Last year, in accordance with the wishes of your President, you
undertook to visit and become acquainted with Latin America, and for
that purpose you made an extended voyage which was fruitful in happy
results.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century adventurous Spanish and
Portuguese navigators sailed from the Atlantic into the Pacific,
effecting important discoveries of which the object was to rescue from
darkness populous regions which, since then, have become part of the
civilized world. You have sailed over nearly the same route four
centuries later, proclaiming a message of peace and concord in all those
regions whose inhabitants greeted you with acclamations from the
northern ports of Brazil around to those of Colombia and Panama.
You are now crowning your mission by visiting the Mexican Republic, and
you arrive at this capital animated by the same aspirations which
actuated you when you set foot on the cruiser _Charleston_ in the port
of New York on July 4, 1906.
Your aims are so noble and great that they cannot but be sincere. The
course you have set before yourself would not be possible for one whose
head did not harbor the loftiest ideals, and whose heart did not quicken
to the finest sentiments.
Your President is a great man; rectitude and loyalty are the dominant
features of his character. A soldier, and a brave one, he knows what war
is, and therefore he abhors it with all the force of his large heart;
the war which engages his thoughts is war upon war itself.
It would not befit me at this moment, much as I should wish to do so, to
extol the character of the supreme magistrate of my country. But I may
say that, though a soldier like your own President, he detests war in
the same degree, and that the ideals and aims of both these great men
are alike directed toward an object sublime and desired of all
men--peace.
The nations which both statesmen govern follow their lead in this
respect with energetic unanimity; and it is safe to augur the happiest
results from a concert so auspicious.
You, sir, second the purposes of both of those leaders with a zeal which
nothing can cool; your mind has been formed at the bar--in the school
of justice; and, like our two Presidents, you abominate injustice and
insincerity.
You also know what war is, and you share the aversion of the two great
American statesmen who are the standard bearers of peace in the new
world.
Welcome, excellency, to this ancient capital of the empire of Montezuma.
She opens her gates to you and to your family, and offers you the
sincerest hospitality, hoping you may preserve of her recollections as
lasting as will be her memory of the visit of one whose happy mission it
has been to carry everywhere the spirit of peace, good-will, and
fraternity.