I thank you, Mr. Ambassador, for the too flattering expression with
which you have characterized the efforts that, by the accident of
position, I have been enabled to make in the interpretation of that
spirit which in the fullness of time has ripened, developed and become
ready for universal expression and influence.
It is a great pleasure for me to look again into the tropical forests of
Brazil; to come under the magic influence of your part of the solar
spectrum; and to be introduced again to the delightful influences of
your language through the words of the representative of King Carlos of
Portugal.
I think any one who is trying to do something is at times--perhaps most
of the time--inclined to become despondent, because any single man can
do so little. But if the little that one man can do happens to be in the
line of national or world tendencies, he may count himself happy in
helping forward the great work.
How many thousands of men, born out of time, give their lives to causes
which are not ripe for action! I think that we, my friends, are doing
our little; happy in contributing to a cause that has fully ripened. I
confess that in passing from the courts to diplomacy; from the argument
of causes, the conclusion of which would be enforced by the power of the
marshal or the sheriff, having behind him the irresistible power of the
nation--passing from such arguments to the discussion that proceeds
between the foreign offices of independent powers, I found myself
groping about to find some sanction for the rules of right conduct which
we endeavor to assert and maintain.
It has long been a widely accepted theory that the only sanction for the
right conduct of nations, for those rules of conduct which nations seek
to enforce upon each other, is the exercise of force; that behind their
diplomatic argument rests, as the ultimate argument, the possibility of
war. But I think there has been developing in the later years of
progress in civilization that other sanction, of the constraining effect
of the public opinion of mankind, which rests upon the desire for the
approval of one's fellowmen. The progress of which you have spoken, Mr.
Ambassador, in American international relations, is a progress along the
pathway that leads from the rule of force as the ultimate sanction of
argument to the rule of public opinion, which enforces its decrees by an
appeal to the desire for approbation among men.
That progress is towards the independence, the freedom, the dignity, the
happiness of every small and weak nation. It tends to realize the
theory of international law, the real national equality. The process is
one of attrition. Isolation among nations leaves no appeal for the
enforcement of rules of right conduct, but the appeal to force.
Communication, intercourse, friendship, the desire for good opinion, the
exercise of all the qualities that adorn, that elevate, that refine
human nature, bring to the defense of the smaller nation the appeal to
the other sanction, the sanction of public opinion.
What we are doing now, because the time has come for it to be done, is
to help in our day and generation in the creation of a public opinion in
America which shall approve all that is good in national character and
national conduct and punish all that is wrong with that most terrible
penalty, the disapproval of all America. As that process approaches its
perfection, the work of our friends, of the armies and navies of
America, will have been accomplished.
It is not a work of selfishness; it is a work for universal
civilization. It is a work by which we will repay to France and Portugal
and to Sweden--to all our mother lands across the Atlantic--all the
gifts of civilization, of literature, of art, of the results of their
long struggles upward from barbarism to light, with which they have
endowed us. For in the vast fields of incalculable wealth that the
American continents offer to the enterprise and the cultivation of the
world, the older nations of Europe will find their wealth, and
opportunity for the exercise of their powers in peace and with equality.
It was a great pleasure to me--it was a cause of pride to me--to hear so
distinguished an English scholar as the Ambassador from France speak the
beautiful language of France so perfectly tonight. It is a great
pleasure for me to find that throughout the United States the young men
are in constantly increasing numbers learning to speak not only French,
but Spanish and Portuguese. It was a great pleasure to find throughout
South America last summer so many, not merely of the most distinguished
and highly cultivated men, speaking English, but so large a number of
the people in the cities that I visited.
It all makes for that attrition, that practical intercourse, which is
the process of civilization; and in destroying the isolation, the
separation of American states from each other, in building up an
American public opinion, we are preparing ourselves the more perfectly
to unite with our friends of Europe in a world public opinion, which
shall establish the reign of justice and liberty and humanity throughout
the world by slow, practical, untiring processes of intercourse and
friendship in place of the rules of brutal force.