BANQUET AT THE OPERA HOUSE

SPEECH OF DR. LUIS M. DRAGO

PRESIDENT OF THE RECEPTION COMMITTEE

August 17, 1906

The large gathering here assembled, representative of all that Buenos Ayres has of the most notable in science, letters, industry, and commerce, has conferred on me the signal honor of designating me to offer this banquet to the eminent minister of one of the greatest nations of the earth, a nation linked to us from the very beginning by many and very real sentiments of moral and political solidarity. This country has not forgotten that in the trying times of the colonial emancipation, our fathers could rely on the sympathy and the warm and disinterested adhesion of the American people, our predecessors and our guides in the paths of liberty. The thrilling utterances of Henry Clay defending our cause when everything appeared to threaten our revolution, have never been surpassed in their noble eloquence; and it was due to the generosity and foresight of their great statesmen that the United States were the first to receive us with open arms as their equals in the community of sovereign nations.

The spiritual affinity thus happily established has gone on strengthening itself almost imperceptibly ever since by the reproduction of institutions and legal customs.

Our charter was inspired by the American Constitution and acts through the operation of similar laws. The great examples of the Union are also our examples; and being sincere lovers of liberty we rejoice in the triumphs (which in a certain sense we consider our own) of the greatest of democratic nations.

George Washington is, for us, one of the great figures of history, the tutelar personality, the supreme model, a prototype of abnegation, honor, and wisdom; and there is an important region in the province of Buenos Ayres bearing the name of Lincoln, as a homage to the austere patriotism of that statesman and martyr. The names of Jefferson, Madison, and Quincy Adams are household words with us; and in our parliamentary debates and popular assemblies mention is frequently made of the statesmen, the orators, and the judges of the great sister republic.

There thus exist, honorable sir, a long-established friendship, an intercommunion of thought and purpose which draw peoples together more closely, intimately, and indissolubly than can be accomplished by the formulae—often barren—of the foreign offices.

And the moment is certainly propitious for drawing closer the bonds of international amity which your excellency's visit puts in relief, and which have found such eloquent expression in the Pan American Congress of Rio de Janeiro. Enlightened patriotism has understood at last that on this continent, with its immense riches and vast unexplored regions, power and wealth are not to be looked for in conquest and displacements, but in collaboration and solidarity, which will people the wilderness and give the soil to the plow. It has understood, moreover, that America, by reason of the nationalities of which it is composed, of the nature of the representative institutions which they have adopted, by the very character of their people, separated as they have been from the conflicts and complications of European governments, and even by the gravitation of peculiar circumstances and events, has been constituted a separate political factor, a new and vast theater for the development of the human race, which will serve as a counterpoise to the great civilizations of the other hemisphere, and so maintain the equilibrium of the world.

It is consequently our sacred duty to preserve the integrity of America, material and moral, against the menaces and artifices, very real and effective, that unfortunately surround it. It is not long since one of the most eminent of living jurisconsults of Great Britain denounced the possibility of the danger. "The enemies of light and freedom," he said, "are neither dead nor sleeping; they are vigilant, active, militant, and astute." And it was in obedience to that sentiment of common defense that in a critical moment the Argentine Republic proclaimed the impropriety of the forcible collection of public debts by European nations, not as an abstract principle of academic value or as a legal rule of universal application outside of this continent (which it is not incumbent on us to maintain), but as a principle of American diplomacy which, whilst being founded on equity and justice, has for its exclusive object to spare the peoples of this continent the calamities of conquest, disguised under the mask of financial interventions, in the same way as the traditional policy of the United States, without accentuating superiority or seeking preponderance, condemned the oppression of the nations of this part of the world and the control of their destinies by the great powers of Europe. The dreams and utopias of today are the facts and commonplaces of tomorrow and the principle proclaimed must sooner or later prevail.

The gratitude we owe to the nations of Europe is indeed very great, and much we still have to learn from them. We are the admirers of their secular institutions; more than once we have been moved by their great ideals, and under no circumstances whatsoever should we like to sever or to weaken the links of a long-established friendship. But we want, at the same time, and it is only just and fair, that the genius and tendency of our democratic communities be respected. They are advancing slowly, it is true; struggling at times and occasionally making a pause, but none the less strong and progressive for all that, and already showing the unequivocal signs of success in what may be called the most considerable trial mankind has ever made of the republican system of government.

In the meantime, to reach their ultimate greatness and have an influence in the destinies of the world, these nations only require to come together and have a better knowledge of each other, to break up the old colonial isolation, and realize the contraction of America, as what is called the contraction of the world has always been effected by the annihilation of distance through railways, telegraphs, and the thousand and one means of communication and interchange at the disposal of modern civilization.

The increase of commerce and the public fortune will be brought about in this way; but such results as concern only material prosperity will appear unimportant when compared with the blessings of a higher order which are sure to follow, when, realizing the inner meaning of things, and stimulated by spiritual communion, these peoples meet each other as rivals only in the sciences and arts, in literature and government, and most of all in the practice of virtues, which are the best ornament of the state and the foundation stone of all enduring grandeur of the human race.

Gentlemen:

To the United States, the noblest and the greatest of democratic nations!

To Mr. Roosevelt, the President of transcendental initiative and strenuous life!

To his illustrious minister, our guest, the highest and most eloquent representative of American solidarity, for whom I have not words sufficiently expressive to convey all the pleasure we feel in receiving him, and how we honor ourselves by having him in our midst.

REPLY OF MR. ROOT

I thank you for the kind and friendly words you have uttered. I thank you, and all of you for your cordiality and bounteous hospitality. As I am soon to leave this city, where I and my family have been welcomed so warmly and have been made so happy, let me take this opportunity to return to you and to the Government and to the people of Buenos Ayres our most sincere and heartfelt thanks for all your kindness and goodness to us. We do appreciate it most deeply, and we shall never forget it, shall never forget you—your friendly faces, your kind greetings, your beautiful homes, your noble spirit, and all that makes up the great and splendid city of Buenos Ayres.

It is with special pleasure, Mr. Chairman, that I have listened to that part of your speech which relates to the political philosophy of our times, and especially to the political philosophy most interesting to America. Upon the two subjects of special international interest to which you have alluded, I am glad to be able to declare myself in hearty and unreserved sympathy with you. The United States of America has never deemed it to be suitable that she should use her army and navy for the collection of ordinary contract debts of foreign governments to her citizens. For more than a century the State Department, the Department of Foreign Relations of the United States of America, has refused to take such action, and that has become the settled policy of our country. We deem it to be inconsistent with that respect for the sovereignty of weaker powers which is essential to their protection against the aggression of the strong. We deem the use of force for the collection of ordinary contract debts to be an invitation to abuses, in their necessary results far worse, far more baleful to humanity than that the debts contracted by any nation should go unpaid. We consider that the use of the army and navy of a great power to compel a weaker power to answer to a contract with a private individual, is both an invitation to speculation upon the necessities of weak and struggling countries and an infringement upon the sovereignty of those countries, and we are now, as we always have been, opposed to it; and we believe that, perhaps not today nor tomorrow, but through the slow and certain process of the future, the world will come to the same opinion.

It is with special gratification that I have heard from your lips so just an estimate of the character of that traditional policy of the United States which bears the name of President Monroe. When you say that it was "without accentuating superiority or seeking preponderance," that Monroe's declaration condemned the oppression of the nations of this part of the world and the control of their destinies by the great powers of Europe, you speak the exact historical truth. You do but simple justice to the purposes and the sentiments of Monroe and his compatriots and to the country of Monroe at every hour from that time to this.

I congratulate you upon the wonderful opportunity that lies before you. Happier than those of us who were obliged in earlier days to conquer the wilderness, you men of Argentina have at your hands great, new forces for your use. Changes have come of recent years in the world which affect the working out of your problem. One is that through the comparative infrequency of war, of pestilence, of famine, through the increased sanitation of the world, the decrease of infant mortality by reason of better sanitation, the population of the world is increasing. Those causes which reduced population are being removed and the pressure of population is sending out wave after wave of men for the peopling of the vacant lands of the earth. Another change is, that through the wonderful activity of invention and discovery and organizing capacity during our lifetime, the power of mankind to produce wealth has been immensely increased. One man today, with machinery, with steam, with electricity, with all the myriads of appliances that invention and discovery have created, can produce more wealth, more of the things that mankind desires, than twenty men could have produced years ago; and the result is that vast accumulations of capital are massing in the world, ready to be poured out for the building up of the vacant places of the earth. For the utilization of these two great forces, men and money, you in Argentina have the opportunity of incalculable potential wealth, and you have the formative power in the spirit and the brain of your people.

I went today to one of your great flour mills and to one of your great refrigerating plants. I viewed the myriad industries that surround the harbor, the forests of masts, the thronged steamers. I was interested and amazed. It far exceeded my imagination and suggested an analogy to an incident in my past life. It was my fortune in the year when the war broke out between Prussia and France, to be travelling in Germany. Immediately upon the announcement of the war, maps of the seat of war were printed and posted in every shop window. The maps were maps of Germany, with a little stretch of France. Within a fortnight the armies had marched off the map. It seems to be so with Argentina. I have read books about Argentina. I have read magazine and newspaper articles; but within the last five years you have marched off the map. The books and magazines are all out of date. What you have done since they were written is much more than had been done before. They are no guide to the country. Nevertheless, with all your vast material activity, it seems to me that the most wonderful and interesting thing to be found here is the laboratory of life, where you are mixing the elements of the future race. Argentine, English, German, Italian, French, and Spanish, and American are all being welded together to make the new type. It was the greatest satisfaction to me to go into the school and see that first and greatest agency, the children of all races in the first and most impressionable period of life, being brought together and acting and reacting on each other, and all tending toward the new type, which will embody the characteristics of all; and to know that the system of schools in which this is being done was, by the wisdom of your great President Sarmiento, brought from my own country through his friendship with the great leader of education in the United States of America—Horace Mann.

Mr. Chairman, I should have been glad to see all these wonderful things as an inconspicuous observer. It is quite foreign to my habits and to my nature to move through applauding throngs, accompanied by guards of honor; yet perhaps it is well that the idea which I represent should be applauded by crowds and accompanied by guards of honor. The pomp and circumstance of war attract the fancy of the multitude; the armored knight moves across the page of romance and of poetry and kindles the imagination of youth; the shouts of the crowd, the smiles of beauty, the admiration of youth, the gratitude of nations, the plaudits of mankind, follow the hero about whom the glamor of military glory dims the eye to the destruction and death and human misery that follow the path of war. Perhaps it is well that sometimes there should go to the herdsman on his lonely ranch, to the husbandman in his field, to the clerk in the counting-house and the shop, to the student at his books, to the boy in the street, the idea that there is honor to be paid to those qualities of mankind which rest upon justice, upon mercy, upon consideration for the rights of others, upon humanity, upon the patient and kindly spirit, upon all those exercises of the human heart which lead to happy homes, to prosperity, to learning, to art, to religion, to the things that dignify life and ennoble it and give it its charm and grace.

We honor Washington as the leader of his country's forces in the war of independence; but that supreme patience which enabled him to keep the warring elements of his people at peace is a higher claim to the reverence of mankind than his superb military strategy. San Martin was great in his military achievements; his Napoleonic march across the Andes is entitled to be preserved in the history of military affairs so long as history is written; but the almost superhuman self-abnegation with which he laid aside power and greatness that peace might give its strength to his people, was greater than his military achievements. The triumphant march of the conquering hero is admirable and to be greeted with huzzas, but the conquering march of an idea which makes for humanity is more admirable and more to be applauded. This is not theory; it is practical. It has to do with our affairs today; for we are now in an age of the world when not governors, not presidents, not congresses, but the people determine the issues of peace or war, of controversy or of quiet. I am an advocate of arbitration; I am an advocate of mediation; of all the measures that tend toward bringing reasonable and cool judgment to take the place of war; but let us never forget that arbitration and mediation—all measures of that description—are but the treatment of the symptoms and not the treatment of the cause of disease; and that the real cure for war is to get into the hearts of the people and lead them to a just sense of their rights and other people's rights, lead them to love peace and to hate war, lead them to hold up the hands of their governments in the friendly commerce of diplomacy, rather than to urge them on to strife; and let there go to the herdsman and the husbandman and the merchant and the student and the boy in the street every influence which can tend toward that sweet reasonableness, that kindly sentiment, that breadth of feeling for humanity, that consideration for the rights of others, which lie at the basis of the peace of the world.



CHILE

SANTIAGO

SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY JERMAN RIESCO

PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC

At the Government House, September 1, 1906

I greet you and welcome you in the name of the people and of the Government of Chile, who receive your visit with the liveliest satisfaction.

Your attendance at the congress of fraternity which the American republics have just held; your visit to the neighboring countries, which we have followed with the greatest interest; and your presence amongst us, upon the invitation which we had the honor of extending to you, are eloquent testimony of the high-minded intentions, which will necessarily produce much good for the progress and the development of America.

In these moments we feel a most profound gratitude toward your country, toward your worthy President, and toward yourself for the friendship and sympathy with which you have joined in the sorrow of Chile because of the disaster which has wounded Valparaiso and other cities of the republic.

I wish that your stay in this country may be agreeable to you and your distinguished family.

REPLY OF MR. ROOT

I thank you, Mr. President, for your kind welcome and for your generous expressions, and I thank you for the courteous invitation which led to this visit on my part. After the great calamity which has befallen your country, I should have feared to intrude upon the mourning which is in so many Chilean homes, but I did not feel that I could pass by without calling upon you—upon the representative of the Chilean people—to express in person the deep sympathy and sorrow which I, and all my people, whom I represent, feel for your country and for the stricken and bereaved ones; and the earnest hope we have for the prompt and cheerful recovery of spirit and of confidence and of prosperity after the great misfortune. We know that the spirit and the strength of the people of Chile are adequate for the recovery, even from so great a disaster. No one in the world, Mr. President, can feel more deeply the misfortune that you have suffered than the people of the United States, because you know that in our country we have recently experienced just such a calamity. I am sure that nowhere in the world will you find so keen a sense of sympathy as is there and as I now express. It may sometimes happen that in adversity stronger friendships arise than in prosperity; and I hope that although I come to bring to you an expression of the friendship of the United States of America for the republic of Chile now while the cloud rests upon you, the effect of the exchange of kind words and kinder feelings in this time may be greater, more permanent, and more lasting than they could have been when all were prosperous and happy.

BANQUET OF THE PRESIDENT

SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY ANTONIO HUNEEUS

MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS

At the Moneda, September 2, 1906

I extend to you the welcome of the people and of the Government. Heartily do I say to you, in the name of all Chileans: Be welcome.

We were preparing to entertain you in magnificent style, but it was the will of Providence to visit us with a bitter trial, so we are now receiving you in a modest manner.

Come and see, sir, what we have suffered. Morally, we have suffered much; for several thousands of our brothers perished in the catastrophe of August 16. Materially speaking, we lose the greater part of our principal port and of several cities of minor importance, together with the profits which cease in consequence. Behold now, sir, what remains to us and how we are rising. Our productive forces are alive and sound; agriculture, mining, and manufacturing have scarcely suffered, and our saltpeter treasures continue to exist.

Public order remained undisturbed; generally speaking, the reign of the law was maintained; the authorities fulfilled their duty; and the navy, glorious guardian of half our territory, which is the ocean, was saved intact. Therefore, all we sons of Chile are of cheerful heart.

The virility of a country is worth more than the splendor of its monuments. It does not humiliate us, therefore, to have you see houses and towns destroyed, for it was not a civil war or a foreign enemy which razed them to the ground, but a higher hand. It is rather a source of pride to us to have you witness the integrity and unity of the Chileans.

The fortitude of our race and our good sense will cause us to rise again in a short time to a greater prosperity.

You plainly see that Chile is still entire, and that our misfortune was more painful than injurious.

We did not, therefore, think for a moment that you might postpone your visit. On the contrary, we telegraphed to you a few hours after the earthquake: "Our home is demolished; but come, sir, for we are safe, calm, and diligent."

Besides, the plain dignity of your character, which we knew, and the objects of your visit encouraged us to speak to you.

You have come, most excellent sir, to offer your over-production to our consumers, and to ask a larger place for the Americans in the Chilean heart.

You are going to obtain all that. But, besides this, Mr. Root, please bear to the sons of the United States, and especially to our brothers in misfortune at San Francisco, California, a sacred homage—the intense gratitude of the society and Government of Chile for the generous aid to our sufferers by which the Americans are proving to us that along with greatness of power they have greatness of heart.

We knew of all this greatness. With a territory covering half a continent and nourished by every kind of riches, with a firm and impulsive character, with broad and far-reaching views along every channel which human activity can pursue, and endowed with a clear instinct of what is possible, the Americans have become useful and wealthy.

They understood two essential things, namely, that government is not merely a pleasant and covetable ideal, but a fundamental necessity, and that the greatest value does not consist in traditions or fortune, but in personal merit. They therefore abolished every unjustified distinction of superiority and organized as a democracy.

The result of the combination of such rare and happy moral and material elements has been the springing up of a nation as powerful as the most powerful, and in freedom equaled by none.

And how well the United States know that there is no greatness without liberty!

Since the consciousness of right has become deeper, principles of respect and faith have become implanted in the commonwealth of nations, whatever be the extent of their territory, their population, or their armed forces. The inveterate abuses of force are disappearing. The principle which, being embodied into a law of equality among all the nations, always prevails at present in international relations is that of liberty for the weaker side.

The American Union—the free country—years ago established its foreign policy on the plan of equality. Its commercial flag waves throughout the world without arrogance or spirit of intervention.

Your natural wisdom tells you, Mr. Root, that you do not need any other than mercantile expansion, and still more that none other would be suited to you.

You have of late repeatedly given practical and unmistakable testimonials that this is your policy.

You have stated so yourself at Rio de Janeiro, and your presence among us is a further proof that your purposes are friendly and frank.

Let us enter into commercial relations with the United States with friendship and confidence. We shall proceed as far as is mutually beneficial to us, and this will be shown us by the natural laws of mercantile transactions.

The Government desires that American goods shall come to Chile in abundance to facilitate living, and it earnestly desires at the same time that Chilean products may be multiplied and that they may endeavor to offset these importations.

Since the sixteenth of August we have been pushing more resolutely than before the work of our restoration. We have all the moral factors, namely, order, will, and an apt and energetic people. We also have incalculable and extremely varied natural resources. There is only one material factor in which we may be short, namely, capital, which is a powerful force if well employed.

Chile will be glad to see American capital come and establish itself in our commercial and industrial circulation. It will blend well with Chilean honor and will prosper under the protection of our laws, which are liberal with the foreigner, and under the shelter of our government, which is unshakable.

We are certain that Chilean interests will meet the same respect from the government of the Union that we cherish for American interests.

The infinite variety of articles of supply and consumption will certainly enable the interchange of goods between Chile and America to increase without narrowing the horizons of our commerce with friendly markets, which today bring us capital, raw materials, workmen, and manufactures.

The American Union has happily solved its internal and foreign problems, has established its political and economic power on a firm basis, and is, finally, in full enjoyment of its natural greatness and freely exercising all its energies at the present time. We have attentively observed that it desires to promote the progress of the world and to see the other nations of Christendom, especially the American republics, associated in this great work on terms of equality, friendship, and mutual benefit.

We respond, therefore, to its affectionate call by declaring that we are imbued with sincere faith in the friendship of the government and the people of the United States; we utter fervent wishes that our mutual confidence may become strengthened and be free of misgivings; and we prophesy that the rapprochement which the eminent Secretary of State now visiting us has initiated will be of beneficent influence on our international cordiality and bring prosperous results for our development.

Most excellent Mr. Root, His Excellency the President of the Republic requests you to say to the illustrious President Roosevelt and to your fellow-citizens that the Chilean people fraternize cordially with the American people; that our markets are free to them; that we admire your government officials; that your most excellent minister, Mr. Hicks, enjoys our highest esteem and good feeling; and that we have received you and your most worthy family with open hearts.

REPLY OF MR. ROOT

I beg you to believe in the sincere and high appreciation which I have for all the kindness you have shown me and my family since our arrival in Chile. I believe that the delicacy, the sense of propriety and fitness, that have characterized our reception, both official and personal, have produced in our minds, under the sad circumstances of the great misfortune that hangs over the Chilean people like a cloud, a deeper impression than the most splendid and sumptuous display. I believe that to be able to mourn with you in your loss, to sympathize with you in your misfortune, draws us closer to you than to be with you in the greatest prosperity and happiness upon which the brightest sun has ever shone.

I thank you for your kindly expressions regarding my President, regarding myself, and regarding my country. In the "United States of America," as our Constitution called us many years ago—the "United States of North America," as perhaps we should call ourselves south of the equator—we have been for a long time, and are still trying to reconcile individual liberty with public order, local self-government with a strong central and national control; trying to develop the capacity of the individuals of our people to control themselves, and also the capacity of the people collectively for self-government; trying to adopt sound financial methods, to promote justice—a justice compatible with mercy—and to make progress in all that makes a people happier, more prosperous, better educated, better able to perform their duties as citizens and to do their part in the world to help humanity out of the hard conditions of poverty and ignorance and along the pathway of civilization. We have done what we could. We have committed errors and we acknowledge them and are deeply conscious of them; but we are justly proud of our country for the progress it has made; and we look on every country that is engaged in that same struggle for liberty and justice with profound sympathy and warm friendship.

I am here to say to the Chilean people that although there have been misunderstandings in the past, they were misunderstandings such as arise between two vigorous, proud peoples that know each other too little. Let us know each other better and we shall have put an end to misunderstandings. The present moment is especially propitious for saying this, because we are upon the threshold of great events in this western world of ours. In my own country the progress of development has reached a point of transition. In the fifty years, from 1850 to 1900, we received on our shores nearly twenty million immigrants from the Old World. We borrowed from the Old World thousands of millions of dollars; and with the strong arm of the immigrants and with the capital from the Old World, we have threaded the country with railroads, we have constructed great public works, we have created the phenomenal prosperity that you all know; and now we have paid our debts to Europe; we have returned the capital with which our country was built up; and in the last half dozen years we have been accumulating an excess of capital that is beginning to seek an outlet in foreign enterprises.

At the same time, there is seen in South America the dawn of a new life which moves its people, as they have never been moved before, with the spirit of industrial and commercial progress.

At a banquet that was given last winter to a great and distinguished man, Lord Grey, Governor-General of Canada, he said: "The nineteenth century was the century of the United States; the twentieth century will be the century of Canada." I should feel surer as a prophet if I were to say: "The twentieth century will be the century of South America." I believe, with him, in the great development of Canada; but just as the nineteenth century was the century of phenomenal development in North America, I believe that no student can help seeing that the twentieth century will be the century of phenomenal development in South America.

And so our countries will be face to face in a new attitude. We cannot longer remain strangers to each other; our relations must be those of intimacy, and this is the time to say that our relations will be those of friendship.

On the other hand, before long the construction of the canal across the Isthmus of Panama, which will fulfill the dreams of the early navigators, which will accomplish the work projected for centuries, will at last be completed, while the men who are today active in the business of both countries are still on the field of action.

This, therefore, is the moment to safeguard harmony in the relations between the two nations.

I do not believe that any one can say what changes the opening of the Panama Canal will bring in the affairs of the world; but we do know that great changes in the commercial routes of the world have changed the course of history, and no one can doubt that the creation of a waterway that will put the Pacific coast of South America in close touch with the Atlantic coast of North America must be a factor of incalculable importance in determining the affairs of the western hemisphere and promoting our relations of intimacy and friendship.

Now, at this moment, at the beginning of this great commercial and industrial awakening—I say at the beginning, notwithstanding all that you have already done, because I believe you have only begun to realize the great work you have before you—at this moment there falls on you this terrible misfortune, one of those warnings that at times God sends to his people to show them how weak they are in his hands—a misfortune because of which the entire world mourns with you. But I believe—I know—that the air of these mountains and of these shores, which in another time gave its spirit to the proud and indomitable Arucanian race, has given to the people of Chile the vigor with which to rise up from the ashes of Valparaiso and with which to make out of the misfortune of today the incentive for great deeds tomorrow. And in this era of friendship, when peaceful immigration has replaced armed invasions, when the free exchange of capital and the international ownership of industrial and commercial enterprises, of manufactures, of mines, have replaced rapine and plunder—in this era of commercial conquest and industrial acquisition, of more frequent intercourse among men, of more intimate knowledge and better understanding, there has come to you in this your great misfortune the friendship and the sympathy of the world.

In truth, our friends who sleep the last sleep there in Valparaiso have brought to their country a possession of greater value than was ever won by the soldier on the battlefield.

As I said to you yesterday, Mr. President, I feared that under the present sad circumstances I might be intruding upon you; should I not rather feel that the words of friendship of which I am the bearer are in perfect harmony with the sentiment that your affliction has created in all countries, the universal recognition of the brotherhood of man?



PERU

BANQUET AT THE GOVERNMENT PALACE, LIMA

SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY JOSE PARDO Y BARREDA

PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC

September 10, 1906

With the most sincere good will, I cordially welcome you in the name of my country and of its Government, and I believe I faithfully interpret the sentiments that rule in Peru in telling you of its sincere good will toward the United States, their illustrious President, and toward your own distinguished person. These feelings which unite the two countries began in the dawn of independence, because the founders of the great republic showed our forefathers the way to become free; and they strengthened us from the first days of our independent life by the safeguard which the admirable foresight of another great statesman of your country placed around American soil.

Since then the closest friendship has united the two nations. Peru has received from the United States proofs of a very special deference, and has appreciated the efforts made by your government to establish political relations between the American peoples upon the basis of right and justice. In this most noble aspiration, worthy of the greatness of your country, Peru, on her part, unreservedly acquiesces.

The lofty ideas which you have expressed since your arrival in South America, the frank expressions of cordiality, the concepts of stimulus and aid to induce us, the Americans of the South, to work in the same way as those of the North, with earnestness and unflinching hope in the future, have found in every breast the most pleasing echo, and they direct toward your person the most lively sympathy.

Closely associated fellow-worker with the illustrious statesman who rules the destinies of your country, to you belongs, in a great measure, the acclamation with which America and the entire world would greet the great nation that has constituted the most perfect democratic society, that has made the most surprising progress in industrial and economic order, and that has placed the prestige of its greatness at the service of peace all over the world.

Gentlemen, I invite you to drink to the United States; to its President, Mr. Roosevelt; and to its Secretary of State, Mr. Root.

REPLY OF MR. ROOT

I thank you sincerely, both in my own behalf and in behalf of my country, for your kind welcome and for the words, full of friendship and of kindly judgment, you have uttered regarding my country and regarding her servants, the President and myself. The distinguished gentleman who represents Peru in the capital of the United States of America, and who shares with you, sir, the inheritance of a name great and honored, not only in Peru but wherever the friends of constitutional freedom are found—in his note of invitation to me, upon which I am now a visitor to your city, used a form of expression that has dwelt in my memory, because it was so true. He spoke of the old, sincere, and cordial friendship of our two countries—that is indeed true of the friendship of the United States of America and the republic of Peru. It is an old friendship, a sincere friendship, and a cordial friendship. I have come here not to make new friends, but to greet old ones; not to announce a new departure in policy, but to follow old and honored lines; and I should have thought that in coming to South America in answer to the invitations of the different countries, all down the east and up the west coast, to have passed by Peru would indeed be to have played "Hamlet" with Hamlet left out. It is still a more natural and still a stronger impulse to visit Peru at this time, as a part of a mission of friendship and good will, when the relations between the two countries are about to be drawn even closer.

The completion of the canal across the Isthmus of Panama will make us near neighbors as we have never been before, so that we may take our staterooms at the wharf at Callao or at New York, and visit each other without change of quarters during the journey. And no one can tell what the effect of the canal will be. We do know that nothing of the kind was ever done before in human history without producing a most powerful effect upon mankind. The course of civilization, the rise and fall of nations, the development of mankind, have followed the establishment of new trade routes. No one can now tell just what the specific effect of the cutting of the canal across the isthmus may be; but it will be great and momentous in the affairs of the world. Of this we may be certain, that for the nations situated immediately to the south and immediately to the north of the canal, there will be great changes in their relations with the rest of the world; and it is most gratifying to know that this great work which the United States of America is now undertaking—the cost of which she never expects to get back—a work which she is doing not merely for her own benefit, but because she is moved by the belief that great things are worth doing, is going to bring great benefits to the entire world, and to her old and her good friend, the republic of Peru.

I thank you, Mr. President, for your kind reception, and I beg you to permit me to ask the gentlemen here to join me in proposing in behalf of President Roosevelt the health and long life and prosperity of the President of Peru.

BANQUET OF THE MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS

SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY JAVIER PRADO Y UGARTECHE

MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS

At the Union Club, September 11, 1906

With the liveliest feelings of consideration and sympathy I have the honor to offer this manifestation to His Excellency Mr. Elihu Root, Secretary of State of the United States of America.

Yielding to the generous impulses of your American heart, and of your brain of a thinker and of a statesman, you have felt a desire, Mr. Root, to visit these countries, to address to them words of friendship and of interest in their welfare, in the name of the honorable government which you represent, and to shed over this continent the rays of the noble ideal of American fraternity.

Your visit will undoubtedly produce fruitful results on behalf of liberty and of justice, of peace and of progress, of order and of improvement, which you have proclaimed as being the highest principles inspiring the policy of the United States in the special mission for which their peculiar virtues and energy have marked them out in the destiny of humanity.

When those austere founders of American independence laid the foundations of the great republic of the North, and gave it its constitution, they were not inspired by narrow-minded ideas or by selfish and transitory interest, but by a profound conviction of the rights of man and a deep feeling of liberty and of justice, which, in its irresistible consequences, would bring about the social and political transformation which came to pass in the world at the end of the eighteenth century, and was destined to constitute the gospel of liberty and of democracy in our modern regime.

This same people, although still in its youth, did not hesitate, shortly after, all alone, to guarantee the independence of all the American countries, placing before the great powers of the world the pillars of Hercules of the Monroe Doctrine, forming an impassable gateway to a free and unconquerable America.

Today this same people excites the admiration of the whole world by its grandeur. Its government brings to its level the harmony of humanity; reestablishes, on the one hand, peace between the empires of Europe and of Asia, and, on the other, between the republics of Central America; patronizes the congress of The Hague, and in it obtains the recognition of the personality of the American nations, thus giving proof of the interest it takes, with equal concern, in the future of the peoples civilized for a century, as well as in that of the countries just commencing their existence. The American Constitution, the Monroe Doctrine, together with the policy of President Roosevelt, and of his Secretary of State, Mr. Root, voice in this manner, through the pages of history, the same language of liberty, of justice, humanity, and Americanism.

How deep is the lesson to be learned from these facts!

The ancient ideas founded right upon force, the regime of the social bodies was that of privilege, and individual efforts were tied by bonds imposed in the name of the authorities. The modern ideas, such as the United States proclaim, found all right upon justice, and the social regime upon liberty and equality. The human being is not an instrument for the display of arbitrary power, but is the whole object of social life, the mission of which is the development of its energies, its moral conscience, the improvement and welfare of individuals and of nations.

According to the ancient ideas, the greatness of the nations was measured by their military power and by the limits of their conquests of force. According to modern ideas, as represented by the United States, the greatness of nations is measured by the conquests obtained by individual and collective efforts, thereby creating the fruitful and happy reign of truth, of justice, of labor, and of peace.

War was formerly a glory; nowadays it is a calamity. Later on it will be condemned as the sad ancestral remains of barbarism and savagery.

The evolution of ideas is that which now rules the world; and if people do not always comprehend this fact it is because the selfish and personal prejudices, passions, and interests disturb and impair their judgment.

In modern progress, the regime of privilege and of force can no longer create rights nor lend security for the future or the aggrandizement of nations; and nowadays those individuals do not render a service to their native land who, while they sacrifice permanent interests, think they can calculate the meridian of their country by the artificial reflections of a moment, transitory and perishable.

The regime of force or of armed peace consumes the vital forces and the resources of nations; and then from the abyss of inequality, of affliction, and danger produced, bursts forth once more the social and political problem demanding, with threats, the reform of the evil, and laying down the maxim that only the ideal of justice, of liberty, and of human solidarity can possibly stand forth, firm and unshaken, amidst the ruins in which the wild ideas of greatness held by the military powers of the world will remain buried forever.

It is not by means of a regime of force, but by that of liberty, peace, and labor, that the United States of America has been enabled to form a marvelous abode of vitality and human progress; and its government, with a perfect insight into the greatness of that country and of its destiny, today addresses the present and the future of our world, and with special interest explains to America the only paths that will lead the nations to the attainment of tranquillity and well-being.

Once that existence is obtained, you have said, Mr. Root, that it is necessary to live and advance worthily and honorably,—and that this object cannot be attained by a regime of domestic oppression and of privilege, nor by the external one of isolation or of war, but by that of liberty, order, justice, economical progress, moral improvement, intellectual advance, respect for the rights of others, and a feeling of human solidarity. You have clearly stated:

No nation can live unto itself alone and continue to live. Each nation's growth is a part of the development of the race.... A people whose minds are not open to the lessons of the world's progress, whose spirits are not stirred by the aspirations and achievements of humanity, struggling the world over for liberty and justice, must be left behind by civilization in its steady and beneficent advance.

In the life of nations there must always prevail an ideal and a harmony of right, of liberty, of peace, and fraternity, although this can only be obtained by persevering efforts, by sacrifices, and by a long and distressing march. It is necessary to "labor more for the future than for the present" and unite together all the nations engaged in the same great task, inspired by a like ideal and professing similar principles.

Peru has read your words, Mr. Root, with profound attention. She is proud to say that in the modest sphere she occupies in the concert of nations, she accepts your ideas as her own, and declares that they also constitute her profession of faith as regards her international policy.

With your superior judgment you have exactly comprehended the difficulties, critical moments, and convulsions which the countries of this continent have undergone in order to establish a republican government, together with a regime of liberty and democracy. They are still in the first period of their development and have yet many problems to solve.

To develop the immense resources and wealth with which nature has so wonderfully endowed these countries; to render their territory accessible to labor and civilization by opening up means of communication, granting all facilities and giving security for the life, health, and welfare of their inhabitants; to obtain the population which their immense territories require: to educate and instruct the people, making them understand their liberty, their duties, and their rights; to develop their faculties and energies, their labor forces, their industrial and commercial capacity and power; to elevate their moral dignity; to consolidate and strengthen the national unity; to insure definitely the government of the people, in justice, in order, and in peace; to attract capital and foreign immigration; to develop and give impulse to commercial relations with other countries; to maintain a frank and true international harmony and solidarity; to respect all mutual and reciprocal rights and settle all disagreements by friendly, just, and honorable means—to perform, in short, the work of human civilization; these are undoubtedly the points which ought to occupy, first of all, the thoughts of the administration of these countries, in order to secure their tranquillity, their welfare, and their aggrandizement, just as the United States have secured theirs by the genius of their people and the power of their ideals.

If the nations of America, instead of living apart from each other and separated by distrust, threats, and quarrels—which unsettle them, rendering their energy and development fruitless, just as they have kept up a state of anarchy, for a long time, in their internal existence—would unite themselves together by the natural ties which the community of their origin, of their civilization, of their necessities, and their destinies clearly indicate, we should then witness the realization of the ideal you have conceived of a great, prosperous, and happy America; the union of sister republics, free, orderly, laborious, lovers of justice, knowledge, sciences, and arts, cooperating, each one and all of them worthily and effectively, for the realization of the great work of human civilization and culture.

The standard and observance of justice should bring about the definite disappearance of the disagreements which may have caused separation among the South American countries, just as family quarrels are effaced on the exhibition of a just and generous sentiment of sincere brotherhood and harmony which vibrates throughout this continent as an intense aspiration of the American soul, and as a noble ideal of concord and of justice.

It is never too late to recognize what is right and to proceed with rectitude. My memory suggests an important event some few years back in the history of the relations between Peru and the United States, described most correctly by the representative of your government as one of those most worthy of note in the annals of diplomacy. I refer to the serious question which arose in 1852 between our respective countries relative to the Lobos guano islands, when the United States held that they did not belong to the territory and sovereignty of Peru, and that as they had been occupied by American citizens your country would uphold these parties in the work of exploitation; but as soon as the Government of the United States, after a lengthened and lively controversy, became convinced of the right which Peru had on her side, it at once spontaneously put an end to the question by a memorable note of its Secretary of State, recognizing the absolute sovereignty of Peru over those islands and declaring that "he makes this avowal with the greater readiness, in consequence of the unintentional injustice done to Peru, under a transient want of information as to the facts of the case."[3]

When powerful nations, laying aside the instruments of oppression and violence which they have in their hands, rise to such a height of moral elevation, universal respect and sympathy will form the unfading halo of their grandeur.

And thus it happened with the United States of America; and Peru has now the honor once more to express its thanks for the generous friendship and constant interest with which the United States have always paid attention to everything affecting the welfare and progress of our country.

Peru, which is the depositary of the secrets of wondrous and unknown civilizations; which possesses great historical traditions; which was long ago the metropolis of this continent, and then a Spanish colony; which has an enormous extent of territory, with the most varied and wonderful climates and wealth; after grievous domestic and foreign vicissitudes, has firmly taken in hand the great work of its reorganization; has acquired the knowledge of its public and private duties; has given vigor to its character and to its spirit of enterprise; has founded industries and labor centers; has fostered agriculture, mining, and commerce; is using every effort to foster public instruction, increasing the number of schools throughout the country and giving civic education to its children; constructing railroads and public works of national and future interest; opening the minds and intelligence of its people to the currents of culture and modern progress, and endeavoring to establish a solid and well-directed public administration; her fiscal revenues, her trade, and the general capitalization of fortunes have reached in a few years an extraordinary development which demonstrates the potentiality of the country. Enjoying public peace, she is using every effort to maintain a policy of frank understanding and friendship with all nations, and sustains the principle of arbitration for the solution of all her international controversies, thus giving evident proof of the rectitude of her sentiments, and that the only settlements which she defends and to which she aspires are the honorable settlements dictated by right.

These ideas are likewise yours, Mr. Root. And I invite you, gentlemen, to unite with us in expressing the hope that the principles proclaimed by our enlightened guest, to whom we today offer the homage of our respect and sympathy, may everlastingly rule in America.

REPLY OF MR. ROOT

I should be insensible, indeed, were I not to feel deeply grateful for your courtesy, your hospitality, and your kindness; nor can I fail to be gratified by the words of praise which you, Mr. Minister, have spoken of my beloved country, and by the hearty and unreserved approval with which you have met my inadequate expression of the sentiments the people of my country feel toward their sister republics of South America. The words which you have quoted, sir, do represent the feelings of the people of the United States. We are very far from living up to the standards which we set for ourselves, and we know our own omissions, our failings, and our errors; we know them, we deplore them, and we are constantly and laboriously seeking to remedy them; but we do have underneath as the firm foundation of constitutional freedom, the sentiments which were expressed in the quotations which you have made.

No government in the United States could maintain itself for a moment if it violated those principles; no act of unjust aggression by the United States against any smaller and weaker power would be forgiven by the people to whom the government is responsible.

Mr. Minister, my journey in South America is drawing to a close. After many weeks of association with the distinguished men who control the affairs of the South American republics, after much observation of the widely different countries I have visited, it is with the greatest satisfaction that I find, in reviewing the new records of my mind, that the impressions with which I came to South America have been confirmed—the impression that there is a new day dawning, a new day of industry, of enterprise, of prosperity, of wider liberty, of more perfect justice among the people of the southern continent.

I find that the difference between the South America of today and the South America as the records show it to have been a generation ago, is as wide as the difference marked by centuries in the history of Europe. Why is it? You are the same people—not so much better than your fathers. The same fields offered to the hand of the husbandman their bounteous harvests then as now; the same incalculable wealth slept in your mountains then as now; the same streams carried down from your mountain sides the immeasurable power ready to the hand of man for the production of wealth then as now; the same ocean washed your shores ready to bear the commerce of the world then as now. Whence comes the change? The change is not in material things, but in spiritual things. The change has come because in the slow but majestic progress of national development, the peoples of South America have been passing through a period of progress necessary to their development, necessary to the building of their characters, up from a stage of strife and discord, of individual selfishness, of unrestrained ambition, of irresponsible power, and out upon the broad platform of love for country, of national spirit, of devotion to the ideal of justice, of ordered liberty, of respect for the rights of others; because the individual characters of the peoples of the South American republics have been developed to that self-control, to that respect for justice toward their fellowmen, to that regard for the rights and feelings of others which inhere in true justice. The development of individual character has made the collective character competent for self-government and the maintenance of that justice, that ordered liberty, which gives security to property, security to the fruits of enterprise, security to personal liberty, to the pursuit of happiness, to the home, to all that makes life worth living; and under the fostering care of that character, individual and national, the hidden wealth of the mountains is being poured out to enrich mankind; under the fostering care of that character, individual and national, new life is coming to the fields, to the mines, to the factories, to commerce, to all the material interests of South America.

Mr. Minister, this is but a part of a great world movement on a wider field. It is no idle dream that the world grows better day by day. We cannot mark its progress by days or by years or by generations; but marking the changes by the centuries mankind advances steadily from brute force, from the rule of selfishness and greed toward respect for human rights, toward desire for human happiness, toward the rule of law and the rule of love among men. My own country has become great materially because it has felt the influence of that majestic progress of civilization. South America is becoming great materially because it, too, is feeling the influence that is making humanity more human.

We can do but little in our day. We live our short lives and pass away and are forgotten. All the wealth, prosperity, and luxury with which we can surround ourselves is of but little benefit and little satisfaction; but if we—if you and I—in our offices and each one of us in his influence upon the public affairs of his day, can contribute ever so little, but something, toward the tendency of our countries, the tendency of our race, away from greed and force and selfishness and wrong, toward the rule of order and love—if we can do something to contribute to that tendency which countless millions are working out, we shall not have lived in vain.

You were kind enough to refer to an incident in the diplomatic history of the United States and Peru, when my own country recognized its error in regard to the Lobos Islands and returned them freely and cheerfully to their rightful owner. I would rather have the record of such acts of justice for my country's fair name than the story of any battle fought and won by her military heroes.

We cannot fail to ask ourselves sometimes the question, What will be the end of our civilization? Will some future generation say of us, in the words of the Persian poet, "The lion and the lizard keep the courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep"? Will the palaces we build be the problem of the antiquarians in some future century? Will all that we do come to naught? If not—if our civilization is not to meet the fate of all that have gone before—it will be because we have builded upon a firm foundation, a foundation of the great body of the plain, the common people, and upon a character formed on the principles of justice, of liberty, and of brotherly love. Our one hope for the perpetuity of our civilization is that quality in which it differs from all civilizations that have gone before—its substantial basis. I find that here in Peru you are building upon that firm rock.

I find that here individual character is being developed so that the people of Peru are collectively developing the necessary and essential national character.

I find that the riches of your wonderful land are in the hands of a people who are worthy to enjoy them.

I shall take away with me from Peru not only the kindest feelings of friendship and of gratitude but the highest and most confident hope of a great and glorious future for the people to whom I wish so well.

Mr. Minister, will you permit me the honor of asking all to join me in drinking to the health of His Excellency the President of Peru?

RECEPTION AT THE MUNICIPAL COUNCIL

SPEECH OF DOCTOR FEDERICO ELGUERA

MAYOR OF LIMA

September 10, 1906

The citizens of Lima welcome you and are glad to have you amongst them.

You arrive at the capital of Peru, after visiting the leading cities in South America and receiving the greetings so justly due the great American nation and your own personal merits.

You are an ambassador of peace, a messenger of good will, and the herald of doctrines which sustain America's autonomy and strengthen the faith in our future welfare.

The wake left by the vessel which has brought you hither serves as a symbol, indicating union, fraternity, and friendship between the northern and southern states of this continent.

You have been able to form a general opinion as to the present state of the political, economical, and social development of Latin America. You also know now what her resources are and to what conditions the growth and progress of this southern continent are due.

After visiting prosperous countries, whose peaceful labor on behalf of civilization has not been disturbed by the sorrows of war, you reach a land where once flourished the greatest empire which ever arose in America.

You have arrived at the ancient metropolis of Spanish America; you are now at the heart of a nation which attracted the world's attention in former days on account of its greatness and the treasures it possessed—a nation which fought the final battles for independence; and, more important than all, a country which, having been shaken and convulsed by dissension, has risen once more to a life of well-being through a supreme effort of will and a firm belief in its future.

The Peru you are visiting is not only the country of olden times, which tradition has made known for its fabulous wealth, but it is a modern country, versed in the principles of order, industry, and labor.

Nations which live exclusively on the wealth given them by nature make no effort to become greater, nor do they consider their future welfare, but perish, crushed by those whose envy and greed they excite.

On the other hand, those countries whose prosperity is based on the principles of justice, trade, and peace attain success and incite others to follow, contributing thus to the great work of universal civilization.

Unfortunately, this peace, based on those principles, must be sustained abroad, following the example of the Old World, by the acquisition of elements of warfare only useful for the destruction and ruin of men and progress, wasting the national vitality and prosperity, earned by dint of the labors of the citizens and the products of the resources that nature has given.

To change this system for another which will insure to our nations the tranquil possession of what lawfully belongs to them, allowing them to devote their efforts fearlessly to their own advancement, is the noble work to which the endeavors of the great nation which has risen up in the New World should be directed, just as the sun rises in the celestial dome to give light, heat, and life; to maintain the equilibrium and prevent the collision of lesser stars.

Such ideals of civilization and fraternity have always guided the conduct of Peru, whose influence and predominance in other times enabled her to watch over justice, to render assistance to the weak, to fight oppression, and to defend the rights of America.

For this reason we heartily sympathize with the doctrines you proclaim; for this reason we extend to you, with sincere regard, the hand of friendship; for this reason we feel satisfaction and pride when we behold the marvelous progress of your country.

When nations succeed in reaching the degree of prosperity at which yours has arrived they do not excite envy, but emulation; they do not inspire fear, but confidence.

Ere long the vigorous arm of your people will tear away the strip of land which still keeps us apart; and in the union of the two oceans surrounding our hemisphere may we hope that the spirits of Washington and Bolivar will watch the maintenance of peace and justice and follow the destinies of the republics they created.

Mr. Root, may the days you are about to spend amongst us be happy and agreeable, and may their memory ever accompany you, as ours will ever retain the grateful impression of your visit.

REPLY OF MR. ROOT

I beg you to believe that I appreciate most highly your kind welcome and the friendly terms with which you have greeted me. I did not feel as though I were coming among strangers when I entered Peru; I do not feel that I am treading on unknown soil when I set foot upon the streets of your famous and historic city. I think no city in the world, certainly no city in the western hemisphere, is better known in the United States of America then the city of Lima. Almost every schoolboy in the United States has read in the books of our own historians the story of the founding of this city. We all know the wonderful and romantic history of your four centuries of life; we all know the charms, the graces, and the lovable qualities of your people.

We know that you are the metropolis of a people who carry the art of agriculture to the highest degree of efficiency, a people frugal, industrious, and of domestic virtue. We have seen with gratification that you are becoming also the metropolis of a people capable of winning from your mountains the inexhaustible wealth they contain, the metropolis of a great mining people; and within the past few years we have rejoiced to see that you are also on the road to become the metropolis of a great manufacturing people.

We have read, too, the story of your struggles—first for independence, then for liberty, then for justice and order and peace; and with the memory of our own struggles for liberty and justice, with the experience of our own trials and difficulties, rejoicing in our own success and prosperity, Mr. Mayor, the feeling of sympathy and rejoicing in your success in overcoming the obstacles that have stood in your way, in your growth in capacity for self-government, in the continuing strength of all the principles of justice and of order and of peace, is universal in my country and among my people.

So I come to you not to make friends, but as a friend among friends. I thank you with all my heart, both for myself and for my people, for the kindness of your welcome and for what I know to be the sincerity of your friendship.

RECEPTION BY THE SENATE

SPEECH OF SENATOR BARRIOS

At an Extraordinary Session, September 13, 1906

The Senate of Peru, honored by your official visit, greets you as the representative of a great democratic people, whose juridical methods, founded on liberty and equality, are a model for all the American parliaments.

I regard your visit to our young republic as one of most important and lasting effect in the history of the continent. When these peoples have reached the power and development which the United States of America enjoys; when the citizens and the public authorities keep within the bounds imposed by the legitimate demands of liberty and justice and the requirements of order and progress; when all this is obtained by means of social well-being, of economic strength, and the political predominance which passes beyond the native land—then the legitimate and noble influence exercised on the life of other peoples is based, not on narrow schemes of national egotism, but on the broad and humane qualities of civilization.

This your government has understood in sending a full representation to these republics, in harmony with the American idea of union and progress, which the illustrious statesman who today presides over the glorious destinies of the American people—to the admiration and respect of all—expounds and accomplishes by his thoughtful work.

In the dawn of the twentieth century may be seen in this part of the world communities of peoples who, with analogous institutions, must fulfill in history a single and great destiny. This part which the future reserves for us cannot be other than an effective and true realization of democracy at home and of justice in international affairs.

Such is the direction in which Peru is developing her energies, after her past and now remote vicissitudes. Such is the ideal that animates her in pursuing her efforts for reconstruction, because a people without an aim in the struggle are unworthy of victory. "It is no more than a scratch on the ground", using the words of your illustrious President.

As the principal co-worker for the exalted international policy of the present government of the United States, receive, Mr. Root, the assurances of the highest consideration and sympathy of the Peruvian Senate.

REPLY OF MR. ROOT

I feel most keenly the great honor conferred upon me by this distinguished legislative body. I thank you for your courtesy personally; still more I thank you for the exhibition of friendship and sympathy for my country,—an exhibition which corresponds most perfectly to the spirit and purpose actuating my visit to Peru.

I do not think, sir, that any one long concerned in government can fail to come at last to a feeling of deep solicitude for the welfare of the people whom he serves. He must come to feel toward them somewhat as the lawyer does toward his clients, as the physician feels toward his patients, as the clergyman feels toward his parishioners—the advocate, the friend of the people whose interests are committed to his official action; and, as a member of the government of a friendly republic, I feel toward you that sympathy which comes from a common purpose, from engagement in the same task, from being actuated by the same motive. The work of the legislator is difficult and delicate. Governments cannot make wealth; governments cannot produce enterprise, industry, or prosperity; but wise government can give that security for property, for the fruits of enterprise, for personal liberty, for justice, which opens the door to enterprise, which stimulates industry and commercial activity, which brings capital and immigration to the shores of the country that is but scantily populated; and which makes it worth while for the greatest exertions of the human mind to be applied to the development of the resources of the country. How difficult is the task! As the engineer controlling a great and complicated machine does not himself furnish the motive power or do the work, yet by a wrong turn of the lever may send the machine to ruin; so the legislative body cannot itself do the work that the people must do, yet by ill-advised, inconsiderate, and unwise legislation, it may produce incalculable misery and ruin. The wisdom that is necessary, the unselfishness that is necessary, the subordination of personal and selfish interests that is necessary, has always seemed to me to consecrate a legislative body seeking to do its duty by its country and make it worthy not only of respect but of reverence.

Mr. President and Senators, in your deliberations and your actions, so fraught with results of happiness or disaster for the people of your beloved country, we of the North, the people of a republic long bound to Peru by ties of real and sincere friendship, follow you with sympathy; with earnest, sincere desire that you may be guided by wisdom; that you may work in simplicity and sincerity of heart for the good of your people; and that your labors may be crowned by those blessings which God gives to those who serve His children faithfully and well.

INSTALLATION OF MR. ROOT AS A MEMBER OF THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SAN MARCOS, LIMA SEPTEMBER 14, 1906

SPEECH OF DOCTOR LUIS F. VILLARAN

RECTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY

The University of San Marcos of Lima heartily shares in the national rejoicing consequent on your visit to us, and greets you as the representative of the great republic which holds so many claims to the high esteem and consideration of the Spanish-American states of this continent.

Your country, indeed, furnished valuable cooperation to the Spanish colonies in the establishment of their independence. With the example of your own emancipation, forming one of the greatest events of history, the longing for liberty deepened in their breasts. It gave them courage in the struggle by frank declarations of friendship and sympathy; bestowed prestige on their cause by recognizing them as free states at a time when their emancipation was not entirely accomplished; and finally added strength to their victory by declaring before the whole world that the independence and integrity of these republics would be maintained at all costs.

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

Half a century ago, Laboulaye, the illustrious professor of the College of France, said:

Washington has founded a wise and well-organized republic and has bequeathed to history, not the fatal spectacle of crime triumphant, but a beneficent example of patriotism and virtue. In less than fifty years, thanks to the powerful influence of Liberty, an empire has been raised which before the end of the century will be the greatest state of the civilized world, and which, if it remain true to the ideals of its founders, if ambition does not check the era of its fortune, will furnish the world the spectacle of a republic of one hundred million men, richer, happier, and more glorious than the monarchies of the Old World. This is the work of Washington!

This prophecy has been fulfilled; that half-century has passed by, and the great republic goes on its career of greatness, and no eye can discern the ultimate reach of its magnificence.

Today, with the kind name of sister, it sends to us, through you, its worthy messenger, fresh words of encouragement, and invites us in a gracious manner to exert ourselves to greater efforts in the work of peace, of labor, and of the aggrandizement of the American continent.

You tell us that—

Nowhere in the world has this progress been more marked than in Latin America. Out of the wrack of Indian fighting and race conflicts and civil wars, strong and stable governments have arisen. Peaceful succession in accord with the people's will has replaced the forcible seizure of power permitted by the people's indifference. Loyalty to country, its peace, its dignity, its honor, has arisen above partizanship for individual leaders.

You add:

We wish to increase our prosperity, to expand our trade, to grow in wealth, in wisdom, and in spirit, but our conception of the true way to accomplish this is not to pull down others and profit by their ruin, but to help all friends to a common prosperity and a common growth, that we may all become greater and stronger together.

The University of Lima, an important factor in our national life, accepts on its part, and in harmony with public thought, your noble invitation.

This University, the distinguished creation of the great Spanish monarchs, proud of its noble lineage of five centuries, jealous of its glories, believes it to be its duty and considers it a special honor to offer you, the illustrious messenger, the deep thinker, and the highest co-worker in the government of Theodore Roosevelt, the peacemaker of the world, a post of honor.

The Faculty of Political and Administrative Sciences, founded thirty years ago by the distinguished President Manuel Pardo, and organized by the eminent public writer Pradier Fodere—this Faculty, which professes, without limitations, the doctrines of international and political law as proclaimed in your country, is the one which with just right offers you this University emblem, which I am pleased to place in the hands of Your Excellency [addressing the President of Peru, and handing him the medal of the University] that you may kindly deliver it to our illustrious guest.

SPEECH OF DOCTOR RAMON RIBEYRO

DEAN OF THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCES

September 14, 1906

The presence among us of the eminent statesman, the Secretary of State of the United States, is indeed of great significance and surpassing importance in the course of our political life, as a singular and unmistakable token of friendship offered by that powerful republic, and as a generous effort to create between the nations of America a stable regime of true understanding and concord.

This work of peace, which is linked with an unvarying respect for the rights of all without regard to the extent of their power, with the close union of their interests, and with a political unity of purpose which springs from the historical origin of the republics of America and the analogy of their institutions, is outlined in a masterly manner in the address which our illustrious guest recently delivered before the congress of American delegates convened at Rio de Janeiro.

The general idea he has expressed therein of the principles of democratic regime, of its severe trials and accidental mistakes, of the virtues which sustain popular government, and of the public education that must prepare and secure it, reveals to us the secret of the prosperity and welfare of the freest and most flourishing republic that has ever existed, and how it has reached the preponderant rank it now occupies among nations.

The noble purpose of our powerful sister of the North, who with a persevering and ever steadfast persistency presses on, is the endeavor to combine continental interests lacking sufficient cohesion, and to promote their common development, thus seeking to reach "the complete rule of justice and peace among nations in lieu of force and war."

These words of Mr. Root contain, in their severe simplicity, a complete statement of his mission of friendship and advice. He seeks to stimulate the common aim of harmonizing the several interests on a permanent basis upon which is to be established the uniform rule of our common existence, the rule of justice never subservient to private and selfish convenience; a barrier against the arbitrary and brutal decisions of force, nearly always dissembled under plausible forms and motives of international tradition.

There exists a fundamental sentiment which opposes the cumulus of violence and usurpation, which in a great degree constitutes historic international law and corrects the deductions made from purely speculative theories,—a sentiment we accept without demur, and which is asserted like the axioms that serve as the basis and foundation of all reasoning and as a rule inspiring human actions.

This concept is that of a law of coexistence, an intuition of the universal conscience, which all human society upholds by reason of the sole fact of its existence.

But the completely empiric and egotistical manner in which nations have understood and applied the right of sovereign independence in their outward dealings, has, up to the present time, been the almost insuperable obstacle to the universal establishment of a rule of justice which governs, in a permanent and uniform manner, the concourse of interests; each state following one of its own modeling, in accordance with the power it holds and the ambitions it is thereby enabled to pursue.

This tendency, whether open or covert, hardly restrained by the formalities of modern civilization, which seldom succeeds in masking the painful reality, has created the singular spectacle witnessed at the present time,—that is, the undefined aggravation of a military situation which absorbs the greater part of the resources of nations, wrung from the labor of humanity.

The constant fear of armed aggression has brought about political alliances of a purely transitory character, which assure nothing and, in truth, mean nothing but the mutual imputation of violence and outrage, unhappily but too well demonstrated as justifiable motives for apprehension, by reason of the ominous antecedents of an international regime founded on the supremacy of power.

This precarious guaranty, the fruit of an unsteady and purely political combination which may undergo the most unexpected alterations, cannot assure a stable situation, because it is not in itself the constitution of a common, strong, and commanding law; but, on the contrary, is the distrust of the efficacy of the latter and a certain traditional disdain for a humane and peaceful solution of international affairs.

When the anxiety of danger or an unforeseen obstacle does not prevent recourse to arms, war breaks out if the motive is simply the securing of an advantage sustained by a military power which the country chosen as the object of aggression cannot forcibly check.

True it is that at the present time wars are less frequent and more humane in the manner they are conducted than heretofore; but their causes are ever the same, and the intervals between them are only due to the increasing number of military powers, and to the fear of consequent complications of political interests which it is hazardous to provoke.

Treaties of peace since the seventeenth century, which recorded the birth of the modern law of nations, have on some occasions passed through real transformation in obedience to the law of evolution of human societies, which favor equilibrium, not as established by frail or artificial alliances, nor by combinations of the powerful, but by its ethnical factors and the amplitude of the national life based primarily on the progress of its institutions, in the ever-increasing intervention of the people in their own affairs and the reality and soundness of its political and civil liberty.

The definite establishment of an international juridical organ, sufficiently authorized and efficacious in its action, is yet a future event. Law in this respect has not as yet gone beyond the limits of a sphere that is at most one of pure speculation,—a worthy ideal, it is true, but one which in actuality has only succeeded in modifying the forms of violence by recording in the customary code of nations a few rules to lessen the brutality of the action, without eliminating the arbitrariness inherent in the sovereignty of arms.

In the work of common security and prosperity that involves the future of this continent, and once carried into effect, will signalize the most effective advance in the law of nations, a prominent part belongs to the great republic that has staked her power and fortune on peace. In this work we have endeavored to cooperate in good faith and without reserve, and in it, also, the ardent sympathy and the boundless confidence of the Peruvian people will follow.

And since the unmerited honor has fallen to my lot to address myself on this memorable occasion to the distinguished personage, to the high dignitary of the nation which represents the greatest intensity of national life on account of the unrestricted development of the human faculties and the most certain and practical evolution of law among nations, I believe that I interpret the unanimous sentiment of my colleagues and of my country, in furnishing him the complete evidence of our cordial adherence and of our faith in the work intrusted to his talents and to his high character.

REPLY OF MR. ROOT

I am deeply sensible of the great honor which you confer upon me, an honor coming from this primate of the universities of the New World; an honor which receives me into the company of men learned, devoted to science, the disciples of truth, men eminent in the republic of letters. I am the more appreciative of this emblem because I am myself the son of a college professor, born within the precincts of a learned institution, and all my life closely associated with higher education in the United States of America. But I realize, sir, that my personality plays no considerable part in the ceremony of today. Happy is he who comes, by whatever chance, to stand as the representative of a great cause; as the representative of ideas which conciliate the feelings and arouse the enthusiasm of men; for the cause sheds light upon his person, however small, and the honor of his purpose reflects honor on him.

With the greatest satisfaction I have heard from the lips of the learned rector and professor of this university so just and high an estimate of the contributions made by my country to the cause of ordered liberty and justice in the world. I feel that what has been said here today is of far greater weight than any ordinary compliment, because it comes from men who speak under the grave responsibility of their high station as instructors of their countrymen, and after deliberate study, resulting in definite and certain conclusions.

It is a matter of most interesting reflection that after the nations of the Old World, from which we took our being, had sought for many years to gain wealth and strength and profit by the enforcement of a narrow and mistaken colonial policy, the revolt of the colonies of the New World brought to the mother nations infinitely greater blessings even than they were seeking. The reflex action of the working of the spirit of freedom on these shores of the new hemisphere upon the welfare of the countless millions of the Old World, has been of a value incalculable and inconceivable to the minds against whose mistaken policy we revolted.

I have always thought, sir, that the chief contribution of the United States of America to political science, was the device of incorporating in written constitutions an expression of the great principles which underlie human freedom and human justice, and putting it in the power of the judicial branch of the government to pass judgment upon the conformity of political action to those principles.

When in the fullness of time the hour had come for the new experiment in government among men, and it was the fate of the young and feeble colonies upon the coast of the North Atlantic to make the experiment, the Old World was full of the most dismal forebodings as to the result. The world was told that the experiment of democratic government meant the rule of the mob; that it might work well today, but that tomorrow the mob which had had but half a breakfast and could expect no dinner, would take control; and that the tyranny of the mob was worse than the tyranny of any individual.

The provisions of our constitutions guard against the tyranny of the mob, for at the time when men can deal in harmony with the principles of justice, when no selfish motive exists, when no excited passions exist, the constitution declares the great principles of justice—that no man shall be deprived of his property without due process of the law; that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation; that a person accused of crime shall be entitled to be informed of the charge against him, and given opportunity to defend himself. These provisions are essential to the preservation of liberty; and in the hands of judicial power rests the prerogative of declaring that whenever a congress, or a president, or a general, or whatever officer of whatever rank or dignity infringes, by a hair's breadth, upon any one of these great impersonal declarations of human rights, his acts cease to have official effect. The substitution of the divine quality of judgment, of the judicial quality in man, that quality which is bound by all that honor, by all that respect for human rights, by all that self-respect can accomplish, to lay aside all fear or favor and decide justly—the substitution of that quality for the fevered passions of the hour, for political favor and political hope, for political ambition, for personal selfishness and personal greed,—that is the contribution, the great contribution, of the American Constitution to the political science of the world.

If we pass to the field most ably and interestingly discussed in the paper to which we have just listened, to the field of international justice, we find the same principle less fully developed. I had almost said we find the need for the application of the same principle. All international law and international justice depend upon national law and national justice. No assemblage of nations can be expected to establish and maintain any higher standard in their dealings with one another than that which each maintains within its own borders. Just as the standard of justice and civilization in a community depends upon the individual character of the elements of the community, so the standard of justice among nations depends upon the standard established in each individual nation. Now, in the field of international arbitration we find a less fully developed sense of impersonal justice than we find in our municipal jurisprudence. Many years ago the Marquis of Salisbury, in a very able note, pointed out the extreme difficulty which lies in the way of international arbitration, arising from the difficulty of securing arbitrators who will act impartially, the trouble being that the world has not yet passed, in general, out of that stage of development in which men, even if they be arbitrators, act diplomatically instead of acting judicially. Arbitrations are too apt, therefore, to lead to diplomatic compromises rather than to judicial decisions. The remedy is not in abandoning the principle of arbitration, but it is by pressing on in every country and among all countries the quickened conscience, the higher standard, the judicial idea, the sense of the responsibility for impartial judgment in international affairs, as distinguished from the opportunity for negotiation in international affairs. We are too apt, both those who are despondent about the progress of civilization and those who are cynical about the unselfishness of mankind, to be impatient in our judgment, and to forget how long the life of a nation is, and how slow the processes of civilization are; how long it takes to change character and to educate whole peoples up to different standards of moral law. The principle of arbitration requires not merely declarations by governments, by congresses; it requires that education of the people of all civilized countries up to the same standard which now exists regarding the sacredness of judicial functions exercised in our courts.