I thank you for the kind reference to myself, and I thank you for the
high terms in which you have spoken of my country, from which I am so
far away. Do not think, I beg you, sir, if I accept what you have said
regarding the country I love, that we, in the north, consider ourselves
so perfect as your description of us. We have virtues, we have good
qualities, and we are proud of them; but we ourselves know in our own
hearts how many faults we have. We know the mistakes we have made, the
failures we have made, the tasks that are still before us to perform.
Yet from the experiences of our efforts and our successes, and from the
experiences of our faults and our failures, we, the oldest of the
organized republics of America, say to you of Uruguay, and to all our
sisters, "Be of good cheer and confident hope."
You have said, Mr. President, in your eloquent remarks this evening,
that the progress of Uruguay has been slow. Slow as measured by our
lives, perhaps, but not slow as measured by the lives of nations. The
march of civilization is slow; it moves little during single human
lives. Through the centuries and the ages it proceeds with deliberate
and certain step. Look to England, whence came the principles embodied
in your constitution, and ours, where first were developed the
principles of free representative government. Remember through how many
generations England fought and bled in her wars of the White and the
Red--her blancos and colorados--the white rose of York and the red rose
of Lancaster, before she could win her way to the security of English
law.
Look to France, whence came the great declarations of the rights of man
and remember--I in my own time can remember--the Tuileries standing in
bright and peaceful beauty, and then in a pile of blackened ruins
bearing the inscription, "Liberty, equality, and fraternity," doing
injustice to liberty, to equality, and to fraternity. These nations have
passed through their furnaces. Every nation has had its own hard
experience in its progressive development, but a nation is certain to
progress if its tendency is right. It is so with Uruguay. You are
passing through the phases of steady development. The restless and
untiring soul of Jose Artigas, who made the independence of Uruguay
possible, did its work in its time, but its time is past; it is not the
day of Artigas now.
The genius of the two great men, for the love of whom your political
parties crystallized upon one side and upon the other, had its day, but
that day has passed away. Step by step Uruguay is taking its course, as
the elder nations of the earth have been taking theirs, steadily onward
and upward, seeking more perfect justice and ordered liberty.
One of the most deeply seated feelings in the human heart is love of
approbation. May we not have such relations to each other that the
desire for each other's approbation shall sustain us in the right course
and warn us away from the wrong, and help us in our development to
preserve high ideals, the ideals of justice and humanity necessary to
free self-government? It is with that hope that I am here, your guest.
It is with that desire that my people send the message of friendship to
yours.
In the name of my President, Theodore Roosevelt, I offer you, Mr.
President, the most sincere assurance of friendship and confidence.