ADDRESS OF WELCOME TO DR. LAURO MUeLLER, SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN
AFFAIRS OF BRAZIL, AT A BANQUET OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF THE STATE
OF NEW YORK, JUNE 18, 1913
The republic of Brazil designated its minister for foreign
affairs, Dr. Lauro Mueller, to return officially Mr. Root's
visit to that republic, and the following address was
delivered by Mr. Root at the dinner given by the Chamber of
Commerce of the State of New York to His Excellency, Lauro
Mueller, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of the
Republic of Brazil.
When in the various pathways that one treads in a long life one has made
friends, has garnered the wealth of friendship, that is more the
happiness of age than wealth of money or possession, I know of nothing
more delightful than to help bring together distant and separated
friends and complete that circuit of magnetic intercourse which, after
all, above all sordid motives, above all selfish interests, above all
things material, makes up the true value of life.
I cannot express the satisfaction that I feel in having you, my friends,
the Chamber of Commerce, unite in taking the hand, and coming into
personal contact with, my old friend and host of the southern republic.
I feel that you are all paying my debt of gratitude, paying it as
friends should pay it for friends.
Dr. Mueller, you have come to see a people widely known throughout the
world for their great material achievements, a people whose influence
has been very great in the development of civilization and in the
advancement of those standards of living and of action which we believe
make our times better than the times that have gone before; and you see
here about you at these tables, and in the portraits upon these walls,
the men who, for nearly a century and a half have played a great, aye,
the greatest part in the amazing material developments and in the
spiritual life of this republic. Those who are living today under the
inspiration and the spirit of the great citizens who have gone before
are gathered to do you honor and do your country honor. What has been
done in the United States of America, has been done, not by the power of
money; it has been done, not under the influence of selfish motives; it
has been done under the influence of noble ideals, of great minds, and
of great hearts directing and guiding and leading the mighty affairs of
a great people. And here are representatives, not all, but many, of the
foremost representatives of that American spirit which has accomplished
everything which you have seen in your journey here.
My friends of the Chamber of Commerce, some years ago when it fell to my
lot to visit South America, for the purpose of carrying to the minds of
our southern sisters a true message of the real feeling of our people
towards them, for the purpose of getting a hearing among the peoples of
South America, which could not be gained through the newspapers, which
could not be gained in any other way than by direct personal contact and
by the influence of one personality meeting another, for the purpose of
doing away with the false and distorted ideas that our great country was
possessed by ambition and the lust of conquest and the desire for
dominion over other lands, I met in Brazil the most noble and generous
hospitality. No nation of men could have exhibited in a higher degree
all those qualities which make men love each other than the people of
Brazil exhibited to me on my visit there. The noble traditions of their
race, all the great-heartedness of the grandees of the Iberian
Peninsula, all those sentiments which have made them _par excellence_
the gentlemen of civilization were exhibited in the welcome they gave
to you, to our people, through me as their representative.
In that land of surpassing beauty, in that scene upon the Bay of Rio,
with its shining waters and its blue mountains, in that city which has
all the romance of fair Ionian cities, I found a depth and warmth of
friendship, a depth of patriotism and love for their own country, a
response to the message of humanity, and a warm acceptance of the tender
of friendship which made the people of Brazil ever to me a group of
dearly loved and always to be remembered friends. And among the first of
them all was our guest of this evening. His personal hospitality I shall
never forget. He knew not the words inconvenience or trouble. One would
have thought he had no other duties to perform but to make the stranger
who came from the distant republic of the north at home and happy, and
he did it as the men of his country know how to do it. Even then he held
a great place in the government of his country; and it is a matter of
the utmost satisfaction to me that his people have continued their
confidence in him and have led him along step by step to higher and
higher office, so that today he stands in the forefront of the statesmen
who are making Brazil one of the great world powers of our modern
civilization.
It is not, my friends, a mere gathering of courtesy tonight. We are not
merely performing a duty of hospitality to the representative of a
foreign state, when we exhibit our sincere friendship and our kindly
feelings toward Dr. Mueller and his country; we are doing for ourselves
something of inestimable value, and we are doing something of
inestimable value for the people of our country.
Of late the electors of America, the unofficial people of America, are
demanding, asserting and laying hold upon more and more direct relation
to the powers of government; but a democracy when it undertakes to
govern directly, needs to remember that there are no rights without a
duty, there is no duty without a right; and if a democracy is to govern
itself well it must realize its responsibilities. We have been so
isolated, we have been so free from wars and rumors of wars, so little
inconvenienced by interference on the part of other nations in our vast
domain, so busy with our internal affairs, that the people of the United
States know but little, think but little, and care but little regarding
foreign affairs. If the people of the United States are themselves to
direct their foreign affairs they must come to a realizing sense of
their responsibilities in foreign affairs; and first among those
responsibilities is the duty of courtesy, the duty of kindly
consideration, the duty to subordinate selfish interests to the broader
interests of the nations of the world; the duty to treat every other
nation with that judicial sense of others' rights which differentiates
all diplomacy from the controversies of courts or the clashing of
business interests.
Our people, if their voice is to be heard in foreign affairs, must learn
that we cannot continue a policy of peace with insult; we must learn
civility, we must learn that when we speak, when an American sovereign
speaks of the affairs of other nations, he speaks under responsibility,
and he must observe those rules of courtesy and of friendly relations by
which alone can the peace of the world be maintained.
Today we hear much of peace and persuasion for peace. Let me tell you
that the great peace agencies of the world today are the governments of
the world. Hitherto, in Dr. Mueller's visit, he has been in the main
entertained by the American Government and the people connected with the
American Government; but the responsibility for international friendship
and international peace today rests not with governments that are always
for peace, but with the people. It is the people from whom the danger of
war comes today; it is the people, so far as they are unwilling to
exercise self-restraint and all the qualities which go to make for
agreeable and kindly and friendly relations with other people.
So, to my mind your meeting here to extend the right hand of fellowship
to Dr. Mueller, to express to him the feeling of kindliness towards his
country, in its representation of the people of the United States and as
one of the multitude of incidents exercising an influence over the
people, is of greater value and greater importance than anything that
the official Government of the United States can do.
We have had for now ninety years a special political relation to the
southern republics. Since the time when Monroe announced the doctrine
which carries the necessary implication that every foot of soil upon the
two American continents is under a government competent to govern, no
longer open to colonization as the waste places of the earth are
open,--from that time to this, special and peculiar political relations
have existed between the United States and the other countries of the
western continent. Thank Heaven the need for it, the need for the
protection that came from that great assertion, is growing less and
less. There are some parts of the continent as to which the necessities
of the Monroe Doctrine, as it regards our safety, do not grow less; but
as to those great republics in South America which have passed out of
the condition of militarism, out of the condition of revolution, into
the condition of industrialism, into the paths of successful commerce,
and are becoming great and powerful nations, the Monroe Doctrine has
done its work. And the thing above all things that I hope and trust and
believe the people of South America will become permanently convinced of
is, that there is neither to the Monroe Doctrine nor any other doctrine
or purpose of the American Government any corollary of dominion or
aggression, or of aught but equal friendship.
There is a national spirit and a national purpose and a national ideal
quite apart from individual purpose or individual ideals. I am one of
those who believe that for the existence of a truly great nation there
must be an ideal of altruism. I believe that no people can be truly
great which has no national and collective purpose that is not selfish.
I believe that our country has a mission in the world; has great deeds
to accomplish for the world; has a great future of beneficence for
civilization; and that our sense of this, dim and vague doubtless among
us in the main, buoys us up and makes us better patriots and makes our
country the great nation that we love and honor. And directly to your
hands in the accomplishment of the great national purpose, making all
our prosperity, all our power, all our capital and our labor instruments
for the bettering of mankind, for the progress of civilization and for
the coming of the effective and universal rule of the religion which we
profess, right at your hands, as the first and plainest duty, is the
cementing of the bonds of friendship between our republic and our sister
republics of the continent.
We have much to learn from Brazil--I hope she may learn much from us;
and the interchange of benefits between us will but make stronger a
friendship which carries with it the recognition of benefits. I
sincerely hope, Dr. Mueller, upon your return to Brazil, you may feel it
in your heart to tell your people that here, while we are pursuing our
business careers, earnest in competition, eager to improve our
conditions, anxious for trade, desirous of the greatness and glory of
our country, we seek those ends only through universal friendship,
through carrying, so far as we can, the benefits of peace and prosperity
to all our sister republics, in order that you and we may grow stronger
and greater together, and that Brazil, with its enormous resources, with
its patriotic people, with its brilliant minds, with its bright future,
may go hand in hand with the republic of the north to ever happier and
happier conditions for all our people.