Latin America and the United States Part 10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

REPLY OF MR. ROOT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PERU

BANQUET AT THE GOVERNMENT PALACE, LIMA

SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY JOSe PARDO Y BARREDA

PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC

September 10, 1906

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

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

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

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

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

REPLY OF MR. ROOT