Honorable Secretary of State, welcome; the national representation, the
chamber that constitutionally symbolizes that people which in this
section of the western hemisphere, is ever striving, ever struggling to
attain a higher civilization, to win for itself a respected name among
nations, feels pleasure in welcoming you to its midst. You are at the
present moment the symbolical representation of a great and friendly
people and the personification of its brotherly feelings toward us. You,
honored sir, are our guest; and were the traditional chivalry of our
people not sufficient justification for our cordiality toward you, the
high character of your office, the luster encircling your name, and the
mission of peace which brings you to this land, would all move us to
open our arms to you, to show you what we are and what we would be, so
that, on returning to your country, you may tell the millions of your
fellow-citizens who will hang upon your words with rapt attention, that
Mexico is not that mythical land, which legends shroud in the mists of
the adventurous romance of the old Latin countries, restless,
mistrustful, dreamy; nay rather, you will tell them, that it is a sturdy
young nation, starting out, aye, already started, on the highroad of
civilization and industrialism; that it pursues lofty ideals and strives
to attain them, that its heart beats at the thought of universal
solidarity, that it sees in the foreigner a friend, that it answers your
brotherly message with a frank and kindly greeting, free from
resentment for the past, and trusting in the omens of the future.
Your name is not unknown to us. We have followed the trail of your
labors and triumphs for the last decade. We know, too, the people from
whom you have come; and setting aside all false modesty, can truly say
we know them better than they know us. The last thirty years of free
intercourse between this country and yours have seen an overflow of men
and money from north to south; we have dashed the mist from our eyes and
have endeavored to wring from you, more fortunate and wiser than
ourselves, the secrets of your greatness and the causes of your
astounding prosperity.
That you once wronged us, that, when burning political, economic, and
humane problems beset you, the course of justice was momentarily
hampered, we have not forgotten; we have not. But as the years have
rolled on you have won back, inch by inch, your place in our affections;
the intercourse every day has become closer and closer between your
people and ours, stepping over the bounds set by race and tongue,
infusing new life into this feeling of mutual good will and friendship,
which tends to establish harmony of ideals and close similarity of
destiny.
So it is happening and so should it be. Offsprings of the same
continent, your institutions point out the path for the development of
ours, your mental and moral advance fires the vigor of our spirit, your
tireless activity excites us to action; in a word, your progress uplifts
our noblest ambitions. We are both marching on to the victories of
civilization, although your lot, in the course of history, shall have
been that of forerunners.
One of your scholars has said that the American nation has rendered five
eminent services to the world's civilization. True are his words. For
the American nation has, in the first place, sustained by word and by
deed, the principle that the medium of bringing differences between
nations to an end, is arbitration; it has accepted and practised
religious toleration as has no other nation; it has known how to raise
the dignity of man, by giving to the political vote the development
which a true democracy calls for; it has thrown open its doors to all
such as seek progress and liberty in your country, and it has taken them
in to form part of one and the same great soul; and lastly, it has
known, as no other nation has, how to scatter abroad material benefits,
the very basis of the moral and mental perfection of the individual. To
these factors and to others derived from the conditions of its
privileged soil, is due the great importance of the American people as a
powerful force in the progress of humanity.
I shall not attempt to analyze in their essence these five glorious
victories of civilization. My mind is dazed by the victory of democracy
through the true action of the suffrage. This is the germ, the primary
origin of your greatness as a people, which makes you the beacon for the
eager gaze of all those who, down-trodden by power or by poverty, seek
under the shelter of your wise laws, the guarantee of life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness, to quote the sacred formula of your
Declaration of Independence; this it is which explains why neither the
difference of race and language, nor the morbid influence produced in
the mind by secular despotism, nor the infinite diversity of religion,
is an obstacle to the hundreds of thousands of helpless beings whom year
by year the Old World is casting on your shores, to be transformed into
citizens and become identified with the new fatherland, as if the
national spirit had breathed into the souls of these new arrivals love
for your glorious traditions and your lofty ideals of liberty, justice,
and progress. The American fatherland is not hemmed in by battlements;
it is the redeemer of all miseries, it is the refuge of all those who,
in their flight from tyranny, like your illustrious Carl Schurz,
exclaim: _ubi libertas, ibi patria!_
We, less blessed by fortune, but no whit less rich in ideals and lofty
aspirations, find pleasure in studying your people. We shall endeavor to
reap benefits from the lessons of your success, and we shall try to
avert the great evils which are born of a prosperity such as yours, and
which would undermine the walls of your civilization, did there not
arise from out of your midst men of great virtue and indomitable
strength of will, armed for the fray against guilt, combating evil, true
apostles of right. Theodore Roosevelt is such a man, the most
conspicuous of our times, the ardent devotee of justice, who claims for
good citizens, for the rich and the poor, the proud and the humble,
perfect equality and liberty unrestrained, without which lawful energies
may not expand; and demands alike for all equal justice, equal
treatment, "a square deal"--to use his own concise and vigorous phrase.
This it is which explains the whole-hearted prestige won by your Chief
Executive within the limits of your own country, and which has passed
the bounds of your territory and been merged in the international
prestige accorded to him by all cultured nations. And, in no small
measure, did you with your knowledge, your ceaseless labor and your
delicate tact contribute to this happy end. Thus the world has seen how
the voice of Theodore Roosevelt, outreaching the roar of the cannons of
Mukden, put an end to the war which in shame to human culture heralded
the dawn of the twentieth century; it has seen how, in deference to his
initiative, the cultured nations of the world hastened to meet at The
Hague Conference, and how, as a reward for his constant efforts, united
with those of the glorious Chief Executive of this republic, who now
receives you with every mark of honor, the disorders in the neighboring
republics to the south were pacified, and these are now making ready
for a work of peace and harmony,--the beginning of that longed-for era
of prosperity.
The international importance achieved by your government and your
country had its beginning when President Monroe gave to the world his
famous doctrine, so debated, so misunderstood, and perhaps so dangerous,
if--as has sometimes been thought--it might be used as a means of
illegitimate preponderance at the expense of the sovereignty of other
nations. The Monroe Doctrine embodies, nevertheless, and we should not
hesitate to say so, the first principle of international law of a great
part of this continent, if not the whole. This it means for us Mexicans,
ever since the President of the Republic announced it to Congress in his
memorable message of April, 1896, received with general acclamation by
the national representatives, and later by the whole country. The
integrity of the nations of this continent is of vital interest to all,
collectively, and not alone to the country immediately affected. Any
attack on this integrity should constitute an offense in the eyes of the
other nations of America. Accordingly, one of our great thinkers and
statesmen has wisely said: "America for Americans means each country for
its own people, to the exclusion of all foreign interference, whether
this comes from other countries of this continent or whether it comes
from any other nation whatsoever. And we in our trying struggles of the
past have given ample proof to the whole world of our homage to
independence and our hatred of all foreign intervention"--to use
President Diaz's own words.
From among the various formulas adopted by the interpreters of the
Monroe Doctrine, we Latin American nations should gather and keep as a
precious pledge, that which Theodore Roosevelt embodied in his famous
speech delivered on the occasion of the opening of the Buffalo
Exposition. Addressing the republics of the New World, the illustrious
statesman, then Vice-President of the United States of America, said:
I believe with all my heart in the Monroe Doctrine. This
doctrine is not to be invoked for the aggrandizement of any
one of us here on this continent at the expense of any one
else on this continent. It should be regarded simply as a
great international Pan American policy, vital to the
interests of all of us. The United States has and ought to
have, and must ever have, only the desire to see her sister
commonwealths in the western hemisphere continue to
flourish, and the determination that no Old World power
shall acquire new territory here on this western continent.
We of the two Americas must be left to work out our own
salvation along our own lines; and if we are wise we will
make it understood as a cardinal feature of our joint
foreign policy that, on the one hand, we will not submit to
territorial aggrandizement on this continent by any Old
World power, and that, on the other hand, among ourselves
each nation must scrupulously regard the rights and
interests of the others, so that, instead of any one of us
committing the criminal folly of trying to rise at the
expense of our neighbors, we shall all strive upward in
honest and manly brotherhood, shoulder to shoulder.
And you, honored sir, have not been less explicit. Your words,
pronounced on a memorable occasion during your recent visit to South
America, before all the free peoples of this continent gathered together
at the third Pan American Conference, should be disclosed, should reach
the ears of my fellow-citizens, for these very words of yours, as
President Roosevelt solemnly declared in his last message to the
Congress of the United States, have revealed to all who doubted the
spirit of complete equality which inspired the Monroe Doctrine, what is
the attitude of the United States towards the other American republics,
and what its purposes. You declared then:
We wish for no victories but those of peace; for no
territory except our own; for no sovereignty except the
sovereignty over ourselves. We deem the independence and
equal rights of the smallest and weakest member of the
family of nations entitled to as much respect as those of
the greatest empire; and we deem the observance of that
respect the chief guaranty of the weak against the
oppression of the strong. We neither claim nor desire any
rights or privileges or powers that we do not freely concede
to every American republic. We wish to increase our
prosperity, to expand our trade, to grow in wealth, in
wisdom, and in spirit; but our conception of the true way to
accomplish this is not to pull down others and profit by
their ruin, but to help all friends to a common prosperity
and a common growth, that we may all become greater and
stronger together.
You spoke words of truth, and know, honored sir, that those are also our
aspirations, those our aims; and thither we wend our way, with the
constant steadiness which the Mexican people showed in its struggles for
liberty and the attainment of the great principles already embodied in
our constitution and laws. Deign to believe it, and when you return to
the fatherland, pray do not ever forget that, if we have showered on you
the hospitality such as is only offered to a friend, it is because your
ideals are ours, because we citizens of this land, no less than those of
yours, accept as the supreme dogma of our political religion the
immortal words of President Lincoln, that "government of the people, by
the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."