Latin America and the United States
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Title: Latin America and the United States
Author: Elihu Root
Editor: Robert Bacon
James Brown Scott
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Most recently updated: January 5, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LATIN AMERICA AND THE UNITED STATES ***
Produced by Irma pehar, Barbara Kosker and the Online
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file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
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
possibili
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