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 circumstances 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 Constitution 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 shores 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 accumulating 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 attitude. 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 canal 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 Canal 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 God 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 shores, 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 circumstances 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?