I beg you to believe that I appreciate most highly your kind welcome and
the friendly terms with which you have greeted me. I did not feel as
though I were coming among strangers when I entered Peru; I do not feel
that I am treading on unknown soil when I set foot upon the streets of
your famous and historic city. I think no city in the world, certainly
no city in the western hemisphere, is better known in the United States
of America then the city of Lima. Almost every schoolboy in the United
States has read in the books of our own historians the story of the
founding of this city. We all know the wonderful and romantic history of
your four centuries of life; we all know the charms, the graces, and the
lovable qualities of your people.
We know that you are the metropolis of a people who carry the art of
agriculture to the highest degree of efficiency, a people frugal,
industrious, and of domestic virtue. We have seen with gratification
that you are becoming also the metropolis of a people capable of winning
from your mountains the inexhaustible wealth they contain, the
metropolis of a great mining people; and within the past few years we
have rejoiced to see that you are also on the road to become the
metropolis of a great manufacturing people.
We have read, too, the story of your struggles--first for independence,
then for liberty, then for justice and order and peace; and with the
memory of our own struggles for liberty and justice, with the experience
of our own trials and difficulties, rejoicing in our own success and
prosperity, Mr. Mayor, the feeling of sympathy and rejoicing in your
success in overcoming the obstacles that have stood in your way, in your
growth in capacity for self-government, in the continuing strength of
all the principles of justice and of order and of peace, is universal in
my country and among my people.
So I come to you not to make friends, but as a friend among friends. I
thank you with all my heart, both for myself and for my people, for the
kindness of your welcome and for what I know to be the sincerity of your
friendship.