 |
It does not follow from this that the declaration of the principle of arbitration is not of value; it does not follow that governments and congresses are not advancing the cause of international justice; a principle recognized and declared always gains fresh strength and force; but for the accomplishment of the results which all of us desire in the substitution of arbitration for war, we must not be content with the declaration of principles; we must carry on an active campaign of universal national and international education, elevating the idea of the sacredness of the exercise of the judicial function in arbitration as well as in litigation between individuals. Still deeper than that goes the duty that rests upon us. Arbitration is but the method of preventing war after nations have been drawn up in opposition to each other with serious differences and excited feelings. The true, the permanent, and the final method of preventing war, is to educate the people who make war or peace, the people who control parliaments and congresses, to a love for justice and regard for the rights of others. So we come to the duty that rests here—not in the whims or the preference or the policy of a monarch, but here, in this university, in every institution of learning throughout the civilized world, with every teacher—the responsibility of determining the great issues of peace and war through the responsibility of teaching the people of our countries the love of justice, teaching them to seek the victories of peace rather than the glories of war; to regard more highly an act of justice and of generosity than even an act of courage or an act of heroism. In this great work of educating the people of the American republics to peace, there are no political divisions. As there is, and has been since the dawn of civilization, but one republic of science, but one republic of letters, let there be but one republic of the politics of peace, one great university of the professors and instructors of justice, of respect for human rights, of consideration for others, and of the peace of the world.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Mr. Everett to Senor Osma, November 16, 1852.
PANAMA
THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY RICARDO ARIAS
SECRETARY OF GOVERNMENT AND FOREIGN RELATIONS
In the National Assembly, at Panama, September 21, 1906
You have just visited the wealthiest capitals of South America, real emporiums of its richness; there you have been received with great magnificence. Our outward manifestations of joy on the occasion of your visit may, therefore, appear to you very humble; but you can rest assured that none of them will surpass us in the intensity of sympathetic feeling toward your person and toward the noble American people that you so worthily represent.
We Panamanians always remember with gratitude the interest we inspired in you from the very first days of our national existence, and we bear in mind very specially your timely speech delivered before the Union League Club of Chicago,[4] when our destiny was pending on the scales of a decision of your Senate; and therefore we avail ourselves of this joyful opportunity to receive you with the cordiality due to an old and good friend.
It has been, and it is yet, the vehement desire of your country to bring into closer ties, as far as possible, its political and commercial relations with the Latin American countries. The similarity of traditions and institutions, the vicinity and continuity of their territories, and the vast field of commercial expansion which they offer, fully justify that natural, legitimate desire, which is also mutually beneficial; but there being between yours and the latter countries essential differences of language, race, disposition, and education, there is bound to exist in them the suspicion which is naturally engendered by the unknown, and thus it is that the first steps taken toward the accomplishment of your desire should have been the removal of that suspicion by means of friendly intercourse and mutual acquaintance.
With the tact brought forth by your vast intelligence and learning, you fully understood that those do not love each other well who are not intimately acquainted; and it is owing to this fact that you decided to come in person to visit and to know the Latin Americans by your own observation and study. No doubt you carry with you a joyful impression of the progress and nobleness of disposition of our southern brothers, together with the assurance that your mission will achieve a new and splendid triumph for that American diplomacy whereof you are the skilled director, and the principal object of which is the accomplishment of the desire of which I have already spoken.
Being desirous to cooperate in the aims you have in view and with the hope of dispelling certain existing misunderstandings concerning the motives and intentions which originated our present pleasant relations, in a statement which I recently addressed to your government through its minister plenipotentiary here, I recounted the historical events which engendered our national existence and those special relations which link us to your country, in order that when the seal of diplomatic silence is removed, and that statement becomes public property, the world may know, through the unimpeachable testimony of history, that only ideals of the highest altruism served as a guide to the foundation of our republic and to the celebration of the treaty concerning the construction of the interoceanic canal for our benefit and pro mundi beneficio.
Panama offers you a splendid field to promote the wise international policy which animates your mind. We being of similar conditions to our Latin American brothers, being linked to your country by the closest ties that can exist between two independent nations, you having the means of exerting decisive influence upon our future life and we being situated in the constant path of universal transit, shall be an evident, shining example of the benefit which your country can confer upon the countries of our race.
The fruits of your influence are already felt and seen. Peace, which we consider a blessing, is a permanent fact. Under its shelter, and under the assurances given us by your illustrious President in his famous letter of October 18, 1904, addressed to the Secretary of War, Panama has entered with firm step upon the path of material, intellectual, and moral development. Those who knew us a little over two years ago, disheartened and ruined by bad government and civil war, and see today the change that has taken place in such a short time, carry to the north and south the gratifying news of our regeneration and thereby contribute to dispel unfounded suspicions regarding yourselves.
These good results are the forerunners of greater benefits in the future, and of the effect of the cooperation of the agents of your government in the progress of the country in general, of their friendly and timely advice, and of their decided moral support whenever there has been need thereof.
I will profit by this opportunity to convey to you the gratitude of the government and people of Panama for the special consideration which has been extended to them by the government of your country. This has been evidenced principally by the diplomatic staff sent to us, from the very able Honorable William I. Buchanan, your first minister plenipotentiary, to the popular Honorable Charles E. Magoon, who can hardly be replaced, and whose separation from the post he occupies with general satisfaction has caused great regret in the country; and later you sent us, doing us an unmerited honor, in the first place, by special order of your very noble President, your Secretary of War, Honorable William H. Taft, who established the relations between our two countries on the happy basis of mutual cordiality and justice, on which they are now established; and now, Mr. Secretary, you do us the great honor of coming yourself on a visit, placing us on a level with the powerful Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay; and, furthermore, which appears to be the extreme limit of what is possible, you allow us to look forward to the coming visit of your great President, the most distinguished of existing rulers—a special honor which has not been vouchsafed even to the most powerful nations of the world. Panama, overwhelmed with so many marks of appreciation, will preserve them as an everlasting remembrance of gratitude toward your noble country; and in return, though it be but partial, we will follow your advice, we will cooperate without reserve and with enthusiasm in the great work of the interoceanic canal, which is bound to be the most magnificent monument of the grandeur of your people; and we will likewise support you in the mission of American brotherhood which you have undertaken, founding a nation which shall distinguish itself by its love of work, of honor, of order, and of justice.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I thank you for your kind welcome to me and for the friendship to my country expressed in that welcome, and I thank you for the honor conferred upon me by this reception in the legislative body which is charged with the government of this republic. You have truly said, sir, that I am deeply interested in the affairs of the people of Panama. At the time of the events which led to your independence, I studied your history carefully and thoroughly from original documents, in order to determine in my own mind what the course of my country ought to be. From that study have resulted a keen sense of the manifold injuries and injustices under which the people of Panama have suffered in years past, a strong sympathy with you in your efforts and aspirations toward a better condition, a fervent hope for your prosperity and welfare.
It is with the greatest pleasure that I have heard the expressions of friendship for my country, because of my feeling toward you and because of the special relations which exist between the two countries. We are engaged together in the prosecution of a great, a momentous enterprise—an enterprise which has been the dream not only of the early navigators who first colonized your coasts, but of the most progressive of mankind for four centuries. Its successful accomplishment will make Panama the very center of the world's trade; you will stand upon the greatest highway of commerce; more than the ancient glories of the isthmus will be restored; and there lies before you in the future of this successful enterprise wealth, prosperity, the opportunity for education, for cultivation, and for intercourse with all the world such as has never before been brought to any people. The success of the enterprise will unite the far-separated Atlantic and Pacific coasts in my country; it will give to us the credit of great deeds done, and make the Atlantic and Pacific for us as but one ocean; and the success of this enterprise will give to the world a new highway of commerce and the possibility of a distinct and enormous advance in that communication between nations which is the surest guaranty of peace and civilization.
The achievement of this work is to be accomplished by us jointly. You furnish the country, the place, the soil, the atmosphere, the surrounding population among which the people who do the work are to live and where the work is to be maintained. We furnish the capital and the trained constructive ability which has grown up in the course of centuries of development of the northern continent. The work is difficult and delicate; the two peoples, the Anglo-American and the Spanish-American, are widely different in their traditions, their laws, their customs, their methods of thinking and speaking and doing business. It often happens that we misunderstand each other; it often happens that we fail to appreciate your good qualities and that you fail to appreciate ours; and that with perfectly good intentions, with the best of purposes and kindliest of feelings, we clash, we fail to understand each other, we get at cross purposes, and misconception and discord are liable to arise. Let us remember this in all our intercourse; let us be patient with each other; let us believe in the sincerity of our mutual good purposes and kindly feelings, and be patient and forbearing each with the other, so that we may go on together in the accomplishment of this great enterprise; together bring it to a successful conclusion; together share in the glory of the great work done and in the prosperity that will come from the result.
Mr. President and gentlemen, let me assure you that in the share which the United States is taking and is to take in this work, there is and can be but one feeling and one desire toward the people of Panama. It is a feeling of friendship sincere and lasting; it is a feeling of strong desire that wisdom may control the deliberations of this assembly; that judgment and prudence and love of country may rule in all your councils and may control all your actions; it is a desire and a firm purpose that so far as in us lies, there shall be preserved for you the precious boon of free self-government. We do not wish to govern you or interfere in your government, because we are larger and stronger; we believe that the principle of liberty and the rights of men are more important than the size of armies or the number of battleships. Your independence which we recognized first among the nations of the earth, it is our desire to have maintained inviolate. Believe this, be patient with us, as we will be patient with you; and I hope, I believe, that at some future day we shall all be sailing through the canal together, congratulating each other upon our share in that great and beneficent work.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] "The Ethics of the Panama Question"; address before the Union League Club of Chicago, February 22, 1904—see Addresses on International Subjects, pp. 175-206, published by the Harvard University Press.
COLOMBIA
CARTAGENA
ADDRESS OF THE MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS, HIS EXCELLENCY VASQUEZ-COBO
At a Breakfast given to Mr. Root, September 24, 1906
Upon receiving your excellency within the confines of our heroic and glorious Cartagena, I present to you a cordial greeting of welcome, in the name of Colombia, of his excellency the President of the Republic, and in my own.
You return to your own country to enjoy merited honors and laurels after a long tour, giving a hearty embrace of friendship to our sisters, the republics of the South; and in breaking your journey upon our burning shores we receive you as the herald of peace, of justice, and of concord with which the great republic of the North greets the American continent. I trust to God that these walls, the austere witnesses of our glory, will serve as a monument whereby this visit may be noted in history.
The honorable Minister Barrett, the worthy and estimable representative of your excellency's Government, has just completed a journey through a large part of our vast territory; he, better than any one, will be able to tell your excellency what he has seen in our beautiful and fertile valleys and mountains, in our flourishing cities and fields, and among our five millions of lusty, high-minded, peace-loving, and hard-working inhabitants, who today think only of peace and useful and honest toil.
This is the nation that greets you today and with loyalty and frankness clasps the hand of her sister of the North.
Mr. Secretary, upon thanking you for the honor of this visit, I fervently pray that a happy outcome may crown your efforts in the great work of American fraternity, and I drink to the prosperity and greatness of the United States, to its President, and especially to your excellency.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
Believe, I beg you, in the sincerity of my appreciation and my thanks for the courtesy with which you have received me, and for the honor which you have shown me. When the suggestion was made that upon my return from a voyage encircling the continent of South America, I should stop at Cartagena for an interview with you, sir, before returning to my own country, I accepted with alacrity and with pleasure, because it was most grateful to me to testify by my presence upon your shores to my high respect for your great country, the country of Bolivar; to my sincere desire that all questions which exist between the United States of Colombia and the United States of America may be settled peacefully, in the spirit of friendship, of mutual esteem, and with honor to both countries. Especially, also, I was glad to come to Colombia as an evidence of my esteem and regard for that noble and great man whom it is the privilege of Colombia to call her President today—General Reyes. I have had the privilege of personal acquaintance with him, and I look upon his conduct of affairs in the chief magistracy of your republic with the twofold interest of one who loves his fellowmen and desires the prosperity and happiness of the people of Colombia, and of a personal regard and friendship for the President himself.
I have been much gratified during my visit to so many of the republics of South America to find universally the spirit of a new industrial and commercial awakening, to find a new era of enterprise and prosperity dawning in the southern continent.
Mr. Minister and gentlemen, it will be the cause of sincere happiness to me if through the present friendly relations, based upon personal knowledge acquired here, I may do something toward helping the republic of Colombia forward along the pathway of the new development of South America. With your vast agricultural and mineral wealth, with the incalculable richness of your domain, the wealth and prosperity of Colombia are sure to come some time. Let us hope that they will come while we are yet living, in order that you may transfer to your children not the possibility but the realization of the increased greatness of your country. Let us hope that some advance of this new era of progress may come from the pleasant friendships formed today. While I return my thanks to you for your courtesy, let me assure you that there is nothing that could give greater pleasure to the President and to the people of the United States of America than to feel that they may have some part in promoting the prosperity and the happiness of this sister republic.
I ask you to join me in drinking to the peace, the prosperity, the order, the justice, the liberty of the republic of Colombia, and long life and a prosperous career in office to its President—General Reyes.
THE VISIT TO MEXICO
Following Secretary Root's visit to South America, with its auspicious results, the President of Mexico, Porfirio Diaz, extended an official invitation to visit the republic immediately to the south of us, in the belief that such a visit would have equally happy results in strengthening and increasing the "steadfast friendship" existing between the two neighboring nations.
Mr. Root, together with his wife and daughter, started for Mexico by special train, arriving in San Antonio on September 28, 1907. On the evening of the day of his arrival in San Antonio, a banquet was tendered to Mr. Root and the Mexican Committee which had come to San Antonio to welcome him and escort him into their country.
On Sunday the 29th, the Root party, together with the Mexican Committee, proceeded across the boundary into Mexico, and were met at the station of Nuevo Laredo by a Mexican delegation. Thence they continued to Mexico City, where the honors extended to Mr. Root were in keeping with the traditional hospitality of the ancient capital of the Montezumas. During his stay the degree of honorary member of the Mexican Academy of Legislation and Jurisprudence was conferred upon him.
A Mexican publication of 314 pages, entitled El Senor Root en Mexico, contains in parallel Spanish and English columns a detailed account of the visit, which extended from September 28 to October 16. It is to be regretted that this volume is defective in that many of the speeches made during the visit are not fully reported. It is possible, however, to gather from those which have been preserved, a keen sense of the cordial reception accorded him by the officials and representative citizens of the republic, and the earnest and eloquent terms in which he reciprocated the expressions of regard for his country and of appreciation of his own services to his country and the world.
The most progressive epoch in Mexico's history was the thirty years of Diaz's supremacy; and it was in the heyday of that period that Mr. Root made his visit to Mexico and paid to President Diaz the tributes which appear in the following pages. During these thirty years, he was always a firm friend of the United States, and no diplomatic misunderstandings arose which were not peaceably adjusted in a spirit of neighborly friendship. Diaz shares with President Roosevelt the honor of submitting the first international controversy to the Hague Tribunal of Arbitration for determination, in what is known as "The Pious Fund of the Californias."
THE VISIT TO MEXICO
SAN ANTONIO
SPEECH OF MR. ROOT
At a Banquet of the International Club in Honor of Mr. Root and the Mexican Envoys, September 28, 1907
Upon his arrival in San Antonio, Texas, on his way to Mexico, Mr. Root was met by a reception committee designated by President Diaz, which had come to San Antonio to welcome him and to escort him to the national capital. While in San Antonio, Mr. Root and the Mexican Reception Committee were the guests of the International Club of that city; and on the evening of the day of their arrival, a banquet was tendered them by that club. At this banquet Mr. Root made what may be called the first address of his Mexican visit. The opening remarks of this speech were not reported in full in the volume entitled El Senor Root en Mexico, or elsewhere; nor were the speeches of the members of the Mexican Reception Committee. Mr. Root began by a reference to the ideals adopted by men and by nations, declaring his opinion that a nation has a right to exist only in so far as it shows its ability to care for the welfare of other nations and the relations of every man with his fellowmen. He spoke of the rising tide of American business which is powerfully spreading towards the south by reason of the financial conditions in the east of the United States, every day becoming more stringent through the volume and accumulation of resources. After this introduction, he spoke at some length about the Panama Canal, the construction of which already was in its opening stage. On this subject he said:
The Panama Canal is now an unquestionable certainty. Relations between the United States and the different nations which are grouped around the Caribbean Sea, are becoming every day closer. It is impossible to anticipate at present the tonnage which will pass through that waterway, nor can we predict the number of vessels which will be required for its transportation; but we do already know, that never in the world has a new and universal trade route been opened, without bringing about a change in the history of the entire world. And it is for this reason I feel that upon us has fallen the mission of assisting all those nations which will find themselves involved in the new influence. At present we are doing everything within our power to assist Cuba in establishing self-government. We have endeavored to stretch out our hand to unhappy Santo Domingo, ruined by its civil wars, so that it may rise and also govern itself. We have plunged into a discussion which really has no further object than that of settling the disputes and the differences which have arisen between the United States and the republic of Colombia. And all this we do, not only through the new interest which the prosperity of all those countries develops in ourselves, but principally through a profound comprehension of the truth contained in the principle above enunciated, that a nation only lives as far as it demonstrates its right to existence by its usefulness to humanity. And one of the most conclusive guarantees of the success of this effort is found in the solid and loyal friendship which exists between the United States and Mexico, with which nation, day after day, and year after year, we are working within the limits of a peaceful and humanitarian national policy, which at the same time is wise and intelligent. Our two republics, now so prosperous, harmoniously work to promote a similar prosperity amongst their sister republics to the south; and I sincerely hope that this happy state of affairs may be prolonged for a long time to come, and that success may finally crown our united efforts. In this manner the two republics will fully prove their right to live, and will show the world that their citizens are able and competent to govern themselves without the assistance of either kings or aristocracies, seeing that they can fill the highest mission of man, which consists in the maintenance of law, order, justice, liberty, and peace....
I also desire to say how greatly I appreciate the distinguished courtesy shown to myself and to the Government of the United States, by the long journey which has been undertaken by the committee charged with the representation of President Diaz and the Mexican Government, crossing the frontier of their country into the state of Texas, in order to give me welcome on the occasion of the visit I am about to make. Indeed, it causes me the greatest satisfaction to be able to declare, without any reserve whatever, that this action is entirely in accordance with the conduct observed by Mexico in all international matters which have arisen between the two countries, since I have taken any part in the government of our own. With an immense boundary line which is only marked by the changeable and capricious currents of the Rio Grande; with the constant traffic across our common frontier; with thousands of Americans residing in that country; with the countless number of enterprises in which Americans are interested on the other side of the Rio Grande, and with the resources of the two countries, there are always a number of questions to be solved by the representatives of one and the other, and there can be no doubt that they will always be solved with the same good-will and courtesy of which such evident proof has been given by General Rincon Gallardo, by Mr. Limantour and by their travelling companions in coming here tonight.[5]
RECEPTION BY THE MEXICAN DELEGATION AT NUEVO LAREDO
SPEECH OF WELCOME BY GENERAL PEDRO RINCON GALLARDO
September 29, 1907
Especially appointed for this purpose by the President, in behalf of the government of the republic, we have the honor to tender to your excellency the most cordial welcome on your happy arrival in Mexico, whose people, of whom we must consider ourselves the faithful echo, pledge the continued good relations with the people of the United States. The reception is an homage to your well-known merits, and the people are anxious to receive your excellency as their illustrious guest and highly esteemed friend. The people of Mexico, during your excellency's brief sojourn amongst us, will show how true is their esteem for you and how proud they will feel on the occasion of this visit of your excellency, accompanied by Mrs. and Miss Root; an event the memory of which will remain forever engraved on our hearts.
MR. ROOT'S REPLY
I beg you to believe that I am highly appreciative of the cordial and hospitable greeting with which I have been received by you on the threshold of your beautiful and wonderful country. I hope that the visit which now begins will not merely give me personally the opportunity I have long desired, to see this great country and its marvels, to meet its public men, and especially to see its illustrious President. I hope that it will also serve, as it is intended to serve, as evidence of the desire of the government and people of the United States to strengthen and increase the steadfast friendship which they have long felt for the people and government of Mexico.
CITY OF MEXICO
SPEECH OF PORFIRIO DIAZ
PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC
At a Banquet at the National Palace, October 2, 1907
In the name of the Mexican people and of their government I tender you this banquet, acknowledging thereby those sentiments of sympathy which are felt and which distinguish one and another, the people of the United States, the great citizen who presides over its high destinies, and the illustrious statesman who honors us with his interesting and very welcome visit. Bonds of sympathy and fellow-feeling, Mr. Secretary, which are not new, but which germinated in the breasts of our fathers at the inception of the independence of our country, our fathers who contemplated with patriotic enthusiasm the daring exploits in war and imitated the political examples set by your heroic liberators; sentiments which we, of subsequent generations, have also cultivated; because, in studying the causes which produce the prodigious national prosperity with which your country has astounded the world, we become accustomed to admire, to magnify perhaps, the indomitable will, energy, labor, and civic and patriotic solidarity which constitute the energetic and abundantly productive type of your countrymen.
The Mexican people, Mr. Secretary, are honored as well as pleased to have you in their midst—honored, because you are the fountain of honor as a noted statesman of our century, and highly pleased because your clear and rapid conception promises us that, seeing with your own eyes the kind and well-merited feelings with which we harbor your countrymen who seek in our land the generous treatment proportionate to their intelligence, perseverance, and indefatigable labor, you may affirm that in Mexico we profess ideas which, carried out in cordial reciprocity, must make happy and loyal friends the two nations which are united by contiguity.
In conclusion, gentlemen, I extend my thanks to the distinguished ladies who have had the kindness to honor and embellish our tables with their presence; and permit me to invite you to drink with them and with me, hoping that the national harmonizing of individual rights and just liberties, which is called the United States of America, may be perpetuated in its increasing moral and material progress, which has given prestige throughout the world to government by popular representation.
I drink also to the personal happiness of that great friend of universal peace, president of the grand republic, the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, and to the hope that our illustrious guest and his lovable family may find in Mexico a reception as pleasing as their interesting visit is to the Mexican people.
MR. ROOT'S REPLY
I thank you most sincerely for the kind and gracious words which you have used regarding my poor self, regarding my President, from whom I bring to you and to the Mexican people a message of deep and warm friendship and good wishes, and regarding my country, which I believe is fitly represented by this brief visit of friendship, made with the purpose, not of creating, for they are already created, but of increasing and advancing the ideas of amity and mutual helpfulness between two great republics.
I cannot keep my mind from reverting to a former visit by an American Secretary of State to the republic of Mexico. Thirty-eight years ago, Mr. Seward, a really great American Secretary of State, visited your country. How vast the difference between what he found and what I find! Then was a country torn by a civil war, sunk in poverty, in distress. Now I find a country great in its prosperity, in its wealth, in its activity and enterprise, in the moral strength of its just and equal laws, and unalterable purpose to advance its people steadily along the pathway of progress.
Mr. President, the people of the United States feel that the world owes this great change chiefly to you. They are grateful to you for it, for they rejoice in the prosperity and happiness of Mexico. We believe, sir, that we are richer and happier because you are richer and happier, and we rejoice that you are no longer a poor and struggling nation needing assistance, but that you are strong and vigorous, so that we can go with you side by side in demonstrating to the world that republics are able to govern themselves wisely; side by side in helping to carry to our less fortunate sisters the blessing of peace.
Mr. President, I have said that we need not create, but wish to strengthen, the ties of friendship. It is my hope that through more perfect understanding, through personal intercourse, through the more complete unity of action to be acquired by the individual intercourse of the men of Mexico and the men of the United States, not only may our friendship be increased, but our power for usefulness—for that usefulness which demonstrates the right of nations to be perpetuated—may be enlarged.
For the generous hospitality, for the spirit of friendship with which you and the people of Mexico have welcomed me as a representative of the United States, I thank you and them, and I hope that there may be found in this visit and in this welcome not merely the pleasure of a holiday, but a step along the pathway of two great nations in their service to humanity.
RECEPTION AT THE MUNICIPAL PALACE
SPEECH OF GOVERNOR GUILLERMO DE LANDA Y ESCANDON
October 3, 1907
Last year, in accordance with the wishes of your President, you undertook to visit and become acquainted with Latin America, and for that purpose you made an extended voyage which was fruitful in happy results.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century adventurous Spanish and Portuguese navigators sailed from the Atlantic into the Pacific, effecting important discoveries of which the object was to rescue from darkness populous regions which, since then, have become part of the civilized world. You have sailed over nearly the same route four centuries later, proclaiming a message of peace and concord in all those regions whose inhabitants greeted you with acclamations from the northern ports of Brazil around to those of Colombia and Panama.
You are now crowning your mission by visiting the Mexican Republic, and you arrive at this capital animated by the same aspirations which actuated you when you set foot on the cruiser Charleston in the port of New York on July 4, 1906.
Your aims are so noble and great that they cannot but be sincere. The course you have set before yourself would not be possible for one whose head did not harbor the loftiest ideals, and whose heart did not quicken to the finest sentiments.
Your President is a great man; rectitude and loyalty are the dominant features of his character. A soldier, and a brave one, he knows what war is, and therefore he abhors it with all the force of his large heart; the war which engages his thoughts is war upon war itself.
It would not befit me at this moment, much as I should wish to do so, to extol the character of the supreme magistrate of my country. But I may say that, though a soldier like your own President, he detests war in the same degree, and that the ideals and aims of both these great men are alike directed toward an object sublime and desired of all men—peace.
The nations which both statesmen govern follow their lead in this respect with energetic unanimity; and it is safe to augur the happiest results from a concert so auspicious.
You, sir, second the purposes of both of those leaders with a zeal which nothing can cool; your mind has been formed at the bar—in the school of justice; and, like our two Presidents, you abominate injustice and insincerity.
You also know what war is, and you share the aversion of the two great American statesmen who are the standard bearers of peace in the new world.
Welcome, excellency, to this ancient capital of the empire of Montezuma. She opens her gates to you and to your family, and offers you the sincerest hospitality, hoping you may preserve of her recollections as lasting as will be her memory of the visit of one whose happy mission it has been to carry everywhere the spirit of peace, good-will, and fraternity.
MR. ROOT'S REPLY
Governor Landa, your welcome now is as it has been from the first instant of my visit, both graceful and grateful. I have been most delighted by the many interesting things I have seen here.
Above all things, I feel impelled to say that the most interesting thing in Mexico, so far as my knowledge goes, is your President. It has seemed to me that of all the men now living, Porfirio Diaz, 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 Diaz. If I were a poet, I would write poetry; if I were a musician, I would compose triumphal marches; if I were a Mexican, I should feel that the steadfast loyalty of a lifetime could not be too much in return for the blessings that he had brought to my country. As I am neither poet, musician, nor Mexican, but only an American who loves justice and liberty and hopes to see their reign among mankind progress and strengthen and become perpetual, I look to Porfirio Diaz, the President of Mexico, as one of the great men to be held up for the hero worship of mankind.
RECEPTION BY THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES
SPEECH OF LICENTIATE MANUEL CALERO
PRESIDENT OF THE CHAMBER
October 3, 1907
Honorable Secretary of State, welcome; the national representation, the chamber that constitutionally symbolizes that people which in this section of the western hemisphere, is ever striving, ever struggling to attain a higher civilization, to win for itself a respected name among nations, feels pleasure in welcoming you to its midst. You are at the present moment the symbolical representation of a great and friendly people and the personification of its brotherly feelings toward us. You, honored sir, are our guest; and were the traditional chivalry of our people not sufficient justification for our cordiality toward you, the high character of your office, the luster encircling your name, and the mission of peace which brings you to this land, would all move us to open our arms to you, to show you what we are and what we would be, so that, on returning to your country, you may tell the millions of your fellow-citizens who will hang upon your words with rapt attention, that Mexico is not that mythical land, which legends shroud in the mists of the adventurous romance of the old Latin countries, restless, mistrustful, dreamy; nay rather, you will tell them, that it is a sturdy young nation, starting out, aye, already started, on the highroad of civilization and industrialism; that it pursues lofty ideals and strives to attain them, that its heart beats at the thought of universal solidarity, that it sees in the foreigner a friend, that it answers your brotherly message with a frank and kindly greeting, free from resentment for the past, and trusting in the omens of the future.
Your name is not unknown to us. We have followed the trail of your labors and triumphs for the last decade. We know, too, the people from whom you have come; and setting aside all false modesty, can truly say we know them better than they know us. The last thirty years of free intercourse between this country and yours have seen an overflow of men and money from north to south; we have dashed the mist from our eyes and have endeavored to wring from you, more fortunate and wiser than ourselves, the secrets of your greatness and the causes of your astounding prosperity.
That you once wronged us, that, when burning political, economic, and humane problems beset you, the course of justice was momentarily hampered, we have not forgotten; we have not. But as the years have rolled on you have won back, inch by inch, your place in our affections; the intercourse every day has become closer and closer between your people and ours, stepping over the bounds set by race and tongue, infusing new life into this feeling of mutual good will and friendship, which tends to establish harmony of ideals and close similarity of destiny.
So it is happening and so should it be. Offsprings of the same continent, your institutions point out the path for the development of ours, your mental and moral advance fires the vigor of our spirit, your tireless activity excites us to action; in a word, your progress uplifts our noblest ambitions. We are both marching on to the victories of civilization, although your lot, in the course of history, shall have been that of forerunners.
One of your scholars has said that the American nation has rendered five eminent services to the world's civilization. True are his words. For the American nation has, in the first place, sustained by word and by deed, the principle that the medium of bringing differences between nations to an end, is arbitration; it has accepted and practised religious toleration as has no other nation; it has known how to raise the dignity of man, by giving to the political vote the development which a true democracy calls for; it has thrown open its doors to all such as seek progress and liberty in your country, and it has taken them in to form part of one and the same great soul; and lastly, it has known, as no other nation has, how to scatter abroad material benefits, the very basis of the moral and mental perfection of the individual. To these factors and to others derived from the conditions of its privileged soil, is due the great importance of the American people as a powerful force in the progress of humanity.
I shall not attempt to analyze in their essence these five glorious victories of civilization. My mind is dazed by the victory of democracy through the true action of the suffrage. This is the germ, the primary origin of your greatness as a people, which makes you the beacon for the eager gaze of all those who, down-trodden by power or by poverty, seek under the shelter of your wise laws, the guarantee of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to quote the sacred formula of your Declaration of Independence; this it is which explains why neither the difference of race and language, nor the morbid influence produced in the mind by secular despotism, nor the infinite diversity of religion, is an obstacle to the hundreds of thousands of helpless beings whom year by year the Old World is casting on your shores, to be transformed into citizens and become identified with the new fatherland, as if the national spirit had breathed into the souls of these new arrivals love for your glorious traditions and your lofty ideals of liberty, justice, and progress. The American fatherland is not hemmed in by battlements; it is the redeemer of all miseries, it is the refuge of all those who, in their flight from tyranny, like your illustrious Carl Schurz, exclaim: ubi libertas, ibi patria!
We, less blessed by fortune, but no whit less rich in ideals and lofty aspirations, find pleasure in studying your people. We shall endeavor to reap benefits from the lessons of your success, and we shall try to avert the great evils which are born of a prosperity such as yours, and which would undermine the walls of your civilization, did there not arise from out of your midst men of great virtue and indomitable strength of will, armed for the fray against guilt, combating evil, true apostles of right. Theodore Roosevelt is such a man, the most conspicuous of our times, the ardent devotee of justice, who claims for good citizens, for the rich and the poor, the proud and the humble, perfect equality and liberty unrestrained, without which lawful energies may not expand; and demands alike for all equal justice, equal treatment, "a square deal"—to use his own concise and vigorous phrase.
This it is which explains the whole-hearted prestige won by your Chief Executive within the limits of your own country, and which has passed the bounds of your territory and been merged in the international prestige accorded to him by all cultured nations. And, in no small measure, did you with your knowledge, your ceaseless labor and your delicate tact contribute to this happy end. Thus the world has seen how the voice of Theodore Roosevelt, outreaching the roar of the cannons of Mukden, put an end to the war which in shame to human culture heralded the dawn of the twentieth century; it has seen how, in deference to his initiative, the cultured nations of the world hastened to meet at The Hague Conference, and how, as a reward for his constant efforts, united with those of the glorious Chief Executive of this republic, who now receives you with every mark of honor, the disorders in the neighboring republics to the south were pacified, and these are now making ready for a work of peace and harmony,—the beginning of that longed-for era of prosperity.
The international importance achieved by your government and your country had its beginning when President Monroe gave to the world his famous doctrine, so debated, so misunderstood, and perhaps so dangerous, if—as has sometimes been thought—it might be used as a means of illegitimate preponderance at the expense of the sovereignty of other nations. The Monroe Doctrine embodies, nevertheless, and we should not hesitate to say so, the first principle of international law of a great part of this continent, if not the whole. This it means for us Mexicans, ever since the President of the Republic announced it to Congress in his memorable message of April, 1896, received with general acclamation by the national representatives, and later by the whole country. The integrity of the nations of this continent is of vital interest to all, collectively, and not alone to the country immediately affected. Any attack on this integrity should constitute an offense in the eyes of the other nations of America. Accordingly, one of our great thinkers and statesmen has wisely said: "America for Americans means each country for its own people, to the exclusion of all foreign interference, whether this comes from other countries of this continent or whether it comes from any other nation whatsoever. And we in our trying struggles of the past have given ample proof to the whole world of our homage to independence and our hatred of all foreign intervention"—to use President Diaz's own words.
From among the various formulas adopted by the interpreters of the Monroe Doctrine, we Latin American nations should gather and keep as a precious pledge, that which Theodore Roosevelt embodied in his famous speech delivered on the occasion of the opening of the Buffalo Exposition. Addressing the republics of the New World, the illustrious statesman, then Vice-President of the United States of America, said:
I believe with all my heart in the Monroe Doctrine. This doctrine is not to be invoked for the aggrandizement of any one of us here on this continent at the expense of any one else on this continent. It should be regarded simply as a great international Pan American policy, vital to the interests of all of us. The United States has and ought to have, and must ever have, only the desire to see her sister commonwealths in the western hemisphere continue to flourish, and the determination that no Old World power shall acquire new territory here on this western continent. We of the two Americas must be left to work out our own salvation along our own lines; and if we are wise we will make it understood as a cardinal feature of our joint foreign policy that, on the one hand, we will not submit to territorial aggrandizement on this continent by any Old World power, and that, on the other hand, among ourselves each nation must scrupulously regard the rights and interests of the others, so that, instead of any one of us committing the criminal folly of trying to rise at the expense of our neighbors, we shall all strive upward in honest and manly brotherhood, shoulder to shoulder.
And you, honored sir, have not been less explicit. Your words, pronounced on a memorable occasion during your recent visit to South America, before all the free peoples of this continent gathered together at the third Pan American Conference, should be disclosed, should reach the ears of my fellow-citizens, for these very words of yours, as President Roosevelt solemnly declared in his last message to the Congress of the United States, have revealed to all who doubted the spirit of complete equality which inspired the Monroe Doctrine, what is the attitude of the United States towards the other American republics, and what its purposes. You declared then:
We wish for no victories but those of peace; for no territory except our own; for no sovereignty except the sovereignty over ourselves. We deem the independence and equal rights of the smallest and weakest member of the family of nations entitled to as much respect as those of the greatest empire; and we deem the observance of that respect the chief guaranty of the weak against the oppression of the strong. We neither claim nor desire any rights or privileges or powers that we do not freely concede to every American republic. We wish to increase our prosperity, to expand our trade, to grow in wealth, in wisdom, and in spirit; but our conception of the true way to accomplish this is not to pull down others and profit by their ruin, but to help all friends to a common prosperity and a common growth, that we may all become greater and stronger together.
You spoke words of truth, and know, honored sir, that those are also our aspirations, those our aims; and thither we wend our way, with the constant steadiness which the Mexican people showed in its struggles for liberty and the attainment of the great principles already embodied in our constitution and laws. Deign to believe it, and when you return to the fatherland, pray do not ever forget that, if we have showered on you the hospitality such as is only offered to a friend, it is because your ideals are ours, because we citizens of this land, no less than those of yours, accept as the supreme dogma of our political religion the immortal words of President Lincoln, that "government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."
MR. ROOT'S REPLY
I am doubly sensible of the high honor which you have conferred upon me by this audience today. I am sensible also of the great mark of friendship to my country involved in the reception of one of her officers in this distinguished manner by the lawmaking—the popular lawmaking—body of this great republic. I sincerely hope, not merely that I personally may never do aught to show myself unworthy of your consideration, but that my country may forever, in its attitude and conduct toward the people of Mexico, justify your kindness.
You will gather from my words, which your president has been good enough to quote in the admirable and graceful address he has just made, that I am one of those who believe that the old days when nations sought to enrich themselves by taking away the wealth of others by force, ought to pass and are passing. I believe, and I am happy to know that the great mass of my countrymen believe, that it is not only more Christian, not only more honorable, but also more useful and beneficial for all nations, and especially all neighboring nations, to unite in helping each other create more wealth, so that all may be rich and prosperous, rather than to seek to take it away from each other.
I find here in this sanctuary of laws, in this body charged with making the laws, the most interesting, the most important, and the most sacred thing in the republic of Mexico. I am not unmindful of the difficulties which confront you, gentlemen of the Chamber of Deputies, in the task that you perform for your country. The discussion of public questions, the reconciliation of differing opinions, the adjustment of different local interests all over this vast country, the reaching of just conclusions, the compromises necessary so often between different interests, present to the members of a legislative body of a republic difficulties little understood by the people at large and requiring for their solution the highest order of ability, self-denial, and love of country. I beg you to take my testimony, coming from another land long engaged in grappling with the same kind of difficulties; I beg you to take my testimony that the troubles of your body in legislating for your country, and those which you are to encounter in the future, are not peculiar to your country, to your race, to your institutions, to your customs. They inhere in the task before every legislative body representing the vastly differing interests, opinions, sentiments, and desires of a people.
Mr. President and gentlemen of the Chamber of Deputies, it is my sincere desire and the desire of my countrymen, that in the performance of this task for the republic of Mexico you may be guided in wisdom and in peace. May you possess that self-restraint which is so necessary to the preservation and security for property, for enterprise, and for life, guarding you always from unwise extremes, leading you always to test every question of legislation by sound principles taught by history. May you always, and every one of you, be so inspired by love of country, that you may be able to sink all personal ambitions and interests, to do only that which is for the benefit of your country; so that through your actions and inspired by your example the spirit of nationality which I see growing among the people of Mexico, may continue to increase until it is the living and controlling spirit of all the people from the Gulf to the Pacific. May you have in your deliberations and your action something of the self-sacrificing spirit of the humble priest Hidalgo, which, without ambition on his part, with no other motive but the love of his country, has written his name among the great benefactors of humanity. May you have something of the patriotism and genius of Benito Juarez, which enabled him with his strong hand to take Mexico out of the conditions of warring factions when individual ambition rose above the love of country. May you have something of that constancy and high courage which has made for the soldier and the statesman who now sits in the chair of the chief magistrate of Mexico, a place in history above scores and hundreds of emperors and kings with high-sounding title and no record in life but the desire for personal advancement.
And so, members of the Chamber of Deputies—may I say, my friends—brothers in the work of seeking by law to advance the peace and prosperity of mankind—may you be able to bring in the rule of justice, of ordered liberty, of peace, of happy homes, of opportunity for children to rise, of opportunity for old age to pass its days in peace. My brother workers in the cause of popular government, of human rights and human happiness, I thank you for the opportunity to say, "God bless you in your labors", which will always have my sympathy and the sympathy of my people.
LUNCHEON BY THE AMERICAN COLONY
SPEECH OF GENERAL C. H. M. Y AGRAMONTE
At the Mexican Country Club, October 4, 1907
As chairman of a committee of the American colony, the pleasant duty devolves upon me to welcome, in behalf of the colony, an illustrious countryman, and a prominent member of the official family of the President of the United States, the Secretary of State.
The opportunity has been afforded us through one of those many acts of exquisite courtesy for which the Government of Mexico is noted in its intercourse with those of us from north of the Rio Grande, and to which unfailing courtesy we can all bear witness.
For the kindly spirit that actuated the Mexican Government in breaking in upon the official program for the entertainment of its guest—our countryman—and placing him in our hands for this occasion, we are extremely grateful. For the graceful act of the Mexican Country Club in permitting us the use of this magnificent building in which to entertain our guest there is no lack of appreciation.
As Americans, knowing our own people and our own country as we do, and keenly alive to everything that may obtain for its weal or its woe, our very absence from it making our hearts grow fonder of it, the joy we feel in welcoming one who has held the bright banner of our country full high advanced, is greater than any words of mine can express.
We love our country; we love it as the blessed consummation of human hopes. The world has been full of sorrow. The tearful eyes of humanity have never been dry; but in this western world, on this new continent, stretching from ocean to ocean, in the maturity of the ages has come forth a nation whose institutions and example shall aid in lifting the nations of the world into the sunlight of God's glorious liberty.
We have no king, no royal family upon which can be centered the loyal emotions of a great people. To us the only representative of the whole people is the glorious banner "thick sprinkled" with stars and striped with vivid red and white.
You, sir, have held aloft that banner. You have added to the glory of our country.
On the sacred field of Gettysburg, ground consecrated by torrents of American blood, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, gave to us a classic which will live while our country exists. You, sir, in your exposition of the attitude of the United States toward other countries, have enunciated a classic that also will live and be a bond of friendship between us and all the nations of this hemisphere.
Gentlemen, I will read to you that classic:
We wish for no victories but those of peace; for no territory except our own; for no sovereignty except the sovereignty over ourselves. We deem the independence and equal rights of the smallest and weakest member of the family of nations entitled to as much respect as those of the greatest empire; and we deem the observance of that respect the chief guaranty of the weak against the oppression of the strong. We neither claim nor desire any rights or privileges or powers that we do not freely concede to every American republic.
With such dignified sentiments resounding in our ears, have we not reason to be proud of our guest?
And now, sir, in the name of the American colony of Mexico, I bid you welcome. Yes, thrice welcome! May every choice blessing attend upon you and those you hold dear.
MR. ROOT'S REPLY
It is a long way from the Bowery, but I feel quite at home! It is delightful to feel that my country is represented in this land of beauty by so many handsome and cheerful-looking men; it is delightful to see the evidences of prosperity in every American here, and it is delightful to see that that subtle, indefinable quickening of spirit that comes from separation has given to each of you, exiles in a foreign land, a new significance in every star and stripe and every reference to the old flag and the old home.
Your welcome is very grateful to me; your kind expressions I most heartily reciprocate. I do not wish to return evil for good by preaching, but it occurs to me that you have—I will not say that you have left your country for your country's good—you have not abandoned your opportunities to serve her; you have rather reached the position where you have new opportunities for service as American citizens. One serious fault which formerly existed to a very great extent among Americans, and which has been growing less, was a certain provincial and narrow way of looking at foreigners. There was a good deal of truth underlying the observations and characterizations of Mr. Dickens which made our people so angry sixty or seventy years ago. One of our American humorists refers to the people of a western mining camp as looking upon a newcomer with the idea that he had the defective moral quality of being a foreigner. Now the residuum of that old feeling stands in the way of American trade and American intercourse generally with other nations. No one can do more to hasten the disappearance of that attitude than you who have experienced the friendship and kindliness of the people of this foreign country; you who have learned by your personal experience how many and how noble are the characteristics of this foreign people; you who have been able to see how much we Americans may well learn from them; you can, each one of you, be a teacher of your countrymen in your continued intercourse with your homes and your home associates in the gospel of courtesy and kindliness toward all mankind.
There is one other thought that comes naturally to my mind. You not only have not abandoned your duties toward your country by coming to this foreign land, but you have acquired new duties toward the community and the nation which has given you welcome and shelter and prosperity. There is underlying all the materialism and the hard practical sense of the American people regulating its own government for its own interests—there is underlying that a certain idealism which carries a conception of a missionary calling to spread through the length and breadth of the world the blessing of justice and liberty and of the institutions which we believe make for human happiness and human progress. That mission is to be fulfilled, not by making speeches and the giving of advice, the writing of books, or even the publication of newspapers; it can best be fulfilled by personal influence and intercourse of men one with another. No American who is in a foreign land can help representing his country; its honor and its good name rest upon each one of us the moment we cross the border. You not only represent your country, but you have a duty to perform toward the country in which you live, giving to her and to her people through your efforts and all your association the best contribution that your training as American citizens, that the traditions of centuries of American life enable you to give, toward the maintenance of law and order, toward the promotion of all ideas that you have been taught in your youth to consider sacred, toward holding up the hands of authority, toward the inculcation of the sentiment of loyalty, toward the perpetuity of the government which gives you security for your lives and your property in your new home.
I have one prominent thought in meeting you today; it is, while you continue to be good, loyal American citizens, you should be good and loyal Mexican residents. I can no better voice the sentiment of all of my countrymen here I know, and I can no better represent the feelings of our friends who remain at home, than by asking you to rise and join me in drinking to the long continuance of life, strength, and usefulness for the man who, more than any other, or all others, has given you the opportunities that you now enjoy, President Porfirio Diaz.
MEXICAN ACADEMY OF LEGISLATION AND JURISPRUDENCE
SPEECH OF LICENTIATE LUIS MENDEZ
PRESIDENT OF THE ACADEMY
At the Installation of Mr. Root as an Honorary Member, October 4, 1907
Honored Sir: Because of the office I am temporarily holding, I am given the unexpected honor of placing in your hands the diploma that entitles you to honorary membership in the Mexican Academy of Legislation and Jurisprudence.
You have come to the country of snowy mountains and flowering valleys which perfume our tropical breezes, preceded by the meritorious fame of having preserved always, unblemished during the course of your fruitful life, the reputation and profession of a lawyer, of having penetrated the secrets of the juridical science and of consecrating today all your energies and abilities to the service of your country.
By a happy coincidence, you will find engraved in this parchment as our motto: "Professional Honor, Science, and Country"—the same great ends that have consecrated your life. Never was the diploma bearing this motto conferred upon a more meritorious or greater man.
In science, you have not been the selfish investigator nor in the service of your country have you confined yourself to directing from your place in the Cabinet the important matters of the foreign relations of a world-power.
Knowing that the time has passed for studies merely speculative, and that at the present day every scientific truth cannot be such unless it is applicable, you have most happily found time to scatter the treasures of your studies, either when carrying them as the apostle of peace and concord to other countries, or through your invaluable publications.
The Academy could hardly be indifferent to this phase of your labors, as we owe to it the great satisfaction of knowing you intellectually and personally; and we pay you our profound respect.
Therefore, selecting from among your works the last you have published, entitled The Citizen's Part in Government,[6] it was agreed that we should offer you a translation of the same, in the hope that it may please you as it comes from the able and learned pen of an Academician for whom you have shown particular friendship prior to this time, and who feels for you the just admiration expressed in the eloquent words of welcome that we have all seconded.
We find in this illuminating work of yours the double revelation of the genius that pursues the development of a great idea, and of the generous heart that instills it with an ardor that will make it successful.
I will not take the liberty, Mr. Secretary, of commenting on the selection made by the Academy; but I can assure you that the collection of your lectures at Yale University, appear to me worthy, for the clear observation and teaching they contain, to be designated as the text-book to be read in all schools by youths preparing to exercise the rights of citizenship. Therefore, I beg you, kindly to accept the special copy of this translation presented by the Academy.
Among those who devote themselves to the study of science in general, Mr. Secretary, and more particularly among those who cultivate one special branch, is formed a sort of fraternity of feelings and affections—the fruit of the communion of ideas—and also of respect caused in every really broad man, for the talents and learning of others.
This fraternal feeling has always existed among the jurists of all nations, and in every language there is a word to describe it: companero, in our Castilian tongue; confrere, in French; and in yours, the most virile and the most expressive, you use the word brother.
As a brother, therefore, this Academy has the honor to receive you in its midst. Foreign though it is by virtue of its by-laws to all matters of militant politics, the Academy hopes and desires that, forgetting for a moment the high official functions with which you are vested and recalling the happy times when you were simply a lawyer, you may come to us to aid with your vast knowledge and generosity of character, in the success of this ideal: "Justice among men and justice among nations."
We hope, sir, that when once more in the calm of your honored home, far from the madding crowd and the cares of business, in the company of the two beings most dear to you, who as a blessing may come to your side to fill your affections and to venerate your white head; when in that tranquillity of the soul you may recall the incidents of your busy life, we hope that the recollection of the brief days you are passing among us may be pleasing, and that in the depths of your heart you may be able to say: "I went to Mexico in search of friends, and I found brothers...."
Members of the Academy, and Committees of Scientific Societies, and all you who have kindly contributed with your presence to enhance the solemnity of this function in honor of an illustrious lawyer: this is a time when he who gives gains more than those who receive. Let us all greet the reception of the new Academician!
SPEECH OF LICENTIATE JOAQUIN D. CASASUS
The Mexican Academy of Legislation and Jurisprudence has intrusted me with the most gratifying task of expressing in its name its good wishes for your safe arrival in our midst, and of voicing the joy it experiences at being afforded the opportunity of publicly testifying to the high respect and esteem in which it holds the great statesman, the eminent jurisconsult, and the illustrious orator who in his position as Secretary of State of the United States of America is now amongst us, the distinguished guest of the Mexican nation.
Had I taken into account solely my own merits, notably deficient, especially when measured by the side of those possessed by the other members composing our academy, I should have refused such a high distinction. I thought, however, I could discern in its resolution the marked purpose that its homage should reach your ears through the echoes of a friend's voice, and so be all the more welcome to you. With this reason, therefore, in mind, I did not hesitate to accept it. Nay, more; this has made me think once and again that the abundant proofs of your good-will—for which I shall ever remain indebted to you—the very base and foundation of our friendship, were those which you earnestly desired to convey to Mexico in the person of him who was then its representative in Washington.
The Mexican people, from the very moment in which you set foot on their soil, and our Government from the time it tendered you the invitation that your visit to Latin America should have in Mexico its fitting end and crowning point, have proved to you, in abundant measure, by manifestations of every kind, that their earnest desire is that the ties which have for so many years bound us to your country, united by common interests and strengthened by common ideals, should every day grow closer and closer. They have also applauded the constant zeal shown by your Government in fostering relations more and more cordial with the republics of America, so that, inspired by the same spirit and guided by the same policy, they should make this western continent of ours the arena of the peaceful struggle of human effort. Nor do we deny you the enthusiastic and universal praise of which your labor as Secretary of State of the United States of America is deserving, since the program of your international policy, later incorporated by President Roosevelt into his last message to Congress, found a sympathizing echo in every Mexican heart; that program which you made known to the world when, having the Pan American conference for your tribune and the whole of America grouped around you for your audience, we were all welcomed on the hospitable soil of the noble and heroic Brazilian people.
Nevertheless, the Mexican Academy of Legislation and Jurisprudence, while recognizing your merits as a statesman, has desired to confine itself to honoring the lawyer who has brought fame and glory to the American bar, the jurisconsult who has won the unstinted admiration of all the nations ruled by democratic institutions, and the orator whose eloquence takes us back to the times of the Latins, be his voice resounding in the courts of justice, or heard in the academies and universities, or pealing forth clear and inspired in the popular tribune.
You, honored sir, we regard as the perfect type of the lawyer who has known how to perform the sacred task commended to him by modern society. The lawyer is a priest whose duty it is, in the bitter battles of life waged by human conflicting interests, to fulfill a mission of peace and harmony. He is indeed, the champion of homes when persecuted by human cruelty; he who strengthens the bonds of love which maintain the family union untainted, when the depravity of customs threatens its downfall. In stretching out a helping hand to the toiler he is ever a master; in carrying out an equitable distribution of fortunes made, an adviser; in proclaiming the respect due to the law, an example and an authority in maintaining its prestige in the social community. His knowledge should be an arsenal from which to arm the weak and a shield with which to protect the powerful; his voice should be beseeching in its pleading for pardon from society for those who by their crimes undermine its foundations, but inexorable in its demand when in the name of society he calls for punishment. To the poor who strive to defend the bread earned for their children, he is a stay; to the rich who worry over productive investment for their fortunes, a guide; and if, in the errors committed by both sides and which ever tend to separate them, he should be equity; then to put an end to the struggles into which they will irreparably be drawn, he must ever be justice itself.
And you have been all this in your exemplary life of lawyer; this is what has won for you the love of the poor, the confidence of the rich, and the respect of the whole of society; which has placed you in the fore rank of the distinguished men of the American bar, from which only the pressing need of serving the greater political interests of your country could draw you.
Your important labors as a statesman and jurisconsult do not call forth our admiration any the less.
The jurisconsult of our days is not only he who in the Roman Forum ex solio tanquam ex tripode solved the conflicts which arose from the applying of the law; because now the part taken by the people in governmental affairs and the ever-increasing necessities of democratic life have widened his sphere of influence, and he has become to society what the lawyer has been to the individual and the family. The jurisconsult is a mentor of nations; in the midst of our eagerness to achieve greater prosperity and in our constant wrestle as citizens to form part of the public administration, he it is who points out the path of our social and political life, and has to dictate the laws which should conform to our customs as well as those which should be necessary to determine its evolution. He it is who, standing in the prow, with gaze fixed on the distant horizon, steers the ship through the paths which guide nations to the haven of greater prosperity.
And you belong to the assembly of jurisconsults who are the glory and pride of the American continent.
Still fresh in men's minds are the honors you reaped in Yale University with the course of lectures you delivered on the part to be taken by citizens in the government. Your lessons have taught what are the rights to be exercised by citizens in nations ruled by democratic institutions and what their duties in order that governments should be the true representatives of the people's will.
But again, the academy deems it but just to accord all honor to the great orator whose voice all America has been heeding with universal approval for more than a year; heeding, because that voice has ever been the expression of the lofty ideals which America has been pursuing from the earliest days of her freedom and independence.
Nor is your eloquence the fruit of meditation and study; it savors not, like that of Demosthenes, of the midnight oil. It is fresh and spontaneous, such as ought to be at the command of men ever ready to speak to the people of their rights and duties in democracies. It abounds always in that cold reasoning and that inflexible logic which alone can persuade and convince.
But your eloquence contains, besides, all the warmth, all the majesty, and all the sparkle of the Latin eloquence.
Plutarch relates, in his life of Cicero, that when the great orator thrilled the inhabitants of Rhodes with his speeches, Apollonius Molon, after listening to him one day, showed no sign of admiration, but that when Cicero had finished he said: "Cicero, I, no less than the others, praise and admire thee; but I weep for the fate of Greece, for thou hast taken to Rome the best that was left to Greece—wisdom and eloquence."
We in Latin America, less selfish than Apollonius Molon, do not weep; rather do we cheer and reward the orator from whose lips we have heard resound the accents of the Latin eloquence.
The Mexican Academy of Legislation and Jurisprudence, on presenting you today with the diploma which confers upon you the degree of honorary member, has desired to make known to the whole country your undoubted merits as lawyer, jurisconsult, and orator, and on this solemn occasion to bestow upon you its highest possible distinction.
Welcome to our midst. May your visit to Mexico be fruitful in good results to both countries; may it be, above all, one more tie to bind the sincere and unshaken friendship which unites them both; and, since it is the end of your triumphal journey to Latin America, may it add, in your great career as a statesman, fresh fame to your labor and glory to your illustrious name.
MR. ROOT'S REPLY
I am highly appreciative of the very great honor which you have now conferred upon me. It is all the more grateful to me that in the ceremony which makes me an associate of this distinguished body, so prominent a part should be taken by a gentleman who, as the representative of Mexico in the capital of the United States, has not only taught me to admire his rare intellectual ability, but has won from me, by the grace and purity of his character, the warmth of friendship which adds especial pleasure to every new association with him into which I can enter. I feel, sir, that the compliment which you have paid to this little work of mine, produced without any idea that it should receive so distinguished an honor or find its way so far from home, I must ascribe rather to friendship than to any intrinsic merit of the work; but I thank you, and I am most appreciative of the honor that you do me in causing it to be translated into Spanish and making it the subject of your resolution.
Circumstances have not permitted, and do not permit, that I should present to the Academy any thesis or discussion adequate to be associated with the admirable and well-considered papers which have been read by Mr. Casasus and yourself. I wish, however, in addition to expressing my thanks, to indicate in a few words the special significance which this academy and my new association with it seem to me to have. We are passing, undoubtedly, into a new era of international communication. We have turned our backs upon the old days of armed invasion, and the people of every civilized country are constantly engaged in the peaceable invasion of every other civilized country. The sciences, the literature, the customs, the lessons of experience, the skill, the spirit of every country, exercise an influence upon every other. In this peaceful interchange of the products of the intellect, in this constant passing to and fro of the people of different countries of the civilized world, we find in each land a system of law peculiar to the country itself, and answering to what I believe to be a just description of all laws which regulate the relations of individuals to each other, in being a formulation of the custom of the civil community. These systems of law differ from each other as the conditions, the customs of each people differ from those of every other people. But there has arisen in recent years quite a new and distinct influence, producing legal enactment and furnishing occasion for legal development. That is the entrance into the minds of men of the comparatively new idea of individual freedom and individual equality. The idea that all men are born equal, that every man is entitled to his life, his liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; the great declarations of principle designed to give effect to the fundamental ideas of liberty and equality, are not the outcome of the conditions or customs of any particular people, but they are common to all mankind.
Before the jurists and lawyers of the world there lies the task of adapting each special system of municipal law to the enforcement of the general principles which have come into the life of mankind within so recent a time, and which are cosmopolitan and world-wide and belong in no country especially. These principles have to be fitted to your laws in Mexico and our laws in the United States and to the French laws in France and the German laws in Germany; and the task before the jurists and lawyers of the world is to formulate, to elaborate, to secure the enactment and the enforcement of such practical provisions as will weld together in each land the old system of municipal law, which regulates the relations of individuals with each other in accordance with the time-honored traditions and customs of the race and country, and these new principles of universal human freedom.
Now, that task is something that cannot be accomplished except by scientific processes, by the study of comparative jurisprudence, by the application of minds of the highest order in the most painstaking and practical way. In the adaptation of these new ideas common to all free people, the best minds of every people should assist every other people and receive assistance from every other people. The study of comparative jurisprudence, apparently dry, purely scientific, is as important to the well-being of the citizen in the streets of Mexico or Washington, as those scientific observations and calculations which seem to be purely abstract have proved to be to the mariner on the ocean or the engineer of the great works of construction which are of such practical value; and we ought to promote by the existence of societies of this character in every civilized land and the free intercourse and intercommunication of such societies, the existence of such a spirit of comradeship between them that they can freely give and take the results of their labors, of their experience, and of their skill.
This is of immense practical importance in the administration of government and the progress of ordered liberty in the world; for, after all, the declaration of political principles is of no value unless laws are framed adequate to bring principles down to the practical use of every citizen, and the framing of such laws in every land is the work of the jurists of the land. It is because I may be associated with you in doing what little a lawyer can do toward helping to the accomplishment of this great, beneficent, and necessary work for civilization, that I find the greatest pleasure in accepting your election as a member of this Academy, and find cause for gratification beyond that of mere personal vanity or personal feeling.
Permit me to express the warmest good wishes for the continued activity, prosperity, and usefulness of this distinguished body which has so greatly honored me by this election.
BANQUET OF THE AMERICAN AMBASSADOR
SPEECH OF AMBASSADOR THOMPSON
October 5, 1907
Probably not before has there been such a gathering of distinguished men as are tonight seated at this table at the foot of the famous Castle of Chapultepec. The honored Secretary of State of the American nation is here, the guest of the great Mexican Republic, with such honors showered upon him as should not and will not soon be forgotten by a friendly and appreciative people, nor by the immediate recipient of Mexico's greeting.
Personally, I feel, I am sure, no less satisfaction than Mr. Root on this occasion, a dinner given by me in honor of chiefs of the Mexican nation and other distinguished Mexicans, for the purpose of demonstrating, as best I can, my regard for them, not only because of the very great honor Mexico is doing my country and my chief, but in part for many kindly and friendly acts of the past. That the chiefs of staff of the Mexican President, and many other high officials of nation and state, have responded to an invitation with their presence on this occasion, thus further honoring my country, Mr. Root, and myself, calls for an expression of good-will that I offer as a toast to Mexico and its illustrious President, General Diaz.
RESPONSE OF VICE-PRESIDENT CORRAL
In the name of my colleagues in the Mexican Cabinet and other national functionaries, invited to this banquet, I thank you for this very gracious distinction.
I consider myself very fortunate to address such a distinguished gathering in these memorable moments, when the Mexican public offers its hospitality to the honorable Secretary of State of the United States, Mr. Elihu Root, one of the most eminent men in the world, both for his wisdom and his political works, as a defender of the rights of nations, and as the courageous knight of American democracy and universal peace.
It is very satisfactory for Mexico to demonstrate her sympathy to a guest of such high merit; and I assure you, Mr. Ambassador, that his visit to this country will create new and stronger bonds of durable friendship between the two sister republics of North America, and will be a new element of the highest value, in the mission of concord you have accomplished with such great ability, and which is a profound cause of satisfaction to us.
I thank you once more for your good wishes for Mexico and the President of our republic; and, in my turn, I have the honor to invite all present to raise their cups to the powerful nation, the United States, and to its great President, Theodore Roosevelt.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I appreciate the high honor conferred upon me by the presence of the Vice-President, the members of the Cabinet, and so many representatives of foreign nations, so many of whom are old acquaintances of mine. It is very pleasing to me to find myself among you, as the guest of the official representative of the United States in Mexico.
I beg you to join me in a sentiment which is not personal—the economic cooperation of Mexico and the United States. This is a sentiment which will be concurred in by all those present, as it will redound to the benefit of all civilized countries who are engaged in commercial pursuits. I hope that the development of progress may follow its course to the end that the two countries adjoining each other for thousands of miles, may, by means of mutual commerce, interchange of capital, labor, and the fruits of intelligence and experience, attain the results reached by the states of the American Union, regardless of the distance between us, because of our mutual cooperation. The signs of the times, as I understand them, show a possibility of an increase in the relations between the two countries, situated so closely on this continent. The whole world has reached a state of progress which renders possible better economic, political, and social relations. A repetition of the war of 1846 between Mexico and the United States would be impossible today;—it would be impossible because the progress of each country, the experience, the prudence of their governments, the knowledge of the business of Mexico would prevent it; general public sentiment in the United States would also be opposed to it.
The European invasion of Mexico, in the year 1861, would be impossible today; no one of the three nations would have any thought of attempting it today. An attempt to establish an empire here neither would nor could be thought of as possible.
The whole world has advanced to a degree when international relations and interchange of courtesies between nations have facilitated the establishment of peaceful correspondence, which would not have been possible before, because of the want of a stability in their relations.
The desire to advance a degree towards the assurance of intimate relations and greater friendship has caused us to accept with pleasure the kindly and gracious invitation of President Diaz to visit Mexico—a visit which shall remain a source of pleasure during all of my life, and during which I have received proofs of friendship and kindness and generous hospitality beyond anything I expected, and for which I beg you, citizens of Mexico, to kindly accept my sincerest gratitude.
RESPONSE OF SENOR LICENCIADO DON JOSE IVES LIMANTOUR
MINISTER OF FINANCE
You have come to this country with the assurance, often reiterated and always received with applause, of close and sincere brotherly feeling between our two countries, the permanence of which is guaranteed by our common ideals and our mutual respect.
Your mission challenges our warmest sympathy. Voices more authoritative than mine have informed you of this fact, and the attitude of the Mexican people is its corroboration. You have been the apostle of a grand idea, the most vital, perhaps, of any affecting the international politics of this continent and assuredly the only one capable of harmonizing the interests and the hearts of all the inhabitants of the New World. This idea consists in laying down, as the invariable basis for the relations of the countries of America with one another, the sacred principles of justice, and the territorial integrity of each one of them.
Such being the pledge which we have from your lips, and feeling confident that the immense majority of your countrymen endorse the declaration to that effect made by you during your memorable journey of last year, and during the journey that is now in progress, we welcome you as one welcomes a loyal and disinterested friend, without the mental reservation that one sometimes feels in clasping the hand of the great, and moved by the hope of thus contributing, in the best manner possible, to us, towards the realization of an aim that is commended by a high and enlightened patriotism.
Mexico's course for the future is clearly marked out, at any rate as far as human foresight can safely reach. Her geographical situation and the conditions governing the international politics of America assure her, as long as the views which you have proclaimed with a conviction so sincere, predominate in your country, the tranquillity in her international relations which she needs in order to devote herself to intellectual culture and to the development of her abundant and varied natural resources, while at the same time offering hospitality to all well-meaning persons who bring here their contingent of industry and civilization. With a program such as this, it has been easy—and will be still more easy in the future—to regulate our conduct towards you, the citizens of the great nation beyond the Rio Grande. You will always be welcome, as it is right and proper that useful and agreeable neighbors who give proofs of their desire to be on good terms and to cooperate in all of the works of progress, should be; and I believe that you are quite convinced that both out of interest and good-will, the Mexican people will offer you every facility that may enable you to take an active part in the social and economic development of this republic.
It is far from my thoughts, at the present moment, to extol the virtues and the good qualities of my countrymen. I may be permitted, however, as a minister of finance, to say a few words in regard to one or two economic facts that have an important bearing on business relations.
Mexico, at the present time, as you well know, is not a country exclusively engaged in mining and farming, but also carries on an extensive commerce and possesses fairly prosperous manufacturing industries. There are many lines of activity demanding industry, intelligence, and capital, and there is an ample field for the utilization of all elements of that nature coming to us from abroad. But a point which all persons interested in Mexico's business affairs will do well to realize is the honesty and prudent habits which characterize mercantile transactions in this country. "Booms" and "bluffs" are exotic plants which can with difficulty be acclimatized here, and speculative combinations rarely enter into the calculations of the merchant.
A single example will suffice to illustrate the characteristics to which I am referring. In that period of stress from 1892 to 1894 when the country, after suffering the loss of several harvests in succession and the ravages of a severe epidemic, was further tried by sudden depreciation of silver, which in the course of a few months cut the gold value of our currency in half, every one thought that the economic constitution of the nation would not be able to withstand shocks so repeated and formidable; and yet we continued to meet our debts with religious punctuality and it was noted with surprise that not a single failure of importance occurred in any part of the republic.
We may be charged with undue timidity, with slender experience, in certain methods that are common elsewhere in the initiation of business undertaking. But these deficiencies and others which no doubt are ours will not debar us, let us hope, from being permitted to join the grand onward march of humanity, and particularly of that portion of the human family inhabiting the New World, towards higher conditions of physical and moral welfare.
Gentlemen, let us raise our glasses to the health and happiness of our distinguished guest and his most estimable family. Let us drink to the hope that his countrymen, taking to heart the gospel which he has proclaimed throughout the length and width of America, may become the firmest guarantors of lasting peace between the two nations, consolidated by warmth of mutual regard and the continued growth of common interests.
BANQUET OF THE MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS
SPEECH OF LICENTIATE IGNACIO MARISCAL
October 7, 1907
Your presence amongst us as our illustrious guest is an event which will leave a mark in the history of Mexico, for yours is not only the visit of a most distinguished American, but also of the best representative, without the usual credentials, of a great government and a great people. The fact that your visit aims at no diplomatic business, except the tightening of the bonds of friendship between our two countries, has made it the more important and congenial to all Mexicans. Some years ago we had here other prominent and representative Americans, such as General Grant and the Honorable William H. Seward, who came as friendly visitors wanting to know Mexico personally and be known by us. Their flying visits did a great deal of good in promoting official and popular relations, for they tended to a real sisterhood between the two republics of North America. Yours, sir, will complete that most important international work, since your high personality is eminently qualified, especially under the present circumstances, to increase the admiration and respect of all my thinking fellow-citizens for the country of Washington, Lincoln, and Grant. |
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