Mr. Root's interest in and knowledge of the American
republics is not of yesterday, nor does it date from his
secretaryship of state. It antedated and has survived
official position. In 1893 it inspired his address of
welcome to the officers of the foreign and United States
squadrons which escorted the Spanish caravels to New York.
It colors with a touch of personal feeling his address on
the Codification of International Law, delivered before the
joint sessions of the American Society and the American
Institute of International Law, and is beautifully expressed
in the following brief passage from his remarks at the
dinner of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to
the delegates of the Second Pan American Scientific
Congress.
Gentlemen of the Pan American Scientific Congress,
and our guests: I cannot refrain, in opening the
postprandial exercises of this evening, from
expressing the great satisfaction which I feel in
taking part in the transformation of the serious and
sometimes dry exercises of our meetings into this
social function. It is especially agreeable to me
because I cherish such rich and precious memories of
hospitality received from our South American guests.
I have said many times to my own countrymen, without
ever provoking resentment on their part, that I wish
they could all learn a lesson in courtesy and the
generosity of friendship from our brothers in South
America. I should have felt that my own participation
in this congress was imperfect and lacked an important
element, if I could not have met you, my old friends
of South America, in this gathering, which excludes
the serious and the scientific, and seeks to cultivate
and satisfy only the generous sentiments of friendship.
Although his address on the Codification of International Law
is contained in Mr. Root's _Addresses on International Subjects_,
it reinforces the views expressed by him, as secretary of
state, in the address before the Third International American
Conference, and its concluding paragraphs are here reprinted,
as a fitting close to the volume of addresses dealing with
the relations of the United States to our sister republics of
the South.
The presence here of Dr. Maurtua, whom it is a great pleasure for me to
hail as a colleague in the Faculty of Political and Administrative
Science of the University of San Marcos, at Lima, and of the
distinguished Ambassador from Brazil, my old friend from Rio de Janeiro,
lead me to say something which follows naturally from my reflections
regarding the interests of the smaller nations. It is now nearly ten
years ago when your people, gentlemen, and the other peoples of South
America, were good enough to give serious and respectful consideration
to a message that it was my fortune to take from this great and powerful
republic of North America to the other American nations. I wish to say
to you, gentlemen, and to all my Latin American friends here in this
congress, that everything that I said in behalf of the Government of the
United States at Rio de Janeiro in 1906 is true now as it was true then.
There has been no departure from the standard of feeling and of policy
which was declared then in behalf of the American people. On the
contrary, there is throughout the people of this country a fuller
realization of the duty and the morality and the high policy of that
standard.
Of course, in every country there are individuals who depart from the
general opinion and general conviction, both in their views and in their
conduct; but the great, the overwhelming body of the American people
love liberty, not in the restricted sense of desiring it for themselves
alone, but in the broader sense of desiring it for all mankind. The
great body of the people of these United States love justice, not merely
as they demand it for themselves, but in being willing to render it to
others. We believe in the independence and the dignity of nations, and
while we are great, we estimate our greatness as one of the least of our
possessions, and we hold the smallest state, be it upon an island of the
Caribbean or anywhere in Central or South America, as our equal in
dignity, in the right to respect and in the right to the treatment of an
equal. We believe that nobility of spirit, that high ideals, that
capacity for sacrifice are nobler than material wealth. We know that
these can be found in the little state as well as in the big one. In our
respect for you who are small, and for you who are great, there can be
no element of condescension or patronage, for that would do violence to
our own conception of the dignity of independent sovereignty. We desire
no benefits which are not the benefits rendered by honorable equals to
each other. We seek no control that we are unwilling to concede to
others, and so long as the spirit of American freedom shall continue, it
will range us side by side with you, great and small, in the maintenance
of the rights of nations, the rights which exist as against us and as
against all the rest of the world.
With that spirit we hail your presence here to cooperate with those of
us who are interested in the international law; we hail the formation of
the new American Institute of International Law and the personal
friendships that are being formed day by day between the men of the
North and the men of the South, all to the end that we may unite in such
clear and definite declaration of the principles of right conduct among
nations, and in such steadfast and honorable support of those principles
as shall command the respect of mankind and insure their enforcement.