in the first period of their development and have yet many
problems to solve.
To develop the immense resources and wealth with which nature has so
wonderfully endowed these countries; to render their territory
accessible to labor and civilization by opening up means of
communication, granting all facilities and giving security for the life,
health, and welfare of their inhabitants; to obtain the population which
their immense territories require: to educate and instruct the people,
making them understand their liberty, their duties, and their rights; to
develop their faculties and energies, their labor forces, their
industrial and commercial capacity and power; to elevate their moral
dignity; to consolidate and strengthen the national unity; to insure
definitely the government of the people, in justice, in order, and in
peace; to attract capital and foreign immigration; to develop and give
impulse to commercial relations with other countries; to maintain a
frank and true international harmony and solidarity; to respect all
mutual and reciprocal rights and settle all disagreements by friendly,
just, and honorable means--to perform, in short, the work of human
civilization; these are undoubtedly the points which ought to occupy,
first of all, the thoughts of the administration of these countries, in
order to secure their tranquillity, their welfare, and their
aggrandizement, just as the United States have secured theirs by the
genius of their people and the power of their ideals.
If the nations of America, instead of living apart from each other and
separated by distrust, threats, and quarrels--which unsettle them,
rendering their energy and development fruitless, just as they have kept
up a state of anarchy, for a long time, in their internal
existence--would unite themselves together by the natural ties which the
community of their origin, of their civilization, of their necessities,
and their destinies clearly indicate, we should then witness the
realization of the ideal you have conceived of a great, prosperous, and
happy America; the union of sister republics, free, orderly, laborious,
lovers of justice, knowledge, sciences, and arts, coöperating, each one
and all of them worthily and effectively, for the realization of the
great work of human civilization and culture.
The standard and observance of justice should bring about the definite
disappearance of the disagreements which may have caused separation
among the South American countries, just as family quarrels are effaced
on the exhibition of a just and generous sentiment of sincere
brotherhood and harmony which vibrates throughout this continent as an
intense aspiration of the American soul, and as a noble ideal of concord
and of justice.
It is never too late to recognize what is right and to proceed with
rectitude. My memory suggests an important event some few years back in
the history of the relations between Peru and the United States,
described most correctly by the representative of your government as one
of those most worthy of note in the annals of diplomacy. I refer to the
serious question which arose in 1852 between our respective countries
relative to the Lobos guano islands, when the United States held that
they did not belong to the territory and sovereignty of Peru, and that
as they had been occupied by American citizens your country would uphold
these parties in the work of exploitation; but as soon as the Government
of the United States, after a lengthened and lively controversy, became
convinced of the right which Peru had on her side, it at once
spontaneously put an end to the question by a memorable note of its
Secretary of State, recognizing the absolute sovereignty of Peru over
those islands and declaring that "he makes this avowal with the greater
readiness, in consequence of the unintentional injustice done to Peru,
under a transient want of information as to the facts of the case."[3]
When powerful nations, laying aside the instruments of oppression and
violence which they have in their hands, rise to such a height of moral
elevation, universal respect and sympathy will form the unfading halo of
their grandeur.
And thus it happened with the United States of America; and Peru has now
the honor once more to express its thanks for the generous friendship
and constant interest with which the United States have always paid
attention to everything affecting the welfare and progress of our
country.
Peru, which is the depositary of the secrets of wondrous and unknown
civilizations; which possesses great historical traditions; which was
long ago the metropolis of this continent, and then a Spanish colony;
which has an enormous extent of territory, with the most varied and
wonderful climates and wealth; after grievous domestic and foreign
vicissitudes, has firmly taken in hand the great work of its
reorganization; has acquired the knowledge of its public and private
duties; has given vigor to its character and to its spirit of
enterprise; has founded industries and labor centers; has fostered
agriculture, mining, and commerce; is using every effort to foster
public instruction, increasing the number of schools throughout the
country and giving civic education to its children; constructing
railroads and public works of national and future interest; opening the
minds and intelligence of its people to the currents of culture and
modern progress, and endeavoring to establish a solid and well-directed
public administration; her fiscal revenues, her trade, and the general
capitalization of fortunes have reached in a few years an extraordinary
development which demonstrates the potentiality of the country. Enjoying
public peace, she is using every effort to maintain a policy of frank
understanding and friendship with all nations, and sustains the
principle of arbitration for the solution of all her international
controversies, thus giving evident proof of the rectitude of her
sentiments, and that the only settlements which she defends and to which
she aspires are the honorable settlements dictated by right.
These ideas are likewise yours, Mr. Root. And I invite you, gentlemen,
to unite with us in expressing the hope that the principles proclaimed
by our enlightened guest, to whom we today offer the homage of our
respect and sympathy, may everlastingly rule in America.
REPLY OF MR. ROOT
I should be insensible, indeed, were I not to feel deeply grateful for
your courtesy, your hospitality, and your kindness; nor can I fail to be
gratified by the words of praise which you, Mr. Minister, have spoken of
my beloved country, and by the hearty and unreserved approval with which
you have met my inadequate expression of the sentiments the people of my
country feel toward their sister republics of South America. The words
which you have quoted, sir, do represent the feelings of the people of
the United States. We are very far from living up to the standards which
we set for ourselves, and we know our own omissions, our failings, and
our errors; we know them, we deplore them, and we are constantly and
laboriously seeking to remedy them; but we do have underneath as the
firm foundation of constitutional freedom, the sentiments which were
expressed in the quotations which you have made.
No government in the United States could maintain itself for a moment if
it violated those principles; no act of unjust aggression by the United
States against any smaller and weaker power would be forgiven by the
people to whom the government is responsible.
Mr. Minister, my journey in South America is drawing to a close. After
many weeks of association with the distinguished men who control the
affairs of the South American republics, after much observation of the
widely different countries I have visited, it is with the greatest
satisfaction that I find, in reviewing the new records of my mind, that
the impressions with which I came to South America have been
confirmed--the impression that there is a new day dawning, a new day of
industry, of enterprise, of prosperity, of wider liberty, of more
perfect justice among the people of the southern continent.
I find that the difference between the South America of today and the
South America as the records show it to have been a generation ago, is
as wide as the difference marked by centuries in the history of Europe.
Why is it? You are the same people--not so much better than your
fathers. The same fields offered to the hand of the husbandman their
bounteous harvests then as now; the same incalculable wealth slept in
your mountains then as now; the same streams carried down from your
mountain sides the immeasurable power ready to the hand of man for the
production of wealth then as now; the same ocean washed your shores
ready to bear the commerce of the world then as now. Whence comes the
change? The change is not in material things, but in spiritual things.
The change has come because in the slow but majestic progress of
national development, the peoples of South America have been passing
through a period of progress necessary to their development, necessary
to the building of their characters, up from a stage of strife and
discord, of individual selfishness, of unrestrained ambition, of
irresponsible power, and out upon the broad platform of love for
country, of national spirit, of devotion to the ideal of justice, of
ordered liberty, of respect for the rights of others; because the
individual characters of the peoples of the South American republics
have been developed to that self-control, to that respect for justice
toward their fellowmen, to that regard for the rights and feelings of
others which inhere in true justice. The development of individual
character has made the collective character competent for
self-government and the maintenance of that justice, that ordered
liberty, which gives security to property, security to the fruits of
enterprise, security to personal liberty, to the pursuit of happiness,
to the home, to all that makes life worth living; and under the
fostering care of that character, individual and national, the hidden
wealth of the mountains is being poured out to enrich mankind; under the
fostering care of that character, individual and national, new life is
coming to the fields, to the mines, to the factories, to commerce, to
all the material interests of South America.
Mr. Minister, this is but a part of a great world movement on a wider
field. It is no idle dream that the world grows better day by day. We
cannot mark its progress by days or by years or by generations; but
marking the changes by the centuries mankind advances steadily from
brute force, from the rule of selfishness and greed toward respect for
human rights, toward desire for human happiness, toward the rule of law
and the rule of love among men. My own country has become great
materially because it has felt the influence of that majestic progress
of civilization. South America is becoming great materially because it,
too, is feeling the influence that is making humanity more human.
We can do but little in our day. We live our short lives and pass away
and are forgotten. All the wealth, prosperity, and luxury with which we
can surround ourselves is of but little benefit and little satisfaction;
but if we--if you and I--in our offices and each one of us in his
influence upon the public affairs of his day, can contribute ever so
little, but something, toward the tendency of our countries, the
tendency of our race, away from greed and force and selfishness and
wrong, toward the rule of order and love--if we can do something to
contribute to that tendency which countless millions are working out, we
shall not have lived in vain.
You were kind enough to refer to an incident in the diplomatic history
of the United States and Peru, when my own country recognized its error
in regard to the Lobos Islands and returned them freely and cheerfully
to their rightful owner. I would rather have the record of such acts of
justice for my country's fair name than the story of any battle fought
and won by her military heroes.
We cannot fail to ask ourselves sometimes the question, What will be the
end of our civilization? Will some future generation say of us, in the
words of the Persian poet, "The lion and the lizard keep the courts
where Jamshýd gloried and drank deep"? Will the palaces we build be the
problem of the antiquarians in some future century? Will all that we do
come to naught? If not--if our civilization is not to meet the fate of
all that have gone before--it will be because we have builded upon a
firm foundation, a foundation of the great body of the plain, the common
people, and upon a character formed on the principles of justice, of
liberty, and
