Elihu Root

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The jurisconsult is a mentor of nations; in the midst of our eagerness to achieve greater prosperity and in our constant wrestle as citizens to form part of the public administration, he it is who points out the path of our social and political life, and has to dictate the laws which should conform to our customs as well as those which should be necessary to determine its evolution. He it is who, standing in the prow, with gaze fixed on the distant horizon, steers the ship through the paths which guide nations to the haven of greater prosperity. ”

“ Above all things, I feel impelled to say that the most interesting thing in Mexico, so far as my knowledge goes, is your President. It has seemed to me that of all the men now living, Porfirio Díaz, of Mexico, is best worth seeing. Whether one considers the adventurous, daring, chivalric incidents of his early career; whether one considers the vast work of government which his wisdom and courage and commanding character have accomplished; whether one considers his singularly attractive personality, no one lives today whom I would rather see than President Díaz. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is delightful to feel that my country is represented in this land of beauty by so many handsome and cheerful-looking men; it is delightful to see the evidences of prosperity in every American here, and it is delightful to see that that subtle, indefinable quickening of spirit that comes from separation has given to each of you, exiles in a foreign land, a new significance in every star and stripe and every reference to the old flag and the old home. ”

“ That sentiment which all the best in modern civilization is trying to live up to, we have written here in marble for the people of the American continents.
The process of civilization is by association. In isolation, men, communities, nations, tend back towards savagery. Repellent differences and dislikes separate them from mankind. In association, similarities and attractions are felt and differences are forgotten. There is so much more good than evil in men that liking comes by knowing. We have here the product of mutual knowledge, coöperation, harmony, friendship. ”

“ But again, the academy deems it but just to accord all honor to the great orator whose voice all America has been heeding with universal approval for more than a year; heeding, because that voice has ever been the expression of the lofty ideals which America has been pursuing from the earliest days of her freedom and independence.
Nor is your eloquence the fruit of meditation and study; it savors not, like that of Demosthenes, of the midnight oil. It is fresh and spontaneous, such as ought to be at the command of men ever ready to speak to the people of their rights and duties in democracies. ”

“ Washington, whose greatness has alone been given worthy expression in the inspired words of Byron—Washington, "the first, the last, the best of men", and the glorious group of illustrious citizens who aided him in his work, were the apostles of democracy and of the republic. The American Constitution is an admirable structure, built on the immovable foundations of justice and the national will, which will never be overthrown by social or political upheavals. ”

“ The substitution of the divine quality of judgment, of the judicial quality in man, that quality which is bound by all that honor, by all that respect for human rights, by all that self-respect can accomplish, to lay aside all fear or favor and decide justly—the substitution of that quality for the fevered passions of the hour, for political favor and political hope, for political ambition, for personal selfishness and personal greed,—that is the contribution, the great contribution, of the American Constitution to the political science of the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Why should you not live in peace and harmony? You are one people in fact; your citizenship is interchangeable—your race, your religion, your customs, your laws, your lineage, your consanguinity and relations, your social connections, your sympathies, your aspirations, and your hopes for the future are the same.
It can be nothing but the ambition of individuals who care more for their selfish purposes than for the good of their country, that can prevent the people of the Central American states from living together in peace and unity. ”

“ Our most fervent desire is that you may take away an impression of Mexico and of her people as agreeable and affectionate as that which you leave behind, and that, in justice toward us, you will tell those among your countrymen who do not yet know us, that ours is a civilized nation, working out its greater welfare, educating itself intellectually, living and desiring to remain in peace with itself and in peace with all who respect its rights,—in a word, living up to its mission as a free and honorable community. ”

“ President and gentlemen, let me assure you that in the share which the United States is taking and is to take in this work, there is and can be but one feeling and one desire toward the people of Panama. It is a feeling of friendship sincere and lasting; it is a feeling of strong desire that wisdom may control the deliberations of this assembly; that judgment and prudence and love of country may rule in all your councils and may control all your actions; it is a desire and a firm purpose that so far as in us lies, there shall be preserved for you the precious boon of free self-government. ”

“ It is a work by which we will repay to France and Portugal and to Sweden—to all our mother lands across the Atlantic—all the gifts of civilization, of literature, of art, of the results of their long struggles upward from barbarism to light, with which they have endowed us. For in the vast fields of incalculable wealth that the American continents offer to the enterprise and the cultivation of the world, the older nations of Europe will find their wealth, and opportunity for the exercise of their powers in peace and with equality. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We believe in the independence and the dignity of nations, and while we are great, we estimate our greatness as one of the least of our possessions, and we hold the smallest state, be it upon an island of the Caribbean or anywhere in Central or South America, as our equal in dignity, in the right to respect and in the right to the treatment of an equal. We believe that nobility of spirit, that high ideals, that capacity for sacrifice are nobler than material wealth. ”

“ Your presence amongst us as our illustrious guest is an event which will leave a mark in the history of Mexico, for yours is not only the visit of a most distinguished American, but also of the best representative, without the usual credentials, of a great government and a great people. The fact that your visit aims at no diplomatic business, except the tightening of the bonds of friendship between our two countries, has made it the more important and congenial to all Mexicans. ”

“ We cannot mark its progress by days or by years or by generations; but marking the changes by the centuries mankind advances steadily from brute force, from the rule of selfishness and greed toward respect for human rights, toward desire for human happiness, toward the rule of law and the rule of love among men. My own country has become great materially because it has felt the influence of that majestic progress of civilization. South America is becoming great materially because it, too, is feeling the influence that is making humanity more human. ”

“ Of course, in every country there are individuals who depart from the general opinion and general conviction, both in their views and in their conduct; but the great, the overwhelming body of the American people love liberty, not in the restricted sense of desiring it for themselves alone, but in the broader sense of desiring it for all mankind. The great body of the people of these United States love justice, not merely as they demand it for themselves, but in being willing to render it to others. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ With the liveliest feelings of consideration and sympathy I have the honor to offer this manifestation to His Excellency Mr. Elihu Root, Secretary of State of the United States of America.
Yielding to the generous impulses of your American heart, and of your brain of a thinker and of a statesman, you have felt a desire, Mr. Root, to visit these countries, to address to them words of friendship and of interest in their welfare, in the name of the honorable government which you represent, and to shed over this continent the rays of the noble ideal of American fraternity. ”