tribunal at The Hague embolden me to ask your
aid in promoting the beneficent work of the Union of
American Republics, which was established by the Conference
of Washington in 1889, continued by the Conference of Mexico
in 1902, and has now been made permanent by the Conference
of Rio de Janeiro in 1906. There is a general feeling that
the Rio Conference, the South American journey of the
Secretary of State, and the expressions of courtesy and
kindly feeling which accompanied them have given a powerful
impulse to the growth of a better acquaintance between the
people of all the American countries, a better mutual
understanding between them, the establishment of a common
public opinion, and the reasonable and kindly treatment of
international questions in the place of isolation,
suspicion, irritation, strife, and war.
There is also a general opinion that while the action of the
Bureau of American Republics, designed to carry on this work
from conference to conference, has been excellent so far as
it has gone, the scope of the Bureau's work ought to be
enlarged and its activity and efficiency greatly increased.
To accomplish this, a building adequate to the magnitude and
dignity of the great work to be done is indispensable. With
this view the nations constituting the Union have expressed
their willingness to contribute, and some of them have
contributed, and the Congress of the United States has, at
its last session, appropriated, to the extent of $200,000,
funds available for the purchase of a suitable site in the
city of Washington. With this view also the Conference at
Rio de Janeiro, on the 13th of August, 1906, adopted
resolutions looking to the establishment of a 'permanent
center of information and of interchange of ideas among the
Republics of this Continent as well as a building suitable
for the library in memory of Columbus,' and expressed the
hope that 'before the meeting of the next International
American Conference the International Bureau of American
Republics shall be housed in such a way as to permit it to
properly fulfill the important functions assigned to it by
this conference.'
Those functions are, in brief, to give effect to the work of
the conference; to carry out its resolutions; to prepare the
work of future conferences; to disseminate through each
American country a knowledge of the affairs, the sentiments
and the progress of every other American country; to promote
better communication and more constant intercourse; to
increase the interaction among all the Republics of each
upon the others in commerce, in education, in the arts and
sciences, and in political and social life, and to maintain
in the city of Washington a headquarters, a meeting place, a
center of influence for the same peaceful and enlightened
thought and conscience of all America.
I feel sure of your hearty sympathy in the furtherance of
this undertaking, so full of possibilities for the peace and
the prosperity of America and of mankind, and I appeal to
you in the same spirit that has actuated your great
benefactions to humanity in the past to provide for the
erection, upon the site thus to be supplied by governmental
action, of a suitable building for the work of the Union,
the direction and control of which has been imposed by our
respective Governments upon the Governing Board, of which I
have the honor to be Chairman.
With great respect and esteem, I am, my dear Mr. Carnegie,
Very sincerely yours,
ELIHU ROOT,
_Secretary of State and ex officio Chairman of the Governing
Board of the Bureau of American Republics._
Now, therefore, be it resolved that the action of the Secretary of
State, as Chairman of this Board, in sending the aforesaid letter be,
and it hereby is, approved.
_Mr. Carnegie to Mr. Root._
NEW YORK, January 1, 1907.
HON. ELIHU ROOT.
_Secretary of State and ex officio Chairman of the Governing Board of
the Bureau of South American Republics, Washington, D. C._
DEAR SIR: I am greatly pleased that you and your colleagues of
the South American Republics have done me the honor to suggest that I
might furnish a suitable home in Washington for the Bureau of American
Republics.
The approval of your application by the Governing Board of the
International Bureau and President Roosevelt's hearty expressions of
satisfaction are most gratifying.
You very kindly mention my membership of the first Pan American
Conference and advocacy of the Pan American Railway, the gaps of which
are being slowly filled. The importance of this enterprise impresses
itself more and more upon me, and I hope to see it accomplished.
I am happy, therefore, in stating that it will be one of the pleasures
of my life to furnish to the Union of all the Republics of this
hemisphere the necessary funds ($750,000) from time to time as may be
needed for the construction of an international home in Washington.
The coöperation of our own Republic is seen in the appropriation of
funds by Congress for the purchase of the site, and in the agreement
between the Republics for the maintenance of the Bureau we have
additional evidence of coöperation, so that the forthcoming American
Temple of Peace will be the joint work of all of the Republics. Every
generation should see them drawing closer together.
It is a cheering thought that all these are for the first time to be
represented at the forthcoming Hague Conference. Henceforth they are
members of that body, whose aim is the settlement of international
disputes by that "High Court of Nations" or other similar tribunal.
I beg to express to each and all of them my heartfelt thanks for being
permitted to make such a New Year's gift as this. I have never felt more
keenly than I do this New Year's morning how much more blessed it is to
give than to receive, and I consider myself highly honored by being
considered worthy to provide the forthcoming union home, where the
accredited representatives of all the Republics are to meet and, I
trust, to bind together their respective nations in the bonds of
unbroken peace.
Very truly, yours,
ANDREW CARNEGIE.
_Resolutions approved by the Governing Board of the International Bureau
of the American Republics, January 30, 1907._
_Resolved_, That the letter of Mr. Andrew Carnegie to the Chairman of
the Board, dated January 1, 1907, be received and filed and spread upon
the minutes of the Board.
_Resolved_, That the Governing Board of the Bureau of American Republics
express to Mr. Andrew Carnegie its acceptance and grateful appreciation
of his generous and public-spirited engagement to supply the funds for
the proposed new building for the Union of American Republics. The Board
shares with Mr. Carnegie the hope that the institution whose work will
thus be promoted may further the cause of peace and justice among
nations and the sincere and helpful friendship of all the American
Republics for each other.
_Resolved_, That the Chairman of the Board communicate a copy of the
foregoing resolutions to Mr. Carnegie.
The Governing Board of the International Bureau of the American
Republics further resolves:
1. That the letter of the Honorable the Secretary of State, Mr. Elihu
Root, to Mr. Andrew Carnegie; the answer of this distinguished
philanthropist, and the resolution of the Governing Board accepting this
splendid gift be kept on file with the important documents of the
Bureau; and
2. That the text of these letters and the resolutions thereon be
artistically engrossed under the title of "Carnegie's Gift to the
International Bureau of the American Republics," and, properly framed,
to form a part of the exhibit of the Bureau at the Jamestown
Tercentennial Exposition.
On May 11, 1908, Mr. Root, then secretary of state, whose forethought
and personal efforts had made its construction possible, delivered the
address at the laying of the corner stone, and later, on April 26, 1910,
when he was no longer secretary of state but senator of the United
States and friend of the Americas, he delivered the principal address at
the dedication of the building. These two addresses follow:
ADDRESS AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNER STONE OF THE BUILDING FOR THE PAN
AMERICAN UNION WASHINGTON, D.C., MAY 11, 1908
We are here to lay the corner stone of the building which is to be the
home of the International Union of American Republics.[10]
The wise liberality of the Congress of the United States has provided
the means for the purchase of this tract of land--five acres in
extent--near the White House and the great executive departments,
bounded on every side by public streets and facing to the east and south
upon public parks which it will always be the care of the National
Government to render continually more beautiful, in execution of its
design to make the national capital an object of national pride and a
source of that pleasure which comes to rich and poor alike from the
education of taste.
The public spirit and enthusiasm for the good of humanity, which have
inspired an American citizen, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, in his administration
of a great fortune, have led him to devote the adequate and ample sum of
three-quarters of a million dollars to the construction of the
building.[11]
Into the appropriate adornment and fitting of the edifice will go the
contributions of every American republic, already pledged and, in a
great measure, already paid into the fund of the Union.
The International Union for which the building is erected is a voluntary
association, the members of which are all the American nations from
Cape Horn to the Great Lakes. It had its origin in the first Pan
American conference held at Washington in 1889, and it has been
developed and improved in efficiency under the resolutions of the
succeeding conferences in Mexico and Brazil. Its primary object is to
break down the barriers of mutual ignorance between the nations of
America by collecting and making accessible, furnishing and spreading,
information about every country among the people of every other country
in the Union, to facilitate and stimulate intercourse, trade,
acquaintance, good understanding, fellowship, and sympathy. For this
purpose it has established in Washington a bureau or office under the
direction of a governing board composed of the official representatives
in Washington of all the republics, and having a director and secretary,
with a force of assistants and translators and clerks.
The bureau has established a rapidly increasing library of history,
travel, description, statistics, and literature of the American nations.
It publishes a _Monthly Bulletin_ of current public events and existing
conditions in all the united countries, which is circulated in every
country. It carries on an enormous correspondence with every part of
both continents, answering the questions of seekers for information
about the laws, customs, conditions, opportunities, and personnel of the
different countries; and it has become a medium of introduction and
guidance for international intercourse.
The governing board is also a permanent committee charged with the duty
of seeing that the resolutions of each Pan American conference are
carried out and that suitable preparation is made for the next
succeeding conference.
The increasing work of the bureau has greatly outgrown the facilities of
its cramped quarters on Pennsylvania Avenue, and now at the close of its
second decade and under the influence of the great movement of awakened
sympathy between the American republics, the Union stands upon the
threshold of more ample opportunity for the prosecution of its
beneficent activity.
Many noble and beautiful public buildings record the achievements and
illustrate the impulses of modern civilization. Temples of religion, of
patriotism, of learning, of art, of justice, abound; but this structure
will stand alone, the first of its kind--a temple dedicated to
international friendship. It will be devoted to the diffusion of that
international knowledge which dispels national prejudice and liberalizes
national judgment. Here will be fostered the growth of that sympathy
born of similarity in good impulses and noble purposes, which draws men
of different races and countries together into a community of nations,
and counteracts the tendency of selfish instincts to array nations
against each other as enemies. From this source shall spring mutual
helpfulness between all the American republics, so that the best
knowledge and experience and courage and hope of every republic shall
lend moral power to sustain and strengthen every other in its struggle
to work out its problems and to advance the standard of liberty and
peace with justice within itself, and so that no people in all these
continents, however oppressed and discouraged, however impoverished and
torn by disorder, shall fail to feel that they are not alone in the
world, or shall fail to see that for them a better day may dawn, as for
others the sun has already arisen.
It is too much to expect that there will not be controversies between
American nations to whose desire for harmony we now bear witness; but to
every controversy will apply the truth that there are no international
controversies so serious that they cannot be settled peaceably if both
parties really desire peaceable settlement, while there are few causes
of dispute so trifling that they cannot be made the occasion of war if
either party really desires war. The matters in dispute between nations
are nothing; the spirit which deals with them is everything.
The graceful courtesy of the twenty republics who have agreed upon the
capital of the United States for the home of this International Union,
the deep appreciation of that courtesy shown by the American Government
and this representative American citizen, and the work to be done within
the walls that are to rise on this site, cannot fail to be powerful
influences towards the creation of a spirit that will solve all disputed
questions of the future and preserve the peace of the Western World.
May the structure now begun stand for many generations to come as the
visible evidence of mutual respect, esteem, appreciation, and kindly
feeling between the peoples of all the republics; may pleasant memories
of hospitality and friendship gather about it, and may all the Americas
come to feel that for them this place is home, for it is theirs, the
product of a common effort and the instrument of a common purpose.
ADDRESS AT THE DEDICATION OF THE BUILDING OF THE PAN AMERICAN UNION,
WASHINGTON, D. C. APRIL 26, 1910
I am sure that this beautiful building must produce a lively sense of
grateful appreciation in all who care for the growth of friendship among
Americans; to Mr. Carnegie, not merely for his generous gift but for the
large sympathy and far vision that prompted it; and to the associate
architects, Mr. Albert Kelsey and Mr. Paul Cret, who, not content with
making this structure express their sense of artistic form and
proportion, have entered with the devotion and self-absorption of true
art into the spirit of the design for which their bricks and marble are
to stand. They have brought into happy companionship architectural
suggestions of the North and of the South; and have wrought into
construction and ornament in a hundred ways the art, the symbolism, the
traditions, and the history of all the American republics; and they have
made the building a true expression of Pan Americanism, of open mind and
open heart for all that is true and noble and worthy of respect from
whatever race or religion or language or custom in the western
continents.
Nor should we forget the fine enthusiasm and understanding with which
Mr. Borglum and Mr. Conti and Mrs. Farnham and Mrs. Whitney have brought
sculpture to aid the architects' expression; nor the honest and faithful
work of Mr. Norcross, the builder; nor the kind help of Mr. William
Smith, of the Botanical Garden, who has filled the patio with tropical
plants rare and strange to northern eyes, but familiar friends to the
Latin American; nor the energy and unwearying labors of Mr. Barrett, the
director of the bureau.
The active interest of President Taft and Secretary Knox is evidence
that the policy of Pan American friendship, re-inaugurated by the
sympathetic genius of Secretary Blaine, is continuous and permanent in
the United States; and the harmony in which the members of the governing
board have worked to this end is a good omen for the future.
This building is to be, in its most manifest utilitarian service, a
convenient instrument for association and growth of mutual knowledge
among the people of the different republics. The library maintained
here, the books and journals accessible here, the useful and interesting
publications of the bureau, the enormous correspondence carried on with
seekers for knowledge about American countries, the opportunities now
afforded for further growth in all these activities, justify the pains
and the expense.
The building is more important, however, as the symbol, the ever-present
reminder, the perpetual assertion, of unity, of common interest and
purpose and hope among all the republics. This building is a confession
of faith, a covenant of fraternal duty, a declaration of allegiance to
an ideal. The members of The Hague conference of 1907 described the
conference in the preamble of its great arbitration convention as:
Animated by the sincere desire to work for the maintenance
of general peace.
Resolved to promote by all the efforts in their power the
friendly settlement of international disputes.
Recognizing the solidarity uniting the members of the
society of civilized nations.
Desirous of extending the empire of law and of strengthening
the appreciation of international justice.
That is the meaning of this building for the republics of America. That
sentiment which all the best in modern civilization is trying to live up
to, we have written here in marble for the people of the American
continents.
The process of civilization is by association. In isolation, men,
communities, nations, tend back towards savagery. Repellent differences
and dislikes separate them from mankind. In association, similarities
and attractions are felt and differences are forgotten. There is so much
more good than evil in men that liking comes by knowing. We have here
the product of mutual knowledge, coöperation, harmony, friendship. Here
is an evidence of what these can accomplish. Here is an earnest of what
may be done in the future. From these windows the governing board of the
International Union will look down upon the noble river that flows by
the home of Washington. They will sit beneath the shadow of the simple
and majestic monument which illustrates our conception of his character,
the character that, beyond all others in human history, rises above
jealousy and envy and ignoble strife. All the nations acknowledge his
preëminent influence. He belongs to them all. No man lives in freedom
anywhere on earth who is not his debtor and his follower. We dedicate
this place to the service of the political faith in which he lived and
wrought. Long may this structure stand, while within its walls and under
the influence of the benign purpose from which it sprang, the habit and
the power of self-control, of mutual consideration and kindly judgment,
more and more exclude the narrowness and selfishness and prejudice of
ignorance and the hasty impulses of super-sensitive _amour propre_. May
men hereafter come to see that here is set a milestone in the path of
American civilization towards the reign of that universal public opinion
which shall condemn all who through contentious spirit or greed or
selfish ambition or lust for power disturb the public peace, as enemies
of the general good of the American republics.
One voice that should have spoken here today is silent, but many of us
cannot forget or cease to mourn and to honor our dear and noble friend,
Joaquim Nabuco. Ambassador from Brazil, dean of the American Diplomatic
Corps, respected, admired, trusted, loved, and followed by all of us, he
was a commanding figure in the international movement of which the
erection of this building is a part. The breadth of his political
philosophy, the nobility of his idealism, the prophetic vision of his
poetic imagination, were joined to wisdom, to the practical sagacity of
statesmanship, to a sympathetic knowledge of men, and to a heart as
sensitive and tender as a woman's. He followed the design and
construction of this building with the deepest interest. His beneficent
influence impressed itself upon all of our actions. No benison can be
pronounced upon this great institution so rich in promise for its future
as the wish that his ennobling memory may endure and his civilizing
spirit may control, in the councils of the International Union of
American Republics.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] _Foreign Relations of the United States_, 1881, p. 14.
[8] _The Pan American Union_, pp. 81, 82.
[9] Ibid., p. 7.
[10] The name was changed to the Pan American Union in 1910.
[11] Later increased to $950,000.
OUR SISTER REPUBLIC--ARGENTINA
ADDRESS AT THE BANQUET OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF THE STATE OF NEW
YORK TO THE OFFICERS OF THE FOREIGN AND UNITED STATES SQUADRONS WHICH
ESCORTED THE SPANISH CARAVELS TO NEW YORK, APRIL 28, 1893
It is my pleasant privilege to respond to a toast to an offspring of old
Spain, a direct lineal descendant, an inheritor of her blood, her faith
and her language.
It is only a young republic, only an American republic. No historic
centuries invest her with romance or with interest; but she is great in
glorious promise of the future, and great in manifest power to fulfill
the promise.
Far away to the southward, beyond the great empire of the Amazon, beyond
the equatorial heats, there stretches a vast land, from the latitude of
Cuba on the north to the latitude of Hudson Bay on the south, and from
the Andes to the Eastern Sea. In this land mighty rivers flow through
vast forests, and immeasurable plains stretch from ocean to mountains,
with a soil of inexhaustible fertility, under every variety of healthful
and invigorating climate.
All this we know; but we must not forget, and we cannot forget tonight,
that this great land, capable of supporting in plenty all the teeming
millions of Europe, is possessed by the people of a free constitutional
republic, of all the sisterhood of nations, in form, in feature and in
character, the most like to ourselves.
For forty years the Argentine Republic has lived and governed itself
under a constitution in all material respects the exact counterpart of
the Constitution of the United States. Its constitution was avowedly
modelled after ours. For forty years, in fourteen separate states like
our own, the people of Argentina have preserved the sacred right of
local self-government. For forty years they have maintained at the same
time the sovereignty of their nation; and by the constancy of their past
they have given a high and ever-increasing credit to their promise that
for the future, under Southern Cross as under Northern Star, government
by the people, of the people, and for the people, shall endure.
Under this constitutional system they have framed for themselves wise
and liberal laws. They have constructed extensive works of internal
improvement; and waterways, and railroads, and telegraph lines, all
invite to the development of their vast natural wealth. They have
established universal religious toleration. They have protected the
rights of private property and of personal liberty. They have created
and maintained a great system of public education. In more than three
thousand public common schools over a quarter of a million children are
today learning how to be good citizens. Grading up from these common
schools through lyceums in every state and two great universities, the
pathway of higher education is open to all the people of the republic.
Under such a constitution and such laws, Argentina has made greater
material progress and greater advance in the art of self-government,
during our generation, than any people upon the western hemisphere,
unless it be, perhaps, our own.
We remember, too, that the people of Argentina, like our own fathers,
won their liberty by struggle and by sacrifice. They made their fight
for independence at a time when Europe was exhausted by the Napoleonic
wars. They attracted but little attention and less aid from the Old
World. No Byron enshrined their heroism in deathless verse; no Rousseau
with the philosophy of humanity awoke for them generous and effective
enthusiasm in the breasts of a Lafayette or a Rochambeau, a Von Steuben
or a Kosciusko.
Alone and unaided they fought their fight. Dependent upon themselves, on
the ninth of July, seventy-seven years ago, they made their own
declaration of independence, commemorated in the name of that thing of
beauty and of power which today floats upon the bosom of the Hudson, a
peer among the embattled navies of the world. They made good that
declaration against all odds, through hardship, through suffering,
through seas of blood, with desperate valor and lofty heroism, worthy
the plaudits of the world.
And then they conquered themselves; learned the hard lesson of
subordinating personal ambition to law, to order, to the public weal.
And today more people than followed Washington with their hopes and
prayers enjoy the blessings of liberty and peace, and the security of
established and equal laws, won for them by the patriots who gave their
lives for their country on the plains of Argentina.
These people have not only done all this for themselves, but they also
have opened their arms to all the people of the earth, and have welcomed
to their shores the poor, the humble, the downcast of all lands. So that
scores of thousands of French, of Italians, of Germans, of English, of
Spaniards, coming not as their fathers came, in mailed forms to conquer
savage foes--but under peaceful flags--a million and a half of men from
all civilized lands of Europe, have come to share the peace, the plenty
and the freedom of the young republic; and to contribute to her
prosperity and wealth. Every guest at our board tonight may feel his
pulses beat in unison with the sentiment of health and prosperity to the
new land where his own kindred have found new homes and hopes.
If there be truth in the philosophy of history--if the crossing of
stocks, the blending of races, makes the strong new race, with capacity
and power to press forward and upward the standard of civilization, the
future is to find the people of Argentina in the forefront of human
progress.
And so, from the Hudson to the La Plata, from the plains to the Pampas,
from the Rockies to the Andes, from the old American republic to the
young American republic, from sister to sister, with the same
convictions and hopes and aspirations, we send sincere and hearty
greeting, congratulation and God-speed.
OUR SISTER REPUBLIC--BRAZIL
ADDRESS OF WELCOME TO DR. LAURO MÜLLER, SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN
AFFAIRS OF BRAZIL, AT A BANQUET OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF THE STATE
OF NEW YORK, JUNE 18, 1913
The republic of Brazil designated its minister for foreign
affairs, Dr. Lauro Müller, to return officially Mr. Root's
visit to that republic, and the following address was
delivered by Mr. Root at the dinner given by the Chamber of
Commerce of the State of New York to His Excellency, Lauro
Müller, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of the
Republic of Brazil.
When in the various pathways that one treads in a long life one has made
friends, has garnered the wealth of friendship, that is more the
happiness of age than wealth of money or possession, I know of nothing
more delightful than to help bring together distant and separated
friends and complete that circuit of magnetic intercourse which, after
all, above all sordid motives, above all selfish interests, above all
things material, makes up the true value of life.
I cannot express the satisfaction that I feel in having you, my friends,
the Chamber of Commerce, unite in taking the hand, and coming into
personal contact with, my old friend and host of the southern republic.
I feel that you are all paying my debt of gratitude, paying it as
friends should pay it for friends.
Dr. Müller, you have come to see a people widely known throughout the
world for their great material achievements, a people whose influence
has been very great in the development of civilization and in the
advancement of those standards of living and of action which we believe
make our times better than the times that have gone before; and you see
here about you at these tables, and in the portraits upon these walls,
the men who, for nearly a century and a half have played a great, aye,
the greatest part in the amazing material developments and in the
spiritual life of this republic. Those who are living today under the
inspiration and the spirit of the great citizens who have gone before
are gathered to do you honor and do your country honor. What has been
done in the United States of America, has been done, not by the power of
money; it has been done, not under the influence of selfish motives; it
has been done under the influence of noble ideals, of great minds, and
of great hearts directing and guiding and leading the mighty affairs of
a great people. And here are representatives, not all, but many, of the
foremost representatives of that American spirit which has accomplished
everything which you have seen in your journey here.
My friends of the Chamber of Commerce, some years ago when it fell to my
lot to visit South America, for the purpose of carrying to the minds of
our southern sisters a true message of the real feeling of our people
towards them, for the purpose of getting a hearing among the peoples of
South America, which could not be gained through the newspapers, which
could not be gained in any other way than by direct personal contact and
by the influence of one personality meeting another, for the purpose of
doing away with the false and distorted ideas that our great country was
possessed by ambition and the lust of conquest and the desire for
dominion over other lands, I met in Brazil the most noble and generous
hospitality. No nation of men could have exhibited in a higher degree
all those qualities which make men love each other than the people of
Brazil exhibited to me on my visit there. The noble traditions of their
race, all the great-heartedness of the grandees of the Iberian
Peninsula, all those sentiments which have made them _par excellence_
the gentlemen of civilization were exhibited in the welcome they gave
to you, to our people, through me as their representative.
In that land of surpassing beauty, in that scene upon the Bay of Rio,
with its shining waters and its blue mountains, in that city which has
all the romance of fair Ionian cities, I found a depth and warmth of
friendship, a depth of patriotism and love for their own country, a
response to the message of humanity, and a warm acceptance of the tender
of friendship which made the people of Brazil ever to me a group of
dearly loved and always to be remembered friends. And among the first of
them all was our guest of this evening. His personal hospitality I shall
never forget. He knew not the words inconvenience or trouble. One would
have thought he had no other duties to perform but to make the stranger
who came from the distant republic of the north at home and happy, and
he did it as the men of his country know how to do it. Even then he held
a great place in the government of his country; and it is a matter of
the utmost satisfaction to me that his people have continued their
confidence in him and have led him along step by step to higher and
higher office, so that today he stands in the forefront of the statesmen
who are making Brazil one of the great world powers of our modern
civilization.
It is not, my friends, a mere gathering of courtesy tonight. We are not
merely performing a duty of hospitality to the representative of a
foreign state, when we exhibit our sincere friendship and our kindly
feelings toward Dr. Müller and his country; we are doing for ourselves
something of inestimable value, and we are doing something of
inestimable value for the people of our country.
Of late the electors of America, the unofficial people of America, are
demanding, asserting and laying hold upon more and more direct relation
to the powers of government; but a democracy when it undertakes to
govern directly, needs to remember that there are no rights without a
duty, there is no duty without a right; and if a democracy is to govern
itself well it must realize its responsibilities. We have been so
isolated, we have been so free from wars and rumors of wars, so little
inconvenienced by interference on the part of other nations in our vast
domain, so busy with our internal affairs, that the people of the United
States know but little, think but little, and care but little regarding
foreign affairs. If the people of the United States are themselves to
direct their foreign affairs they must come to a realizing sense of
their responsibilities in foreign affairs; and first among those
responsibilities is the duty of courtesy, the duty of kindly
consideration, the duty to subordinate selfish interests to the broader
interests of the nations of the world; the duty to treat every other
nation with that judicial sense of others' rights which differentiates
all diplomacy from the controversies of courts or the clashing of
business interests.
Our people, if their voice is to be heard in foreign affairs, must learn
that we cannot continue a policy of peace with insult; we must learn
civility, we must learn that when we speak, when an American sovereign
speaks of the affairs of other nations, he speaks under responsibility,
and he must observe those rules of courtesy and of friendly relations by
which alone can the peace of the world be maintained.
Today we hear much of peace and persuasion for peace. Let me tell you
that the great peace agencies of the world today are the governments of
the world. Hitherto, in Dr. Müller's visit, he has been in the main
entertained by the American Government and the people connected with the
American Government; but the responsibility for international friendship
and international peace today rests not with governments that are always
for peace, but with the people. It is the people from whom the danger of
war comes today; it is the people, so far as they are unwilling to
exercise self-restraint and all the qualities which go to make for
agreeable and kindly and friendly relations with other people.
So, to my mind your meeting here to extend the right hand of fellowship
to Dr. Müller, to express to him the feeling of kindliness towards his
country, in its representation of the people of the United States and as
one of the multitude of incidents exercising an influence over the
people, is of greater value and greater importance than anything that
the official Government of the United States can do.
We have had for now ninety years a special political relation to the
southern republics. Since the time when Monroe announced the doctrine
which carries the necessary implication that every foot of soil upon the
two American continents is under a government competent to govern, no
longer open to colonization as the waste places of the earth are
open,--from that time to this, special and peculiar political relations
have existed between the United States and the other countries of the
western continent. Thank Heaven the need for it, the need for the
protection that came from that great assertion, is growing less and
less. There are some parts of the continent as to which the necessities
of the Monroe Doctrine, as it regards our safety, do not grow less; but
as to those great republics in South America which have passed out of
the condition of militarism, out of the condition of revolution, into
the condition of industrialism, into the paths of successful commerce,
and are becoming great and powerful nations, the Monroe Doctrine has
done its work. And the thing above all things that I hope and trust and
believe the people of South America will become permanently convinced of
is, that there is neither to the Monroe Doctrine nor any other doctrine
or purpose of the American Government any corollary of dominion or
aggression, or of aught but equal friendship.
There is a national spirit and a national purpose and a national ideal
quite apart from individual purpose or individual ideals. I am one of
those who believe that for the existence of a truly great nation there
must be an ideal of altruism. I believe that no people can be truly
great which has no national and collective purpose that is not selfish.
I believe that our country has a mission in the world; has great deeds
to accomplish for the world; has a great future of beneficence for
civilization; and that our sense of this, dim and vague doubtless among
us in the main, buoys us up and makes us better patriots and makes our
country the great nation that we love and honor. And directly to your
hands in the accomplishment of the great national purpose, making all
our prosperity, all our power, all our capital and our labor instruments
for the bettering of mankind, for the progress of civilization and for
the coming of the effective and universal rule of the religion which we
profess, right at your hands, as the first and plainest duty, is the
cementing of the bonds of friendship between our republic and our sister
republics of the continent.
We have much to learn from Brazil--I hope she may learn much from us;
and the interchange of benefits between us will but make stronger a
friendship which carries with it the recognition of benefits. I
sincerely hope, Dr. Müller, upon your return to Brazil, you may feel it
in your heart to tell your people that here, while we are pursuing our
business careers, earnest in competition, eager to improve our
conditions, anxious for trade, desirous of the greatness and glory of
our country, we seek those ends only through universal friendship,
through carrying, so far as we can, the benefits of peace and prosperity
to all our sister republics, in order that you and we may grow stronger
and greater together, and that Brazil, with its enormous resources, with
its patriotic people, with its brilliant minds, with its bright future,
may go hand in hand with the republic of the north to ever happier and
happier conditions for all our people.
HOW TO DEVELOP SOUTH AMERICAN COMMERCE
ADDRESS BEFORE THE TRANS-MISSISSIPPI COMMERCIAL CONGRESS, KANSAS CITY,
MISSOURI, NOVEMBER 20, 1906
Sir Henry Wotton is credited with the statement that "an
ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie for the
commonwealth", a definition half in jest but not without a
touch of seriousness. The feeling is making itself manifest
which will soon become universal, that an ambassador is an
honest man sent abroad to represent the people of his own
country to the people of the country to which he is
accredited. Mr. Root, not sent to South America, but going
on his own initiative, was an ambassador in this modern
sense of the word to the Latin American states in 1906; and
upon his return he enlarged the meaning of the function of
an ambassador by representing to his countrymen the peoples
whom he had visited in South America. The three addresses
delivered before the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress,
the National Convention for the Extension of Foreign
Commerce of the United States, and the Pan American
Commercial Conference are conceived in this spirit and were
delivered in the performance of a continuous mission.
A little less than three centuries of colonial and national life have
brought the people inhabiting the United States, by a process of
evolution, natural and, with the existing forces inevitable, to a point
of distinct and radical change in their economic relations to the rest
of mankind.
During the period now past, the energy of our people, directed by the
formative power created in our early population by heredity, by
environment, by the struggle for existence, by individual independence,
and by free institutions, has been devoted to the internal development
of our own country. The surplus wealth produced by our labors has been
applied immediately to reproduction in our own land. We have been
cutting down forests and breaking virgin soil and fencing prairies and
opening mines of coal and iron and copper and silver and gold, and
building roads and canals and railroads and telegraph lines and cars
and locomotives and mills and furnaces and schoolhouses and colleges and
libraries and hospitals and asylums and public buildings and storehouses
and shops and homes. We have been drawing on the resources of the world
in capital and in labor to aid us in our work. We have gathered strength
from every rich and powerful nation and expended it upon these home
undertakings; into them we have poured hundreds of millions of money
attracted from the investors of Europe. We have been always a debtor
nation, borrowing from the rest of the world, drawing all possible
energy towards us and concentrating it with our own energy upon our own
enterprises. The engrossing pursuit of our own opportunities has
excluded from our consideration and interest the enterprises and the
possibilities of the outside world. Invention, discovery, the progress
of science, capacity for organization, the enormous increase in the
productive power of mankind, have accelerated our progress and have
brought us to a result of development in every branch of internal
industrial activity marvelous and unprecedented in the history of the
world.
Since the first election of President McKinley, the people of the United
States have for the first time accumulated a surplus of capital beyond
the requirements of internal development. That surplus is increasing
with extraordinary rapidity. We have paid our debts to Europe and have
become a creditor instead of a debtor nation; we have faced about; we
have left the ranks of the borrowing nations and have entered the ranks
of the investing nations. Our surplus energy is beginning to look beyond
our own borders, throughout the world, to find opportunity for the
profitable use of our surplus capital, foreign markets for our
manufactures, foreign mines to be developed, foreign bridges and
railroads and public works to be built, foreign rivers to be turned into
electric power and light. As in their several ways England and France
and Germany have stood, so we in our own way are beginning to stand and
must continue to stand towards the industrial enterprise of the world.
That we are not beginning our new rôle feebly is indicated by
$1,518,561,666 of exports in the year 1905 as against $1,117,513,071 of
imports, and by $1,743,864,500 exports in the year 1906 as against
$1,226,563,843 of imports. Our first steps in the new field indeed are
somewhat clumsy and unskilled. In our own vast country, with oceans on
either side, we have had too little contact with foreign peoples readily
to understand their customs or learn their languages; yet no one can
doubt that we shall learn and shall understand and shall do our business
abroad, as we have done it at home, with force and efficiency.
Coincident with this change in the United States, the progress of
political development has been carrying the neighboring continent of
South America out of the stage of militarism into the stage of
industrialism. Throughout the greater part of that vast continent,
revolutions have ceased to be looked upon with favor or submitted to
with indifference; the revolutionary general and the dictator are no
longer the objects of admiration and imitation; civic virtues command
the highest respect; the people point with satisfaction and pride to the
stability of their governments, to the safety of property and the
certainty of justice; nearly everywhere the people are eager for foreign
capital to develop their natural resources and for foreign immigration
to occupy their vacant lands.
Immediately before us, at exactly the right time, just as we are ready
for it, great opportunities for peaceful commercial and industrial
expansion to the south are presented. Other investing nations are
already in the field--England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain; but the
field is so vast, the new demands are so great, the progress so rapid,
that what other nations have done up to this time is but a slight
advance in the race for the grand total.
The opportunities are so large that figures fail to convey them. The
area of this newly awakened continent is 7,502,848 square miles--more
than two and one half times as large as the United States without
Alaska, and more than double the United States including Alaska. A large
part of this area lies within the temperate zone, with an equable and
invigorating climate, free from extremes of either heat or cold. Farther
north in the tropics are enormous expanses of high table-lands,
stretching from the Atlantic to the foothills of the Andes, and lifted
far above the tropical heats; the fertile valleys of the western
cordilleras are cooled by perpetual snows even under the equator; vast
forests grow untouched from a soil of incredible richness. The plains of
Argentina, the great uplands of Brazil, the mountain valleys of Chile,
Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Colombia are suited to the habitation of any
race, however far to the north its origin may have been; hundreds of
millions of men can find healthful homes and abundant sustenance in this
great territory.
The population in 1900 was only 42,461,381, less than six to the square
mile. The density of population was less than one-eighth of that in the
state of Missouri, less than one-sixtieth of that in the state of
Massachusetts, less than one-seventieth of that in England, less than
one per cent of that in Belgium.
With this sparse population the production of wealth is already
enormous. The latest trade statistics show exports from South America to
foreign countries of $745,530,000, and imports of $499,858,600. Of the
five hundred millions of goods that South America buys, we sell them but
$63,246,525, or 12.6 per cent. Of the seven hundred and forty-five
millions that South America sells, we buy $152,092,000, or 20.4 per
cent--nearly two and a half times as much as we sell.
Their production is increasing by leaps and bounds. In eleven years the
exports of Chile have increased forty-five per cent, from $54,030,000 in
1894 to $78,840,000 in 1905. In eight years the exports of Peru have
increased one hundred per cent, from $13,899,000 in 1897 to $28,758,000
in 1905. In ten years the exports of Brazil have increased sixty-six per
cent, from $134,062,000 in 1894 to $223,101,000 in 1905. In ten years
the exports of Argentina have increased one hundred and sixty-eight per
cent, from $115,868,000 in 1895 to $311,544,000 in 1905.
This is only the beginning; the coffee and rubber of Brazil, the wheat
and beef and hides of Argentina and Uruguay, the copper and nitrates of
Chile, the copper and tin of Bolivia, the silver and gold and cotton and
sugar of Peru, are but samples of what the soil and mines of that
wonderful continent are capable of yielding.
Ninety-seven per cent of the territory of South America is occupied by
ten independent republics living under constitutions substantially
copied or adapted from our own. Under the new conditions of tranquillity
and security which prevail in most of them, their eager invitation to
immigrants from the Old World will not long pass unheeded. The pressure
of population abroad will inevitably turn its streams of life and labor
towards those fertile fields and valleys. The streams have already begun
to flow; more than two hundred thousand immigrants entered the Argentine
Republic last year; they are coming this year at the rate of over three
hundred thousand. Many thousands of Germans have already settled in
southern Brazil. They are most welcome in Brazil; they are good and
useful citizens there, as they are here; I hope that many more will come
to Brazil and every other South American country, and add their
vigorous industry and good citizenship to the upbuilding of their
adopted home.
With the increase of population in such a field, under free
institutions, with the fruits of labor and the rewards of enterprise
secure, the production of wealth and the increase of purchasing power
will afford a market for the commerce of the world worthy to rank even
with the markets of the Orient, as the goal of business enterprise. The
material resources of South America are in some important respects
complementary to our own; that continent is weakest where North America
is strongest as a field for manufactures; it has comparatively little
coal and iron. In many respects the people of the two continents are
complementary to each other; the South American is polite, refined,
cultivated, fond of literature and of expression and of the graces and
charms of life, while the North American is strenuous, intense,
utilitarian. Where we accumulate, they spend. While we have less of the
cheerful philosophy which finds sources of happiness in the existing
conditions of life, they have less of the inventive faculty which
strives continually to increase the productive power of man and lower
the cost of manufacture. The chief merits of the peoples of the two
continents are different; their chief defects are different. Mutual
intercourse and knowledge cannot fail greatly to benefit both. Each can
learn from the other; each can teach much to the other, and each can
contribute greatly to the development and prosperity of the other. A
large part of their products find no domestic competition here; a large
part of our products will find no domestic competition there. The
typical conditions exist for that kind of trade which is profitable,
honorable, and beneficial to both parties.
The relations between the United States and South America have been
chiefly political rather than commercial or personal. In the early days
of the South American struggle for independence, the eloquence of Henry
Clay awakened in the American people a generous sympathy for the
patriots of the south as for brethren struggling in the common cause of
liberty. The clear-eyed, judicious diplomacy of Richard Rush, the
American minister at the Court of St. James, effected a complete
understanding with Great Britain for concurrent action in opposition to
the designs of the Holy Alliance, already contemplating the partition of
the southern continent among the great powers of continental Europe. The
famous declaration of Monroe arrayed the organized and rapidly
increasing power of the United States as an obstacle to European
interference and made it forever plain that the cost of European
aggression would be greater than any advantage which could be won even
by successful aggression.
That great declaration was not the chance expression of the opinion or
the feeling of the moment; it crystallized the sentiment for human
liberty and human rights which has saved American idealism from the
demoralization of narrow selfishness, and has given to American
democracy its true world power in the virile potency of a great example.
It responded to the instinct of self-preservation in an intensely
practical people. It was the result of conference with Jefferson and
Madison and John Quincy Adams and John C. Calhoun and William Wirt--a
combination of political wisdom, experience, and skill not easily
surpassed. The particular circumstances which led to the declaration no
longer exist; no Holy Alliance now threatens to partition South America;
no European colonization of the west coast threatens to exclude us from
the Pacific. But those conditions were merely the occasion for the
declaration of a principle of action. Other occasions for the
application of the principle have arisen since; it needs no prophetic
vision to see that other occasions for its application may arise
hereafter. The principle declared by Monroe is as wise an expression of
sound political judgment today, as truthful a representation of the
sentiments and instincts of the American people today, as living in its
force as an effective rule of conduct whenever occasion shall arise, as
it was on December 2, 1823.
These great political services to South American independence, however,
did not and could not in the nature of things create any relation
between the people of South America and the people of the United States
except a relation of political sympathy.
Twenty-five years ago, Mr. Blaine, sanguine, resourceful, and gifted
with that imagination which enlarges the historian's understanding of
the past into the statesman's comprehension of the future, undertook to
inaugurate a new era of American relations which should supplement
political sympathy by personal acquaintance, by the intercourse of
expanding trade, and by mutual helpfulness. As secretary of state under
President Arthur, he invited the American nations to a conference to be
held on November 24, 1882, for the purpose of considering and discussing
the subject of preventing war between the nations of America. That
invitation, abandoned by Mr. Frelinghuysen, was renewed under Mr.
Cleveland, and on October 2, 1889, Mr. Blaine, again secretary of state
under President Harrison, had the singular good fortune to execute his
former design and to open the sessions of the first American conference
at Washington. In an address of wisdom and lofty spirit, which should
ever give honor to his memory, he described the assembly as--
... an honorable, peaceful conference of seventeen
independent American powers, in which all shall meet
together on terms of absolute equality; a conference in
which there can be no attempt to coerce a single delegate
against his own conception of the interests of his nation; a
conference which will permit no secret understanding on any
subject, but will frankly publish to the world all its
conclusions; a conference which will tolerate no spirit of
conquest, but will aim to cultivate an American sympathy as
broad as both continents; a conference which will form no
selfish alliance against the older nations from which we are
proud to claim inheritance--a conference, in fine, which
will seek nothing, propose nothing, endure nothing that is
not, in the general sense of all the delegates, timely,
wise, and peaceful.
The policy which Mr. Blaine inaugurated has been continued; the Congress
of the United States has approved it; subsequent presidents have
followed it. The first conference at Washington has been succeeded by a
second conference in Mexico, and now by a third conference in Rio de
Janeiro; and it is to be followed in years to come by further successive
assemblies in which the representatives of all American states shall
acquire better knowledge and more perfect understanding, and be drawn
together by the recognition of common interests and the kindly
consideration and discussion of measures for mutual benefit.
Nevertheless, Mr. Blaine was in advance of his time. In 1881 and 1889
the United States had not reached a point where it could turn its
energies away from its own internal development and direct them outward
towards the development of foreign enterprises and foreign trade, nor
had the South American countries reached the stage of stability in
government and security for property necessary to their industrial
development.
Now, however, the time has come; both North and South America have grown
up to Blaine's policy. The production, the trade, the capital, the
enterprise of the United States have before them the opportunity to
follow, and they are free to follow, the pathway marked out by the
far-sighted statesmanship of Blaine for the growth of America, North and
South, in the peaceful prosperity of a mighty commerce.
To utilize this opportunity certain practical things must be done. For
the most part these things must be done by a multitude of individual
efforts; they cannot be done by government. Government may help to
furnish facilities for the doing of them, but the facilities will be
useless unless used by individuals. This cannot be done by resolutions
of this or any other commercial body; resolutions are useless unless
they stir individual business men to action in their own business
affairs. The things needed have been fully and specifically set forth in
many reports of efficient consuls and of highly competent agents of the
Department of Commerce and Labor, and they have been described in
countless newspapers and magazine articles; but all these things are
worthless unless they are followed by individual action.
I will indicate some of the matters to which every producer and merchant
who desires South American trade should pay attention.
1. He should learn what the South Americans want and conform his product
to their wants. If they think they need heavy castings, he should give
them heavy castings and not expect them to buy light ones because he
thinks they are better. If they want coarse cottons, he should give them
coarse cottons and not expect them to buy fine cottons. It may not pay
today, but it will pay tomorrow. The tendency to standardize articles of
manufacture may reduce the cost and promote convenience, but if the
consumers on the River Plata demand a different standard from the
consumers on the Mississippi, you must have two standards or lose one
market.
2. Both for the purpose of learning what the South American people want
and of securing their attention to your goods, you must have agents who
speak the Spanish or Portuguese language. For this there are two
reasons: one is that people can seldom really get at each other's minds
through an interpreter, and the other is that nine times out of ten it
is only through knowing the Spanish or Portuguese language that a North
American comes to appreciate the admirable and attractive personal
qualities of the South American, and is thus able to establish that
kindly and agreeable personal relation which is so potent in leading to
business relations.
3. The American producer should arrange to conform his credit system to
that prevailing in the country where he wishes to sell goods. There is
no more money lost upon commercial credits in South America than there
is in North America; but business men there have their own ways of doing
business; they have to adapt the credits they receive to the credits
they give. It is often inconvenient and disagreeable, and it is
sometimes impossible, for them to conform to our ways, and the
requirement that they should do so is a serious obstacle to trade.
To understand credits it is, of course, necessary to know something
about the character, trustworthiness, and commercial standing of the
purchaser, and the American producer or merchant who would sell goods in
South America must have some means of knowledge upon this subject. This
leads naturally to the next observation I have to make.
4. The establishment of banks should be brought about. The Americans
already engaged in South American trade could well afford to subscribe
the capital and establish an American bank in each of the principal
cities of South America. This is a fact, first, because nothing but very
bad management could prevent such a bank from making money; capital is
much needed in those cities, and six, eight, and ten per cent can be
obtained for money upon just as safe security as can be had in Kansas
City, St. Louis, or New York. It is a fact also because the American
bank would furnish a source of information as to the standing of the
South American purchasers to whom credit may be extended, and because
American banks would relieve American business in South America from the
disadvantage which now exists of making all its financial transactions
through Europe instead of directly with the United States. It is
unfortunately true that among hundreds of thousands of possible
customers the United States now stands in a position of assumed
financial and business inferiority to the countries through whose
banking houses all its business must be done.
5. The American merchant should himself acquire, if he has not already
done so, and should impress upon all his agents that respect for the
South American to which he is justly entitled and which is the essential
requisite to respect from the South American. We are different in many
ways as to character and methods. In dealing with all foreign people, it
is important to avoid the narrow and uninstructed prejudice which
assumes that difference from ourselves denotes inferiority. There is
nothing that we resent so quickly as an assumption of superiority or
evidence of condescension in foreigners; there is nothing that the South
Americans resent so quickly. The South Americans are our superiors in
some respects; we are their superiors in other respects. We should show
to them what is best in us and see what is best in them. Every agent of
an American producer or merchant should be instructed that courtesy,
politeness, kindly consideration, are essential requisites for success
in the South American trade.
6. The investment of American capital in South America under the
direction of American experts should be promoted, not merely upon simple
investment grounds, but as a means of creating and enlarging trade. For
simple investment purposes the opportunities are innumerable. Good
business judgment and good business management will be necessary there,
of course, as they are necessary here; but, given these, I believe that
there is a vast number of enterprises awaiting capital in the more
advanced countries of South America, capable of yielding great profits,
and in which the property and the profits will be as safe as in the
United States or Canada. A good many such enterprises are already begun.
I have found a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a
graduate of the Columbia School of Mines, and a graduate of Colonel
Roosevelt's Rough Riders smelting copper close under the snow line of
the Andes; I have ridden in an American car upon an American electric
road, built by a New York engineer, in the heart of the coffee region of
Brazil; and I have seen the waters of that river along which Pizarro
established his line of communication in the conquest of Peru, harnessed
to American machinery to make light and power for the city of Lima.
Every such point is the nucleus of American trade--the source of orders
for American goods.
7. It is absolutely essential that the means of communication between
the two countries should be improved and increased.
This underlies all other considerations and it applies to the mail, the
passenger, and the freight services. Between all the principal South
American ports and England, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, lines of
swift and commodious steamers ply regularly. There are five subsidized
first-class mail and passenger lines between Buenos Ayres and Europe;
there is no such line between Buenos Ayres and the United States. Within
the past two years the German, the English, and the Italian lines have
been replacing their old steamers with new and swifter vessels of modern
construction, accommodation, and capacity.
In the year ending June 30, 1905, there entered the port of Rio de
Janeiro steamers and sailing vessels flying the flag of Austria-Hungary,
120; of Norway, 142; of Italy, 165; of Argentina, 264; of France, 349;
of Germany, 657; of Great Britain, 1785; of the United States,--no
steamers and seven sailing vessels, two of which were in distress!
An English firm runs a small steamer monthly between New York and Rio de
Janeiro; the Panama Railroad Company runs steamers between New York and
the Isthmus of Panama; the Brazilians are starting for themselves a line
between Rio and New York; there are two or three foreign concerns
running slow cargo boats, and there are some foreign tramp steamers.
That is the sum total of American communication with South America
beyond the Caribbean Sea. Not one American steamship runs to any South
American port beyond the Caribbean. During the past summer, I entered
the ports of Pará, Pernambuco, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, Santos,
Montevideo, Buenos Ayres, Bahia Blanca, Punta Arenas, Lota, Valparaiso,
Coquimbo, Tocopilla, Callao, and Cartagena--all of the great ports and a
large proportion of the secondary ports of the southern continent. I saw
only one ship, besides the cruiser that carried me, flying the American
flag.
The mails between South America and Europe are swift, regular, and
certain; between South America and the United States they are slow,
irregular, and uncertain. Six weeks is not an uncommon time for a letter
to take between Buenos Ayres or Valparaiso and New York. The merchant
who wishes to order American goods cannot know when his order will be
received nor when it will be filled. The freight charges between the
South American cities and American cities are generally and
substantially higher than between the same cities and Europe; at many
points the deliveries of freight are uncertain and its condition upon
arrival doubtful. The passenger accommodations are such as to make a
journey to the United States a trial to be endured and a journey to
Europe a pleasure to be enjoyed. The best way to travel between the
United States and both the southwest coast and the east coast of South
America is to go by way of Europe, crossing the Atlantic twice. It is
impossible that trade should prosper or intercourse increase or mutual
knowledge grow to any great degree under such circumstances. The
communication is worse now than it was twenty-five years ago. So long as
it is left in the hands of our foreign competitors in business, we
cannot reasonably look for any improvement. It is only reasonable to
expect that European steamship lines shall be so managed as to promote
European trade in South America, rather than to promote the trade of the
United States in South America.
This woeful deficiency in the means to carry on and enlarge our South
American trade is but a part of the general decline and feebleness of
the American merchant marine, which has reduced us from carrying over
ninety per cent of our export trade in our own ships to the carriage of
nine per cent of that trade in our own ships and dependence upon foreign
shipowners for the carriage of ninety-one per cent. The true remedy and
the only remedy is the establishment of American lines of steamships
between the United States and the great ports of South America, adequate
to render fully as good service as is now afforded by the European lines
between those ports and Europe. The substantial underlying fact was well
stated in the resolution of this Trans-Mississippi Congress three years
ago:
That every ship is a missionary of trade; that steamship
lines work for their own countries just as railroad lines
work for their terminal points, and that it is as absurd for
the United States to depend upon foreign ships to distribute
its products as it would be for a department store to depend
upon the wagons of a competing house to deliver its goods.
How can this defect be remedied? The answer to this question must be
found by ascertaining the cause of the decline of our merchant marine.
Why is it that Americans have substantially retired from the foreign
transport service? We are a nation of maritime traditions and facility;
we are a nation of constructive capacity, competent to build ships; we
are eminent, if not preëminent, in the construction of machinery; we
have abundant capital seeking investment; we have courage and enterprise
shrinking from no competition in any field which we choose to enter.
Why, then, have we retired from this field in which we were once
conspicuously successful?
I think the answer is twofold.
1. The higher wages and the greater cost of maintenance of American
officers and crews make it impossible to compete on equal terms with
foreign ships. The scale of living and the scale of pay of American
sailors are fixed by the standard of wages and of living in the United
States, and those are maintained at a high level by the protective
tariff. The moment the American passes beyond the limits of his country
and engages in ocean transportation, he comes into competition with the
lower foreign scale of wages and of living. Mr. Joseph L. Bristow, in
his report upon trade conditions affecting the Panama Railroad, dated
June 14, 1905, gives in detail the cost of operating an American
steamship with a tonnage of approximately thirty-five hundred tons as
compared with the cost of operating a specified German steamship of the
same tonnage, and the differences aggregate $15,315 per annum greater
cost for the American steamship than for the German; that is $4.37 per
ton. He gives also in detail the cost of maintaining another American
steamship with a tonnage of approximately twenty-five hundred tons as
compared with the cost of operating a specified British steamship of the
same tonnage, and the differences aggregate $18,289.68 per annum greater
cost for the American steamship than for the British; that is $7.31 per
ton. It is manifest that if the German steamship were content with a
profit of less than $15,000 per annum, and the British with a profit of
less than $18,000 per annum, the American ships would have to go out of
business.
2. The principal maritime nations of the world, anxious to develop their
trade, to promote their shipbuilding industry, to have at hand
transports and auxiliary cruisers in case of war, are fostering their
steamship lines by the payment of subsidies. England is paying to her
steamship lines between six and seven million dollars a year; it is
estimated that since 1840 she has paid to them between two hundred and
fifty and three hundred millions. The enormous development of her
commerce, her preponderant share of the carrying trade of the world, and
her shipyards crowded with construction orders from every part of the
earth indicate the success of her policy. France is paying about eight
million dollars a year; Italy and Japan, between three and four million
each; Germany, upon the initiative of Bismarck, is building up her trade
with wonderful rapidity by heavy subventions to her steamship lines and
by giving special differential rates of carriage over her railroads for
merchandise shipped by those lines. Spain, Norway, Austria-Hungary,
Canada, all subsidize their own lines. It is estimated that about
$28,000,000 a year are paid by our commercial competitors to their
steamship lines.
Against these advantages of his competitor the American shipowner has to
contend; and it is manifest that the subsidized ship can afford to carry
freight at cost for a period long enough to drive him out of business.
We are living in a world not of natural competition, but of subsidized
competition. State aid to steamship lines is as much a part of the
commercial system of our day as state employment of consuls to promote
business.
It will be observed that both of these disadvantages under which the
American shipowner labors are artificial; they are created by
governmental action--one by our own Government in raising the standard
of wages and living, by the protective tariff; the other by foreign
governments in paying subsidies to their ships for the promotion of
their own trade. For the American shipowner it is not a contest of
intelligence, skill, industry, and thrift against similar qualities in
his competitor; it is a contest against his competitors and his
competitors' governments and his own government also.
Plainly, these disadvantages created by governmental action can be
neutralized only by governmental action, and should be neutralized by
such action.
What action ought our Government to take for the accomplishment of this
just purpose? Three kinds of action have been advocated.
1. A law providing for free ships--that is, permitting Americans to buy
ships in other countries and bring them under the American flag.
Plainly, this would not at all meet the difficulties which I have
described. The only thing it would accomplish would be to overcome the
excess in cost of building a ship in an American shipyard over the cost
of building it in a foreign shipyard; but since all the materials which
enter into an American ship are entirely relieved of duty, the
difference in cost of construction is so slight as to be practically a
negligible quantity, and to afford no substantial obstacle to the
revival of American shipping. The expedient of free ships, therefore,
would be merely to sacrifice our American shipbuilding industry, which
ought to be revived and enlarged with American shipping, and to
sacrifice it without receiving any substantial benefit. It is to be
observed that Germany, France, and Italy all have attempted to build up
their own shipping by adopting the policy of free ships, have failed in
the experiment, have abandoned it, and have adopted in its place the
policy of subsidy.
2. It has been proposed to establish a discriminating tariff duty in
favor of goods imported in American ships--that is to say, to impose
higher duties upon goods imported in foreign ships than are imposed on
goods imported in American ships. We tried that once many years ago and
abandoned it. In its place we have entered into treaties of commerce and
navigation with the principal countries of the world, expressly agreeing
that no such discrimination shall be made between their vessels and
ours. To sweep away all those treaties and enter upon a war of
commercial retaliation and reprisal for the sake of accomplishing
indirectly what can be done directly should not be seriously considered.
3. There remains the third and obvious method: to neutralize the
artificial disadvantages imposed upon American shipping through the
action of our own government and foreign governments by an equivalent
advantage in the form of a subsidy or subvention. In my opinion this is
what should be done; it is the sensible and fair thing to do. It is what
must be done if we would have a revival of our shipping and the desired
development of our foreign trade. We cannot repeal the protective
tariff; no political party dreams of repealing it; we do not wish to
lower the standard of American living or American wages. We should give
back to the shipowner what we take away from him for the purpose of
maintaining that standard; and unless we do give it back we shall
continue to go without ships. How can the expenditure of public money
for the improvement of rivers and harbors to promote trade be justified
upon any grounds which do not also sustain this proposal? Would any one
reverse the policy that granted aid to the Pacific railroads, the
pioneers of our enormous internal commerce, the agencies that built up
the great traffic which has enabled half a dozen other roads to be built
in later years without assistance? Such subventions would not be gifts.
They would be at once compensation for injuries inflicted upon American
shipping by American laws and the consideration for benefits received by
the whole American people--not the shippers or the shipbuilders or the
sailors alone, but by every manufacturer, every miner, every farmer,
every merchant whose prosperity depends upon a market for his products.
The provision for such just compensation should be carefully shaped and
directed so that it will go to individual advantage only so far as the
individual is enabled by it to earn a reasonable profit by building up
the business of the country.
A bill is now pending in Congress which contains such provisions; it has
passed the Senate and is now before the House Committee on Merchant
Marine and Fisheries; it is known as Senate bill No. 529, Fifty-ninth
Congress, First Session. It provides specifically that the
Postmaster-General may pay to American steamships, of specified rates of
speed, carrying mails upon a regular service, compensation not to exceed
the following amounts: For a line from an Atlantic port to Brazil,
monthly, $150,000 a year; for a line from an Atlantic port to Uruguay
and Argentina, monthly, $187,500 a year; for a line from a Gulf port to
Brazil, monthly, $137,500 a year; for a line from each of two Gulf ports
and from New Orleans to Central America and the Isthmus of Panama,
weekly, $75,000 a year; for a line from a Gulf port to Mexico, weekly,
$50,000 a year; for a line from a Pacific coast port to Mexico, Central
America, and the Isthmus of Panama, fortnightly, $120,000 a year. For
these six regular lines a total of $720,000. The payments provided are
no more than enough to give the American ships a fair living chance in
the competition.
There are other wise and reasonable provisions in the bill relating to
trade with the Orient, to tramp steamers, and to a naval reserve, but I
am now concerned with the provisions for trade to the south. The hope of
such a trade lies chiefly in the passage of that bill.
Postmaster-General Cortelyou, in his report for 1905, said:
Congress has authorized the Postmaster-General, by the act
of 1891, to contract with the owners of American steamships
for ocean mail service and has realized the impracticability
of commanding suitable steamships in the interest of the
postal service alone by requiring that such steamers shall
be of a size, class, and equipment which will promote
commerce and become available as auxiliary cruisers of the
navy in case of need. The compensation allowed to such
steamers is found to be wholly inadequate to secure the
proposals contemplated; hence, advertisements from time to
time have failed to develop any bids for much-needed
service. This is especially true in regard to several of the
countries of South America, with which we have cordial
relations and which, for manifest reasons, should have
direct mail connections with us. I refer to Brazil and
countries south of it. Complaints of serious delay to mails
for these countries have become frequent and emphatic,
leading to the suggestion on the part of certain officials
of the government that for the present and until more
satisfactory direct communication can be established,
important mails should be dispatched to South America by way
of European ports and on European steamers, which would not
only involve the United States in the payment of double
transit rates to a foreign country for the dispatch of its
mails to countries of our own hemisphere, but might
seriously embarrass the government in the exchange of
important official and diplomatic correspondence.
The fact that the government claims exclusive control of the
transmission of letter mail throughout its own territory
would seem to imply that it should secure and maintain the
exclusive jurisdiction when necessary, of its mails on the
high seas. The unprecedented expansion of trade and foreign
commerce justifies prompt consideration of an adequate
foreign mail service.
It is difficult to believe, but it is true, that out of this faulty
ocean mail service the government of the United States is making a large
profit. The actual cost to the government last year of the ocean mail
service to foreign countries other than Canada and Mexico was
$2,965,624.21, while the proceeds realized by the government from
postage between the United States and foreign countries other than
Canada and Mexico was $6,008,807.53, leaving the profit to the United
States of $3,043,183.32; that is to say, under existing law the
government of the United States, having assumed the monopoly of carrying
the mails for the people of the country, is making a profit of
$3,000,000 per annum by rendering cheap and inefficient service. Every
dollar of that three millions is made at the expense of the commerce of
the United States. What can be plainer than that the government ought to
expend at least the profits that it gets from the ocean mail service in
making the ocean mail service efficient. One quarter of those profits
would establish all these lines which I have described between the
United States and South and Central America, and give us, besides a good
mail service, enlarged markets for the producers and merchants of the
United States who pay the postage from which the profits come.[12]
In his last message to Congress, President Roosevelt said:
To the spread of our trade in peace and the defense of our
flag in war a great and prosperous merchant marine is
indispensable. We should have ships of our own and seamen of
our own to convey our goods to neutral markets, and in case
of need to reënforce our battle line. It cannot but be a
source of regret and uneasiness to us that the lines of
communication with our sister republics of South America
should be chiefly under foreign control. It is not a good
thing that American merchants and manufacturers should have
to send their goods and letters to South America via Europe
if they wish security and dispatch. Even on the Pacific,
where our ships have held their own better than on the
Atlantic, our merchant flag is now threatened through the
liberal aid bestowed by other governments on their own steam
lines. I ask your earnest consideration of the report with
which the Merchant Marine Commission has followed its long
and careful inquiry.
The bill now pending in the House is a bill framed upon the report of
that Merchant Marine Commission. The question whether it shall become a
law depends upon your Representatives in the House. You have the
judgment of the Postmaster-General, you have the judgment of the
Senate, you have the judgment of the President; if you agree with these
judgments and wish the bill which embodies them to become a law, say so
to your Representatives. Say it to them individually and directly, for
it is your right to advise them and it will be their pleasure to hear
from you what legislation the interests of their constituents demand.
The great body of Congressmen are always sincerely desirous to meet the
just wishes of their constituents and to do what is for the public
interest; but in this great country they are continually assailed by
innumerable expressions of private opinion and by innumerable demands
for the expenditure of public money; they come to discriminate very
clearly between private opinion and public opinion, and between real
public opinion and the manufactured appearance of public opinion; they
know that when there is a real demand for any kind of legislation it
will make itself known to them through a multitude of individual voices.
Resolutions of commercial bodies frequently indicate nothing except that
the proposer of the resolution has a positive opinion and that no one
else has interest enough in the subject to oppose it. Such resolutions
by themselves, therefore, have comparatively little effect; they are
effective only when the support of individual expressions shows that
they really represent a genuine and general opinion.
It is for you and the business men all over the country whom you
represent to show to the Representatives in Congress that the producing
and commercial interests of the country really desire a practical
measure to enlarge the markets and increase the foreign trade of the
United States, by enabling American shipping to overcome the
disadvantages imposed upon it by foreign governments for the benefit of
their trade, and by our government for the benefit of our home industry.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] There would be some modification of these figures if the cost of
getting the mails to and from the exchange offices were charged against
the account; but this is not separable from the general domestic cost
and would not materially change the result.
SOUTH AMERICAN COMMERCE
ADDRESS AT THE NATIONAL CONVENTION FOR THE EXTENSION OF THE FOREIGN
COMMERCE OF THE UNITED STATES, WASHINGTON, D. C., JANUARY 14, 1907
I thank you for your cordial greeting, and I thank you, Mr. Chairman,
for the very kind terms which you have used regarding myself. I have
come here with pleasure, not to make a prepared address, or to attempt
oratory, but to talk a few minutes about subjects of common interest to
us all.
I wish first to express the satisfaction that I feel in the existence of
this convention. The process of discussion, consideration, mutual
information, and comparison of opinion among the people who are not in
office, is the process that puts under the forms of representative
government the reality of freedom and of a self-governing people. The
discussion which takes place in such meetings as this, and which is
stimulated by such meetings as this, in the club, in all the local
associations and places where men meet throughout the country, is at
once far removed from the secret and selfish devices of the lobbyist and
from the stolid indifference which characterizes a people willing to be
governed without themselves having a voice in government.
I congratulate you that you have come here to the nation's capital to
discuss and consider subjects which are properly of national concern;
that you have not come to ask the national government to do anything
which you ought to do yourselves at home in your separate states, but to
consider the exercise of the great commerce power of the nation, the
power which from the beginning of our government has been fittingly
placed in the hands of the national administration.
To my view we are advancing, and the whole world is advancing, in the
opportunities and in the spirit and method which create opportunities
for that kind of commerce which is profitable and beneficial to both
parties the world over. Our relations continually grow more reasonable,
more sensible and kindly with Europe and all the powers of Europe, with
our vigorous and growing neighbor to the north, with our rapidly
advancing and developing neighbors to the south, and with the nations
that face us on the other side of the Pacific. Little occasions for
controversy, little causes for irritation, little incidents of
conflicting interests continually arise, as they do among friends and
neighbors in the same town, but the general trend of international
relations is a trend towards mutual respect, mutual consideration, and
substantial good understanding.
Of course our relations to Europe, and our relations to the Orient, and
our relations to Canada have long been much discussed and are worthy of
discussion; but it seems to me that the subject which at this particular
time opens before us with more of an appearance, and just appearance, of
new opportunity than any other, is the subject of our relations to the
Latin American nations to the south. I am not going to detain you by any
extended discussion of that subject. I made a long--perhaps too
long--speech about it before the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress
at Kansas City a few weeks ago, and that has been printed in various
forms and some of you, perhaps, have seen it or will see it. The
substance is that just at the time when the United States has reached a
point of development in its wonderful resources and accumulation of
capital so that it is possible for us to turn our attention from the
development of our own internal affairs to reach out into other lands
for investment, for the fruits of profitable enterprise, for the
expansion and extension of trade--just at that time the great and
fertile and immeasurably rich countries of South America are emerging
from the conditions of internal warfare, of continual revolution, of
disturbed and unsafe property conditions, and are acquiring stability in
government, safety for property, capacity to protect enterprise. So that
we may look with certainty to an enormous increase of population and of
wealth throughout the continent of South America, and we may look with
certainty for an enormous increase in purchasing power as a consequence
of that increase in population and wealth.
These two things coming together spread before us an opportunity for our
trade and our enterprise surpassed by none anywhere in the world or at
any time in our history.
It was with this view that last summer I spent three months, in response
to the kind invitations of various Governments of South America, in
visiting their capitals, in meeting their leading men, in becoming
familiar with their conditions, and in trying to represent to them what
I believe to be the real relation of respect and kindliness on the part
of the people of the United States.
I wish you all could have seen with what genuine reciprocal friendship
they accepted the message that I brought to them. We have long been
allied to them by political sentiment. Now lies before us the
opportunity--with their stable governments and protection for enterprise
and property, and our increased capital--now lies before us the
opportunity to be allied to them also by the bonds of personal
intercourse and profitable trade.
This situation is accentuated by the fact that we are turning our
attention to the south and engaging there in the great enterprise of
constructing the Panama Canal. No one can tell what effect that will
have upon the commerce of the world, but we do know that there never has
been in history a case of a great change in the trade routes of the
world which has not powerfully affected the rise and fall of nations,
the development of commerce, and the development of civilization.
We, by the expenditure of a part of our recently acquired capital, are
about to open a new trade route that will bring our Atlantic and Gulf
ports into immediate, close intercourse with all the Pacific coasts of
South and Central America, and which will bring our Pacific ports into
immediate and close relation with all the countries about the Caribbean
Sea and the eastern coast of South America. The combination of political
sentiment which has long allied us with the Latin American countries,
the opportunity which comes from their change of conditions and our
increase of capital, and the effects that must necessarily follow the
opening of the great trade route of the Panama Canal, all point to the
development of American enterprise and American trade to the south.
Now, in considering that view of the future there are certain practical
considerations that necessarily arise. How are we to adapt ourselves to
this new condition? How are we to utilize this opportunity? One subject
naturally presents itself, and that is the increase of means of
communication through which our intercourse and our trade may be carried
on. And that may be in two ways: one by the promotion of the railroad,
long ago projected, and in constant course of development--the road that
we speak of as the Pan American road. When we speak of the Pan American
Railroad we are speaking of something of the future, and which exists
today only in a great number of links, each of which has its separate
name. They are being built, and being built with great rapidity. In
Mexico, in Guatemala, in Bolivia, in Peru, in the Argentine, in other
countries pieces of road are being built--many of them by American
capital and American enterprise; some of them by capital coming from
other countries--promoted by the strong desire of the people of these
Latin American countries to break out from their isolation and to be
brought into closer contact with the rest of the world. Those pieces are
being built until now, when the work actually under contract is
completed, there will be less than 4,000 miles remaining to be built to
make a complete railroad which will unite the city of Washington with
the city of Buenos Ayres in the Argentine.
One of the objects of the Rio conference last summer was to promote and
further the interest of all American countries in the building of this
road, and I am glad to believe that the action taken by that conference
has had that effect. The line now running to the south is almost through
Mexico--has almost reached the Guatemala line; and lines are being built
in Guatemala to connect with that; and within the life of men now
sitting in this room it will be possible for passengers and merchandise
to travel by rail practically the entire length of both the North and
South American continents.
The other method of communication is by steamships. We are lamentably
deficient in that. A great many fine, swift, commodious lines of
steamships run between the South American ports and Europe and very few
and comparatively poor ships run between those ports and the ports of
the United States. No American line runs south of the Caribbean Sea. Our
mails are slow and uncertain. It is a matter of hardship for a passenger
to go directly between the great South American ports and the great
North American ports, while the mails run swiftly and certainly to and
from Europe, and it is a pleasure for a passenger to go between one of
those ports and the European ports. The Postmaster-General reports that
the best way for him to get the despatches from my Department to our
ministers in South America with certainty and swiftness is to send them
to Europe and have them sent from there to South America. That condition
of things ought not to continue if we can prevent it.
One great reason why it exists is, that American shipping is driven off
the seas by two great obstacles interposed in its way by legislation.
One is the legislation of foreign countries which has subsidized foreign
shipping; the other is the legislation of our own country which by the
protective tariff has raised the standard of living of all Americans--a
most beneficent result--has raised the standard of living of all
Americans so that American ships paying and feeding their officers and
men according to the American standard cannot compete on even terms with
foreign ships, the cost of whose officers and men is under the foreign
standard.
If our Government will equalize these artificial disadvantages under
which our vessels labor and will do for them enough to make up to them
the disadvantage caused by raising the standard of living of the men
they employ and to make up to them the disadvantage, coming from the
fact that their foreign competitors are subsidized by foreign
governments for the purpose of promoting foreign trade against American
trade, we will have an American merchant marine and American ships to
carry passengers and freight and mails between South and North American
ports. A bill to provide that is pending in Congress now. It has passed
the Senate. It is in the Committee of the House. I hope that all of you
who agree with me in believing that our Government ought to be fair to
the American merchant marine will say so out loud; say so to your
neighbors; say so in such a way that American public opinion will
realize that that kind of fair treatment is not a matter of the
lobbyist, but is a matter of broad, American public policy.
There is one other subject--very important as a part of this general
outlook and forecast of American policy looking towards the south. That
is our special relation towards the countries, the smaller countries
about the Caribbean, and particularly the West Indian countries, the
islands that lie directly on the route between our ports and the Panama
Canal. Some of them have had a pretty hard time. The conditions of their
lives have been such that it has been difficult for them to maintain
stable and orderly governments. They have been cursed, some of them, by
frequent revolution. Poor Cuba, with her wonderful climate and richness
of soil, has suffered. We have done the best we could to help her, and
we mean to go on doing the best we can to help her.
I think the key of our attitude towards these countries can be put in
three sentences:
First. We do not want to take them for ourselves.
Second. We do not want any foreign nations to take them for themselves.
Third. We want to help them.
Now, we can help them; help them govern themselves, help them to acquire
capacity for self-government, help them along the road that Brazil and
the Argentine and Chile and Peru and a number of other South American
countries have travelled--up out of the discord and turmoil of continual
revolution into a general public sense of justice and determination to
maintain order.
There is a good deal of talk in the newspapers about the annexation of
Cuba. Never! so long as the people of Cuba do not themselves give up the
effort to govern themselves. Our efforts should be towards helping them
to be self-governing. That is what we are trying to do now and what we
mean to try to do.
So with Santo Domingo. Poor Santo Domingo! With her phenomenal richness
of soil, her people ought to be among the richest and happiest on earth;
but the island has been the scene of almost continued revolution and
bloodshed. Her politics are purely personal, and have been a continual
struggle of this and that and the other man to secure ascendancy and
power. She has come to us for help. She is burdened with an enormous
amount of debt, much of it fraudulent, much of it created by
revolutionary governments in the bush or by regular governments in
distress, needing a little money to save themselves from being
overthrown, in desperate circumstances, ready to make any sort of
bargain, to pay any sort of interest, to promise anything to get
immediate relief. Many debts have been created in that way and are
hanging over her, foreign debts as to which she has pledged the
resources of this custom-house to the creditors of this country, and of
that custom-house to the creditors of that country, and of another
custom-house to the creditors of the third country. She is unable to pay
interest; unable to make any settlement because she could not give
anything to carry out any settlement. With this enormous debt hanging
over her like a pall, and with this record of continual revolution and
strife depriving her of credit, depriving her of courage and of hope,
she came to us to help her. And we are trying to arrange so that she may
have the little--very little--moral support of the United States which
is necessary to settle her debts, to insure the honest collection of her
revenue and its application to carry out the settlement, and that she
may be able to stand and walk alone. Now, we are trying to make an
arrangement of that kind by a treaty; trying to perform the office of
friendship and discharge the duty of good neighborhood towards Santo
Domingo. I hope you wall take a little interest in this unfortunate
neighbor and try to create a little interest in her on the part of our
people; for our treatment of Santo Domingo, like our treatment of Cuba,
is but a part of a great policy which shall in the years to come
determine the relations of this vast country, with its wealth and
enterprise, to the millions of men and women and the countless millions
of trade and treasure of the great world to the south.
Our treatment of Santo Domingo, like our treatment of Cuba, is but a
part of the working out of the policy of peace and righteousness as the
basis for wealth and prosperity, in place of the policy of force, of
plunder, of conquest, as the means of acquiring wealth.
The question is frequently asked, Should not a series of reciprocity
treaties be adopted for the purpose of promoting our relations with
these southern countries? That is not so important in regard to the
South American countries as it might seem at first, because so greatly
do the productions of North and South America vary that most of the
products of South America already come into the United States free, as
they are not competing with our products. Between eighty and ninety per
cent of all our imports from South America are now admitted to the
United States free of duty. The great country of Brazil--over ninety per
cent of all our imports from there come in free of duty. So that the
field to be covered by reciprocity treaties with those countries is
comparatively narrow, and that question is not a question of first
importance in regard to our relations with them. There are, however,
some countries in regard to whose products I should like very much to
see an opportunity to make reciprocity treaties.
But this opens up a broader subject. I do not think that the subject of
reciprocity can now be adequately considered or discussed without going
into that broader subject, and that is the whole form of our tariff
laws.
In my judgment the United States must come to a maximum and minimum
tariff.
A single straight-out tariff was all very well in the world of single
straight-out tariffs; but we have passed on, during the course of years,
into a world for the most part of maximum and minimum tariffs, and with
our single-rate tariff we are left with very little opportunity to
reciprocate good treatment from other countries in their tariffs and
very little opportunity to defend ourselves against bad treatment. Of
course this is the side that I look at; this is my point of view. I may
be wrong, but this is the way it looks to me--that any country in the
world can put up its tariff against our products as compared with
similar products from another country without suffering for it so far as
our present laws are concerned. We go on taking that country's products
at just the same rates as we did before. Any country in the world knows
that if it puts down our products in its tariff it will get no benefit
from it because we will have to charge it the same rates that we charge
the country that treats us the worst. The maximum and minimum tariff
would be free from one serious difficulty that arises in the negotiation
of reciprocity treaties. That difficulty is this: When you make a
reciprocity treaty with Country A, agreeing to receive certain products
from that country at less than our tariff schedules, you are immediately
confronted by Country B, which is equally friendly with us, treats us as
well or perhaps better, and to which we cannot with good grace refuse
the same. Then comes Country C with the same demand, and D and E. The
result is that with that fair and equal treatment which we wish to
accord to all countries there is a tendency, by means of successive
reciprocity treaties, to change the whole form of the tariff, and to
change it without that full and general discussion, without that
deliberate consideration of the effect upon all American interests,
which there ought to be in dealing with this complicated and interwoven
business of tariff rates. Now, a maximum and minimum tariff would enable
us to deal equally with all countries, as we are friendly, and ought to
be, with all countries. It would be free from invidious discrimination;
it would enable us to protect ourselves against those that use us badly,
to reward those that use us well; and it would proceed upon a general
and intelligent consideration of all interests.
There is but one other subject that I want to speak to you about, one to
which the convention that met here last year contributed very much, and
that is representation abroad under the American consular system.
The American consular service, I had the honor to say here last year,
has been an exceptionally uneven one. There have been many very good men
in it, and there have been many men in it who were simply passing the
remainder of their days in dignified retirement. That came along
naturally enough when we did not have much foreign trade and we were not
pushing much for foreign trade; but the strain on that machinery has of
late years become rather great. We are pushing out in all the world for
trade, and our people want information. Some of them need it--all want
it--and they need to be well represented among the people of the other
countries where they want to do business. And wherever there is a weak
spot there is trouble and dissatisfaction. So that with changing times a
change in method has become necessary.
Congress passed a law at the last session, the material parts of which
had been hanging in Congress for over thirteen years, introduced years
ago by men with foresight a little in advance of the practical
requirements of the time. Their ideas did not receive endorsement and
practical effect until the last session. The Congress in that law
classified the consulates in different grades. They provided an
inspection service, so that now we have inspectors who have been
selected from among the most able and efficient consuls and whose
business it is to see what consuls are doing and whether they are doing
anything, so that now the State Department will not be the last place
where information is received about the misdeeds of a consul.
They made provision that all fees should be turned into the Treasury and
the sole compensation of consuls should be their salary, thus closing
the door to temptation.
They did in that act a number of very good things for the consular
service. There was a clause in the bill originally which provided that
all appointments to the higher positions in the service should be by
promotion from the lower positions, and that all appointments to the
lower positions should be upon examination. That was stricken out
because it was considered that Congress had no constitutional right to
limit the President in that way. There is a good deal to be said for
that view; but it is equally true of appointments to the army and to the
navy, yet there have stood upon the statute books of the United States
for many years provisions for the filling of higher grades in the army
and navy by promotion, and for the appointment to the lower grades only
upon a satisfactory examination. And those provisions, while doubtless
the President could break over them with the consent of the Senate,
nevertheless have constituted a kind of agreement between the President
and the Senate, having the appointing power, and Congress which creates
the offices and appropriates the money to pay them, as to how the
offices are to be filled. I would like to see that kind of an agreement
applied to the consular service, so that the method of selection could
be settled, and permanently settled, as it has been in the army and the
navy.
Immediately after the passage of the consular reorganization act with
that clause omitted, the President made an order, known as the Order of
June 27, 1906, in which he provided that all the upper grades should be
filled by promotion and that the lower grades should be filled only upon
examination, and prescribed the method of the examination, and also
provided that as between candidates of equal merit the appointments
should be made so as to equalize them throughout the United States, as
they ought to be equalized so far as it is practicable, and also that
the appointments should be made without regard to the political
affiliations of the candidates.
Under that order we will have the opportunity, in filling all of the
important consulates, to get the best possible evidence as to whether a
man is fit for the important place by scanning the work of the young men
in the lower places--better than a dozen examinations and better than
ten thousand letters of recommendation.
Under that plan we will put in the young men who come along for the
lower grades of places and bar out the lazy fellows that want to fall
back on a living they are not energetic enough to get for themselves.
And when we have seen how the young fellows work in the lower places we
will pick out the men here and there who are born consuls and put them
into the higher places.
Now, that is the law for this Administration. It is good until March 4,
1909. What will become of it then no one can tell. I should be very glad
if the public opinion of the country would say to Congress: Agree to
that in such a way that it will be permanent for all time.
Gentlemen, I thank you for your attention and again renew my expression
of satisfaction at the intelligent public service you have rendered by
leaving your homes and your occupations to come here and do the work of
self-governing American citizens.
INDIVIDUAL EFFORT IN TRADE EXPANSION
ADDRESS AT THE PAN AMERICAN COMMERCIAL CONFERENCE
WASHINGTON, D.C., FEBRUARY 17, 1911
Governments may hold doors open all over the world, but if there is no
one to go through them it is an empty form, and people get tired of
holding doors open as an empty form. The claims of a government to
consideration soon come to be regarded as pretentious unless there are
really substantial interests behind the claims. No government, and least
of all our government, least of all a democratic republic, can make
commerce to go through open doors, to avail itself of fair and equal
treatment, and to give substance and reality to the theoretical increase
of amity and friendship between nations. The people of the country must
do it themselves, and they must do it by individual enterprise; they
must do it by turning their attention toward the opportunities that are
afforded by friendly governments, by availing themselves of those
opportunities, and by carrying on their business through availing
themselves of them. But while it is a matter of individual enterprise,
while that must be the basis of all development and progress, all
advance, all extension, nevertheless, there must be something besides
the individual enterprise. The great principle of organization which is
revolutionizing the business and the social enterprise of the world,
applies here as it applies elsewhere. No single business can make very
much advance except as all other business of the country makes advance.
No one can go into a new field very far in advance of others; and the
way for each man to make his business successful in a new field is to
do his share as a member of the community, as a citizen of his country,
as one of the great business organizations of his country, to advance
the trade, the commerce, the influence of his country as a whole, in the
field into which he wishes to enter. A recognition of the dependence of
each man's business for its prosperity and progress upon the prosperity
and progress of the business of all is necessary in order that there be
real progress.
Now, there are governments which undertake actively to lead in this
direction, and they are governments which are making enormous progress.
Germany, a country regarding which Mr. White has just spoken in such apt
and appropriate terms, leads, and to a considerable extent in various
directions, it requires the combination of her manufacturers, her
producers, and her commercial concerns. Japan practically does also.
There is solidarity brought about by the wonderful organization of that
combination; so that it is one for all, and all for one, under
government leadership. We cannot do it here. Our country cannot take
that kind of lead. Our people do not conceive of that as a function of
government, and as far as the activities of our government are
concerned, they are largely engaged in breaking up organizations which
do increase the industrial efficiency of our country. I do not want to
be understood as criticising that. It is all right to break them up when
they are taking too great a portion of the field for themselves. It is
all right and important to break them up when they are monopolizing the
means of subsistence that should be spread throughout the great body of
the people. But we must recognize the fact that when our government does
enforce the law--a just law, wise law--against our great commercial and
our great industrial organizations, it reduces the industrial efficiency
of the country. There is only one way to counteract that effect, not
violating any law, but securing through organization the united action,
and concentrated action of great numbers of Americans who have a common
purpose, substituting that kind of organization for the organizations
which it is the duty of our government to break up, because they are
contrary to our laws.
I am much gratified by this meeting and by the association of so many
practical men, business men, who, by uniting, are really creating a new
force in this direction, upon which I am sure we ought to move.
Let me say one thing about the practical direction of your efforts. The
so-called Ship Subsidy bill has been reduced now to nothing but the
proposition that the Government should be authorized to pay out of the
profits of the ocean mail service adequate compensation to procure the
carriage of the mails by American steamers to South America; that is
what it has come down to. It passed the Senate, as Mr. White has said,
only by the casting of the vote of the Vice-President, and I do not know
what will be done with it in the House. I am afraid in these last days
that it may be lost in the shuffle.
There are two reasons why that perfectly simple and reasonable
proposition failed to carry a great majority of the Senate, and
fails--if it does fail--to be certain of passing the House. One is
because there is a difference between the people who want to have the
thing accomplished about the way in which it should be accomplished.
That is one of the most common things in the world. A certain set of men
who want to have a revival of our merchant marine, say the way to do it
is to pay subsidies, the way to do it is to equalize the differences
between the cost of maintaining and running an American ship and the
cost of maintaining and running a foreign ship, and to equal the
subsidies paid by practically all the other great commercial nations to
their steamship lines. Another set of men who equally desire to restore
our merchant marine, say that is not the right way; the right way is to
throw open the doors and enable our people to buy their ships abroad.
Still others say the true way is to authorize our ships to employ crews
and officers of the low-priced men of the world, relieve them from the
obligations imposed upon them in respect of the employment of Americans,
people of the United States, who will require the high standard of
living that has been produced in the United States by the operation of
our protective system, relieve them from the obligations which are
imposed upon them by our laws in regard to the requirements of the crew,
the air space, the food, and the treatment that a crew is to receive, so
that it will be cheaper to run an American ship. Now, between these
different sets of people, having different ideas of the way to
accomplish a thing, nothing is done; and that situation which exists so
frequently regarding so many measures will exist forever, unless there
is put behind the proposition a force that gives it a momentum to carry
it over such obstacles. Put force enough behind it so that the gentlemen
in the Senate and House of Representatives understand that they are
going to be held responsible by the American people, going to be held
responsible for not doing the thing, for not finding out some way to do
it, and they will come to this sensible conclusion very shortly, and
that is:
"We will settle the controversy about the way it should be done by
trying one thing first, and if that does not work, we will try the
other."
Another difficulty about this measure is that there is a difference in
appreciation of its importance in different parts of the country. Down
here on the seaboard I think most people do appreciate it. You
appreciate it; all the people who are concerned, or wish to be
concerned, in South American trade, or the trade of the Orient,
appreciate it; but you go back into the interior of the country, into
the great agricultural states of the Northwest, and the farther Middle
West, states along in the valley of the Mississippi and the Missouri,
and the people there are thinking about other things, and they have a
natural dislike for subsidies, and when told that a measure means giving
somebody else something for nothing, they express and impress upon their
representatives a great dislike for it. The way for us to get something
done is not for us who are in favor of it to talk to each other about
it. We can do that indefinitely without getting much farther. The way is
to take steps to bring to the minds of the people of the valley of the
Missouri and the Northwest, and those great agricultural states the
importance to them, as well as to us, of having our merchant marine
restored.
I noticed the other day that the people of San Francisco were justifying
their confidence in themselves by procuring all their business
correspondents in the state of New York to write letters to me in favor
of having the great "Exposition and Celebration of the Opening of the
Canal in San Francisco"; and these letters came in by the thousand from
my constituents. They became so tiresome that I came very near voting
against the project as a measure of revenge; but it showed the San
Francisco people understood where to go in order to preach their
doctrine. They did not talk to each other on the Pacific coast about it.
They came to New York and got their business correspondents interested
in it, and got them to talk to their representatives about it. That is
what you want to do in Kansas and Nebraska and Iowa and the Dakotas--you
want, through all the relations that you have, and by every means in
your power, to represent to the people of those great interior states,
who have but little direct relation with the ocean commerce of the
world, the real conditions under which we exist, and the importance to
the whole country of doing something; and if they do come to appreciate
the importance to the country of doing what you are talking about, then
they will be for it, for they are sincere, patriotic Americans.
There is but one thing more I want to say regarding the relations which
underlie the success of such an enterprise as you are now engaged in. Of
course, you have had a great amount of advice, and a great many speakers
have told you a great many things you know, and I am going to put myself
in line with the distinguished gentlemen who have preceded me by doing
the same thing. At the basis of all intercourse, commercial as well as
social, necessarily lies a genuine good understanding. That cannot be
simulated; the pretense of it is in general, in the long run, futile.
People trade with those with whom they have sympathy; they tend to trade
with their friends. The basis of all permanent commercial intercourse is
benefit to both parties--not that cut-throat relation which may exist
between enemies, where one is trying to do the other--and a relation
founded upon mutual respect, good understanding, sympathy, and
friendship; and the way to reach the condition which is thus essential
is by personal intercourse and acquaintance between the men of
Anglo-Saxon or German or Norse, or whatever race they may be, peopling
the United States, and the men of the Latin American race peopling the
countries of the South.
This is something, my friends, in which our people are very deficient.
So long have we been separated from the other nations of the earth that
one of our faults is a failure to appreciate the qualities of the people
who are unlike us. I have often had occasion to quote something that
Bret Harte said about the people of a frontier western camp, to whom
came a stranger who was regarded by them as having "the defective moral
quality of being a foreigner." Difference from us does not involve
inferiority to us. It may involve our inferiority to somebody else. The
sooner our business men open their minds to the idea that the peoples of
other countries, different races and speaking different languages and
with different customs and laws, are quite our equals, worthy of our
respect, worthy of our esteem, regard, and affection, the sooner we
shall reach a basis on which we can advance our commerce all over the
world. A little more modesty is a good thing for us occasionally; a
little appreciation of the good qualities of others--and let me tell you
that nowhere on earth are there more noble, admirable and lovable
qualities to be found among men than you will find among the people of
Latin America.
Gentlemen, I hope for you the effectiveness of a great and permanent
organization, and that you may advance the time when through more
perfect knowledge, through broader sympathies and a better
understanding, ties of commerce may bind together all our countries,
advance our wealth and prosperity and well-being with equal step as they
advance the wealth and prosperity and well-being of all those with whom
we deal, and increase the tie of that perfect understanding of other
peoples which is the condition of unbroken and permanent peace.
WELCOME TO THE LATIN AMERICAN PUBLICISTS TAKING PART IN THE SECOND PAN
AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS
WASHINGTON, DECEMBER 30, 1915
Mr. Root's interest in and knowledge of the American
republics is not of yesterday, nor does it date from his
secretaryship of state. It antedated and has survived
official position. In 1893 it inspired his address of
welcome to the officers of the foreign and United States
squadrons which escorted the Spanish caravels to New York.
It colors with a touch of personal feeling his address on
the Codification of International Law, delivered before the
joint sessions of the American Society and the American
Institute of International Law, and is beautifully expressed
in the following brief passage from his remarks at the
dinner of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to
the delegates of the Second Pan American Scientific
Congress.
Gentlemen of the Pan American Scientific Congress,
and our guests: I cannot refrain, in opening the
postprandial exercises of this evening, from
expressing the great satisfaction which I feel in
taking part in the transformation of the serious and
sometimes dry exercises of our meetings into this
social function. It is especially agreeable to me
because I cherish such rich and precious memories of
hospitality received from our South American guests.
I have said many times to my own countrymen, without
ever provoking resentment on their part, that I wish
they could all learn a lesson in courtesy and the
generosity of friendship from our brothers in South
America. I should have felt that my own participation
in this congress was imperfect and lacked an important
element, if I could not have met you, my old friends
of South America, in this gathering, which excludes
the serious and the scientific, and seeks to cultivate
and satisfy only the generous sentiments of friendship.
Although his address on the Codification of International Law
is contained in Mr. Root's _Addresses on International Subjects_,
it reinforces the views expressed by him, as secretary of
state, in the address before the Third International American
Conference, and its concluding paragraphs are here reprinted,
as a fitting close to the volume of addresses dealing with
the relations of the United States to our sister republics of
the South.
The presence here of Dr. Maurtua, whom it is a great pleasure for me to
hail as a colleague in the Faculty of Political and Administrative
Science of the University of San Marcos, at Lima, and of the
distinguished Ambassador from Brazil, my old friend from Rio de Janeiro,
lead me to say something which follows naturally from my reflections
regarding the interests of the smaller nations. It is now nearly ten
years ago when your people, gentlemen, and the other peoples of South
America, were good enough to give serious and respectful consideration
to a message that it was my fortune to take from this great and powerful
republic of North America to the other American nations. I wish to say
to you, gentlemen, and to all my Latin American friends here in this
congress, that everything that I said in behalf of the Government of the
United States at Rio de Janeiro in 1906 is true now as it was true then.
There has been no departure from the standard of feeling and of policy
which was declared then in behalf of the American people. On the
contrary, there is throughout the people of this country a fuller
realization of the duty and the morality and the high policy of that
standard.
Of course, in every country there are individuals who depart from the
general opinion and general conviction, both in their views and in their
conduct; but the great, the overwhelming body of the American people
love liberty, not in the restricted sense of desiring it for themselves
alone, but in the broader sense of desiring it for all mankind. The
great body of the people of these United States love justice, not merely
as they demand it for themselves, but in being willing to render it to
others. We believe in the independence and the dignity of nations, and
while we are great, we estimate our greatness as one of the least of our
possessions, and we hold the smallest state, be it upon an island of the
Caribbean or anywhere in Central or South America, as our equal in
dignity, in the right to respect and in the right to the treatment of an
equal. We believe that nobility of spirit, that high ideals, that
capacity for sacrifice are nobler than material wealth. We know that
these can be found in the little state as well as in the big one. In our
respect for you who are small, and for you who are great, there can be
no element of condescension or patronage, for that would do violence to
our own conception of the dignity of independent sovereignty. We desire
no benefits which are not the benefits rendered by honorable equals to
each other. We seek no control that we are unwilling to concede to
others, and so long as the spirit of American freedom shall continue, it
will range us side by side with you, great and small, in the maintenance
of the rights of nations, the rights which exist as against us and as
against all the rest of the world.
With that spirit we hail your presence here to coöperate with those of
us who are interested in the international law; we hail the formation of
the new American Institute of International Law and the personal
friendships that are being formed day by day between the men of the
North and the men of the South, all to the end that we may unite in such
clear and definite declaration of the principles of right conduct among
nations, and in such steadfast and honorable support of those principles
as shall command the respect of mankind and insure their enforcement.
INDEX
INDEX
Adams, John Quincy, American president, xiii, 21, 76, 79, 90, 94, 251.
Ahumada, Mexican governor, speech of, 208 f.
Alaska, 248.
Alliances, traditional policy of the United States concerning, 86.
Altruism, ideal of, 244.
Amazon, river, 46.
America, services of, to the world's civilization, 169 f.
American colony, the, at Mexico city, 177-181.
American Institute of International Law, the, 291, 293.
Andes, the, 27, 74, 101, 248.
Apollonius Molon, Greek orator, anecdote of, 188.
Arbitration, international, 170;
practical difficulties in, 142 f.
Argentina, 73-102, 235-238, 248, 249, 264, 272, 275.
Arias, Ricardo, speech of, 145-148.
Armenians, the, 26.
Arthur, Chester Alan, American president, 252.
Artigas, José, dictator of Uruguay (1811-1820), 64.
Atheneum, the, at Montevideo, Uruguay, 65-71.
Austria, 26, 257, 261.
Bahia, Brazil, 48-54, 258.
Bahia Blanca, 258.
Banks, importance of, in securing South American trade, 255.
Barbosa, Ruy, Brazilian senator, 32;
speeches of, 19-28, 52 ff.
Barrett, John, director of the Pan American Union, 153, 232.
Barrios, Senator, speech of, 130 f.
Batlle y Ordóñez, José, president of Uruguay, speech of, 60-63.
Bayard, Thomas Francis, secretary of state, 21.
Belgium, 248.
Bismarck, Otto von, German statesman, 261.
Blaine, James Gillespie, American statesman, 5, 21, 42, 91, 232, 252 f.
_Blancos_, Uruguayan faction, 64, 65.
Blending of races, effect of, 238.
Bolívar, Simón, Venezuelan general, 129, 154.
Bolivia, 75, 248, 249, 272.
Borglum, Gutzon, sculptor, 232.
Brazil, 3-54, 166, 219, 239-244, 248, 249, 257, 264, 265, 275, 277.
Bristow, Joseph Little, United States senator, 260.
Buchanan, William Insco, American diplomat, 147, 214.
Buenos Ayres, xiii, 73-102, 257, 258, 273.
Buffalo Exposition, the, 172 f.
Bureau of American Republics, establishment of the, 91.
Byron, Lord, 236;
characterization of Washington by, 134.
Calero, Manuel, speech of, 168-174.
Calhoun, John Caldwell, American statesman, 21, 251.
Callao, 115, 258.
Camargo, Theodomiro de, speech of, 35 f.
Canada, 110 f., 257, 261, 265.
Canning, George, English statesman, 78, 79.
Capital, opportunities for, in South America, 256 f.;
investment of American capital in Mexico, 201.
Caribbean Sea, the, 55, 159, 258, 272, 273, 274, 292.
Carlos, king of Portugal, 219.
Carnegie, Andrew, contributes towards the construction of the Building
of the Pan American Union, 223, 228, 231;
letter of, 226 f.;
letter of Mr. Root to, 225 f.;
resolutions concerning, 227.
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the, 291.
Cartagena, Colombia, 153 ff., 258.
Casasus, Joaquín D., speech of, 184-188.
Castlereagh, Viscount, British premier, 77, 78.
Central America, 50, 117, 264, 266, 272, 292.
Central American Peace Conference, the, xiv, 213-218.
Chamber of Commerce, the, of New York, 239-244.
Chamber of Deputies, the, in Mexico, 168-177.
_Charleston_, the, 55, 166.
Chile, 103-112, 248, 249, 275.
China, 36.
Cicero, anecdote of, 188.
Civilization, the process of, 233.
Clay, Henry, American statesman, xiii, 5, 21, 28, 75, 76, 90, 94, 251.
Cleveland, Grover, American president, 252.
Coffee, importance of, to Brazil, 41.
Colombia, 152-155, 160, 166, 248.
_Colorados_, Uruguayan faction, 64, 65.
Columbia School of Mines, the, 257.
Columbus, Christopher, 57.
Commerce and Labor, Department of, 254.
Communication, importance of means of, 257-267.
Consular service, the, 279 ff.
Conti, sculptor, 232.
Coquimbo, 258.
Cornejo, Mariano, Peruvian envoy, speech of, 11 f.
Corral, Ramón, Mexican vice-president, speeches of, 192 f., 203 f.
Cortelyou, George Bruce, postmaster-general, 265.
Cortés, Hernán, Spanish soldier, 56.
Costa Rica, 213.
Credit system, the, in South America, 255.
Creel, Enrique C., Mexican diplomat, 214.
Cret, Paul Phillippe, architect, 231.
Cuba, 35, 160, 275, 276, 277.
Cuellar, Samuel García, Mexican officer, 162.
Dakotas, the, 287.
Darcy, Dr. James, speech of, 16 f.
Declaration of Independence, the, 170.
Declaration of the rights of man, the, 57, 64.
Dehesa, Teodoro A., Mexican governor, speech of, 206.
Demosthenes, 187.
Díaz, Porfirio, Mexican president, 158, 161, 167 f., 172, 181, 192,
194, 202, 203, 206, 207, 210;
speech of, 162 ff.
Dickens, Charles, observations of, on America, 179.
Drago, Luis M., speech of, xiii, 93-97.
Drago doctrine, the, 95 f.
Ecuador, 248.
Elguera, Federico, speech of, 127 ff.
_El Señor Root en Mexico_, 158.
England, 64, 246, 247, 248, 257, 261.
Europe, 4, 48, 51, 57, 59, 60, 61, 246, 251, 256, 257, 258, 259, 270.
Evarts, William Maxwell, secretary of state, 21.
Everett, Edward, American statesman, 21;
note of, 121 f.
_Federalist, The_, 21, 24.
Figueroa, Alcorta, J., president of Argentina, speech of, 81-84.
Florida, 75.
Fodéré, Pradier, Peruvian publicist, 135.
Forsyth, John, secretary of state, 21.
France, 57, 64, 100, 190, 221, 247, 257, 261, 262.
Franklin, Benjamin, American philosopher and statesman, 29.
Free ships, policy of, 262.
Frelinghuysen, Frederick Theodore, secretary of state, 252.
Gama, Brazilian commercial teacher, speech of, 36 ff.
Garnett, American congressman, 78.
Garrison, William Lloyd, American abolitionist, 23.
Germans, in Brazil, 249 f.
Germany, 57, 100, 190, 247, 257, 261, 262.
Gettysburg, battle of, 178.
Gonçalvez, Sigismundo, governor of Pernambuco, 47.
Government, functions of, 132.
Grant, Ulysses Simpson, American general and president, 198, 199.
Great Britain, 57, 251, 257.
Greece, 26.
Grey, Lord, 110.
Guadalajara, Mexico, 208 ff.
Guatemala, 213, 272, 273.
Guimarães, Paula, Brazilian deputy, speech of, 30 f.
Hague Conference, Second, in 1907, 3, 171, 233.
Hague Tribunal of Arbitration, the, 158.
Hamilton, Alexander, American statesman, 21, 83.
Harrison, Benjamin, American president, 252.
Harte, Francis Bret, American author, 288.
Hay, John, secretary of state, and author, 21.
Hicks, John, American diplomat, 108.
Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel, Mexican priest and revolutionist, 176,
206, 207.
Holy Alliance, the, 77, 251.
Honduras, 213.
Huneeus, Antonio, Chilean minister, address of, 104-108.
Hungary, 26.
Iberian Peninsula, the, 51, 240.
Ibsen, Henrik, Norwegian dramatic poet, 16.
Indians, 7, 47;
passing of their civilization in Mexico, 209.
International Bureau of the American Republics, the, 223.
Iowa, 287.
Isolation, disadvantages of, 233.
Italy, 247, 257, 261, 262.
Jalisco, Mexican state, 208.
Japan, 26, 261.
Jay, John, American statesman, 83.
Jefferson, Thomas, American president, xiii, 5, 21, 23, 29, 79, 94, 251.
Jews, the, 26, 48.
Juárez, Benito, Mexican president, 176.
Kansas, 287.
Kansas City, 255, 270.
Kelsey, Albert, architect, 231.
Knox, Philander Chase, secretary of state, 232.
Laboulaye, Édouard de, French historian, 134.
Lafayette, Marquis de, French general and statesman, 28, 54, 237.
Lancaster, house of, 64.
Landa y Escandón, Guillermo de, speech of, 165 ff.
Laredo, 210.
Lima, 113-144, 257.
Limantour, José, Mexican minister, 161;
speech of, 195 ff.
Lincoln, Abraham, American president, 94, 174, 178, 198.
Lobos Islands, controversy concerning, 121 f., 126.
London, 26, 76 f.
Lota, 258.
McKinley, William, American president, 36, 246.
Madison, James, American president, 21, 23, 74, 79, 83, 94, 251.
Magoon, Charles E., provisional governor of Cuba, 147 f.
Mann, Horace, American educator, 101.
Marcelino de Souza, José, governor of Bahia, speech of, 48 ff.
Marcy, William Learned, American statesman, 21.
Marshall, John, American jurist, xiii, 21, 83.
Martínez, Mucio P., governor of Puebla, speech of, 204 f.
Massachusetts, 248.
Massachusetts Bay, 51.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the, 257.
Material benefits, importance of, 170.
Maurtua, Peruvian savant, 291.
Mediterranean, the, 26.
Méndez, Luis, speech of, 181-184.
Merchant Marine Commission, the, 266.
Mexican Academy of Legislation and Jurisprudence, the, 181-191.
Mexican Country Club, the, 177-181.
Mexico, 50, 152-210, 215, 264, 265, 272, 273.
Missouri, 248.
Mitre, Emilio, speech of, 73-81.
Mob, rule of the, 141.
Mogy-Guasú, the, river in Brazil, 41.
Monroe, James, American president, xiii, 5, 14, 21, 56, 58, 74, 78,
79 f., 84, 99, 172, 251, 252.
Monroe Doctrine, the, xiii, 50, 56, 58, 61, 74, 79 f., 117, 172 f., 243.
Montague, Andrew Jackson, American delegate, speech of, 13.
Montenegro, Augusto, governor of Pará, speech of, 45 f.
Montevideo, 55-71, 258.
Müller, Lauro, Brazilian minister, 239-244.
Mukden, battle of, 171.
Nabuco, Joaquim, the elder, 47.
Nabuco, Joaquim, Brazilian ambassador, 17, 47, 48, 219, 234;
speech of, 3-6.
National Convention for the Extension of the Foreign Commerce of the
United States, address of Mr. Root at the, 269-281.
Nazareth de Arujo, Galaor, speech of, 36.
Nebraska, 287.
New Orleans, 264.
New York, city, 26, 115, 166, 255, 258.
New York, state, 287.
Nicaragua, 213.
Norcross, Orlando Whitney, American builder and contractor, 232.
North American Society of the River Plata, the, 87 f.
Norway, 257, 261.
Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, 161 f.
Orient, the, 264, 270, 286.
Orizaba, Mexico, 206 f.
Oyapoc, river in South America, 27.
Pacific railroads, the, 263.
Palacio Monroe, xiii, 14.
Panama, 145-151, 166.
Panama, Isthmus of, 258, 264.
Panama Canal, the, 111, 115, 149, 159, 271, 275.
Panama Railroad, the, 260.
Panama Railroad Company, the, 258.
Pan American Commercial Conference, address of Mr. Root at, 283-293.
Pan American Conference, First, at Washington, xii, 225, 229, 252 f.,
291.
Pan American Conference, Second, at Mexico, xi, 225, 229, 253.
Pan American Conference, Third, at Rio de Janeiro, xii, xiii, 3-14,
173, 224 f., 229, 253.
Pan American Railroad, the, 272 f.
Pan American Scientific Congress, Second, address of Mr. Root at, 291 ff.
Pan American Union, the, 91, 223-234.
Pará, Brazil, 44, 45 f., 258.
Paranahyba, the, river in Brazil, 41.
Pardo, Manuel, Peruvian statesman, 135.
Pardo y Barreda, José, president of Peru, speech of, 113 f.
Paulistas, 39, 40.
Peaceable invasion, 189.
Pernambuco, Brazil, 47 f., 54, 258.
Peru, 11, 12, 113-144, 248, 249, 257, 272, 275.
Philadelphia, 29.
Pious Fund, the, 158.
Piracy, 26.
Pizarro, Francisco, Spanish soldier, 56, 257.
Plutarch, 188.
Political science, chief contribution of the United States to, 141.
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 26.
Portugal, 221.
Prado y Ugarteche, Javier, speech of, 116-123.
Prussia, 100.
Public opinion, rule of, 220 f.
Puebla, Mexico, 204 f.
Punta Arenas, 258.
Purdie, Francis B., speech of, 86-89.
Puritan element, the, in America, 56.
Randolph, Edmund, American statesman, 21.
Recife, _see_ Pernambuco.
Religious toleration, 170.
Reyes, Rafael, Colombian president, 154, 155.
Rezende, Doctor, speech of, 41 f.
Rhodes, 188.
Ribeyro, Ramón, speech of, 136.
Riesco, Jermán, president of Chile, speech of, 103.
Rincón Gallardo, Pedro, Mexican officer, 161;
speech of, 161 f.
Rio Branco, Baron do, Brazilian minister, 18;
speeches of, 13, 14.
Rio de Janeiro, xii, xiii, 3-35, 40, 55, 58, 63, 66, 67, 68, 95, 107,
136, 257, 258.
Rio de la Plata, 27, 56, 74.
Rio Grande, the, 161, 196.
Rivadavia, Bernardino, Argentine statesman, 78.
Rochambeau, Comte de, French general, 237.
Romeu, José, Uruguayan minister, speech of, 55-58.
Roosevelt, Theodore, American president, 5, 13, 14, 28, 30, 58, 65, 84,
97, 108, 114, 115, 117, 135, 158, 163, 164, 166, 171, 172 f., 185,
193, 198, 205, 206, 208, 257.
Roses, Wars of the, 64.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, Swiss-French philosopher, 236.
Rush, Richard, American diplomat, xiii, 76 f., 84, 251.
Russia, 26.
St. Louis, Missouri, 13, 255.
Salisbury, Marquis of, 142.
Salvador, 213.
San Antonio, Texas, 158, 159 ff.
San Francisco, 106, 287.
San Marcos, University of, 133-144, 291.
San Martín, José de, Argentine general, 101.
San Martín, Zorrilla de, speech of, 65-69.
Santiago, Chile, 103-112.
Santo Domingo, unhappy condition of, 160, 275 ff.
Santos, Brazil, 41-45, 258.
São Paulo, Brazil, 35-40, 54.
Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino, Argentine president, 100 f.
Scandinavia, 16.
Schurz, Carl, American statesman, 171.
Sentiment, power of, 70.
Seward, William Henry, American statesman, 5, 21, 164, 198, 199.
Smith, William, botanist, 232.
Solís, Juan Díaz de, Spanish navigator, 56.
South America, Mr. Root's visit to, in 1906, xi-xiv, 3-155;
Mr. Root's addresses in the United States on topics relating to South
America, 235-293.
Spain, 26, 57, 75, 77, 235, 247, 257, 261.
Steamships, cost of operating, 260.
Subsidies, maritime, 261-267, 274, 285 ff.
Sweden, 221.
Taft, William Howard, American president, 148, 232.
Taney, Roger Brooke, American jurist, 83.
Tariff, protective, 274;
maximum and minimum, 277 ff.;
discriminating tariff duties, 262 f.
Texas, 161.
Thompson, David E., American diplomat, 192-197.
Tieté, the, river in Brazil, 41.
Tocopilla, 258.
Trade expansion, individual effort in, 283-293.
Trade routes, importance of, 111, 115, 149.
Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress, address of Mr. Root before,
245-267.
Tucuman, Congress of, 75.
Tuileries, burning of the, 64.
Turkey, 26.
Uruguay, 55-71, 249, 264.
Uruguay, river, 46.
Valparaiso, 103, 112, 258.
Vásquez-Cobo, Colombian minister, address of, 153 f.
Venezuela, 74.
Vera Cruz, Mexican state, 206 f.
Villarán, Luis F., speech of, 133 ff.
Washington, city, 273.
Washington, George, American president, xiii, 21, 23, 28, 83, 94, 101,
129, 134, 198, 206, 207, 233 f., 237.
Webster, Daniel, American statesman, 5, 21.
West Indian countries, difficulties of, 274-277.
White, Andrew Dickson, American diplomat, 284, 285.
Wirt, William, American statesman, 251.
Wotton, Sir Henry, statement of, 245.
Yale University, 182, 187.
York, house of, 64.
PRINTED AT THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U.S.A.
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