At a Breakfast by the Reception Committee, in the Atheneum at Montevideo
August 12, 1906
Before we rise from the table I have the pleasant task of saying to you
a few words to reflect and perpetuate the sentiment which has caused us
to desire to share with you the bread of Uruguay and to drink in your
company the wine which gladdens the heart of man, according to the
expression of the Holy Book.
Yes, Mr. Secretary, we are glad and happy to have you among us, and we
wish that this repast, at which, as you see, a representative group of
the ladies of Montevidean society surrounds and bestows graceful
attention upon your most worthy spouse and your daughter, may be a
symbol of the intense affection which can be shown to a welcome guest,
that of opening to you the door of our home, that of introducing you
into the affections of our household.
Yes, we are glad, sir, not only because we have the honor of knowing you
to be a gentleman and an illustrious personage who is a glory among the
glories of our America, but because--I must be very frank with you
now,--because we are convinced that this visit of yours will redound to
the honor as well as the benefit of that which is dearest to us, of that
which we love above all else on earth, our good mother-country, Uruguay,
this good sovereign mother of ours who is the mistress of our life and
whom we cannot help believing, under pain of ceasing to be her sons, to
be the greatest, the most beautiful and the most amiable of mothers,
just as you think of yours, sir; just as you feel regarding your
excellent American land. We, sir, being perhaps carried away by an
ingenuous filial illusion, are persuaded that to know our Uruguay is to
love her; and for this reason we have desired that you should know her;
for this reason we cherish the hope that, when you have returned to your
country and recall the sum of reminiscences of your memorable voyage,
pleasant and lucid recollections will burst forth of this people which
has been the first to shake your hand upon your setting foot on the soil
of a republic of sub-tropical America, and which offers you its bread
and drinks with you the wine of friendship in a sincere transport of
enduring sympathy.
We thought, Mr. Secretary, that we saw you respectfully kiss the brow of
our mother when, in a moment which should be considered historical, you
defined at the Pan American Congress of Rio de Janeiro the object and
character of your visit to the Spanish-American republics, to these
favorite daughters who are advancing slowly but surely up the steep
mountain at whose summit the ideal of self-government, freedom, and
order, and the reign of internal justice and peace awaits them; these
are the foundation and real guaranty of the reign of international
justice and peace, to which we aspire.
Yes, Mr. Secretary, you spoke the truth in your memorable speech at Rio
de Janeiro, and your words seem like corner stones. Sovereign states are
not merely coexisting on the face of the earth, but are members of one
great palpitating organism, collective persons who, obeying the same
natural law which groups together physical persons into civil and
political society, also instinctively group themselves together in order
to form the body, the life, and the thought of the international world.
Just as social life, far from disparaging the essential attributes of
the sacred human person, constitutes the ambient medium necessary to the
life, the development, and the attainment of the inalienable destiny of
man, so this great commonwealth of nations, whose permanent
establishment in America is the earnest desire of the Congress at Rio de
Janeiro, should have as its inviolable basis and essential purpose the
life, the honor, the prosperity, and the glory of the sovereign states
which constitute it.
You have proclaimed democracy, sir, as the most powerful bond which
unites the republics of America. But democracy is nothing else than
the equality of men before the law, and is consequently above all the
triumphant vindication of the right of the weak in their relations
with the strong. Therefore, sir, in pronouncing this name of our
common mother, you did so only in order to proclaim, as the American
ideal in the relations of states, the same noble principle which
governs the relations of free men, and which is the essence of our
being; you proclaimed, then, a species of international American
democracy in the bosom of which all persons should be persons with
full self-consciousness, with an individual destiny independent of the
destiny of others, with the moral and material means to accomplish
this destiny, with freedom, with dignity, and with all the attributes
which characterize and ennoble the person and distinguish it from
inferior beings.
To elevate the moral level of this great international democracy which
you have proclaimed, and of which our America should be the prototype,
there is but one means, namely, to elevate the level of all and every
one of the units which compose it, and to stimulate in all and every one
of them a consciousness of and pride in their own destiny, an undying
love for the abstract idea of country, and a deep conviction that in the
sphere of peoples, just as in that of the orbs, there is no star, no
matter how powerful, which can perturb the gravitation of the other
stars; for over the entire body of the worlds stands the immutable law
which governs them, and over this law is the sovereign will of the
Supreme Legislator of orbs and of souls.
This was the echo in my mind, Mr. Secretary, of what you said at Rio de
Janeiro and are confirming among us. Your words were great and good
because they were yours, without any doubt; but they were so, above all,
because they were in accord with the ideal of justice in pursuit of
which humanity is slowly marching--with that solemn diapason hung
between heaven and earth which furnishes the pitch from time to time to
men and peoples and worlds, in order that they may not depart from the
universal harmony.
Your words have reverberated like a friendly voice in the depths of the
soul of this people, which has acclaimed you without reserve because it
has understood you, sir. And for this reason, because I have thought
that I interpreted all the generous intensity of your attitude and of
your speeches, I have not told you at this time, as would have appeared
natural, how much we in Uruguay love and admire your wonderful American
country, whose stars shine perhaps without precedent in the sky of human
history, but rather how much we respect and with what a passion we love
our good Uruguayan mother-country, whose sun is also a star; how glad we
are to see it honored by your visit, and how we cherish the hope that
you will bear away a remembrance of us as a sincerely friendly people--a
people very conscious of its own destinies, of its rights, and of its
duties; in a word, a people very much in accord with that grand harmony
which exists among sovereign states which respect and love one another,
and which you have proclaimed in the name of your country as the supreme
ideal of our free America.
Ladies and gentlemen, let us fill our glasses with the most generous
wine, with the wine which most gladdens and cheers the heart of
man--with the wine of hope--and let us drink to the health of our
illustrious guest and messenger who represents here the intelligence and
the thought of the heart, and to the health of his wife and daughter,
who are the amiable symbol thereof; to the greater brilliancy of the
stars of his country, our glorious friend; to the realization, on the
American continent and throughout the world, of his exalted ideas of
peace, fraternity, and justice.