So I hope you can carry back to your homes something better than
assurances and words. You have had contact with our people. You
know of your own personal reception. You know how gladly we have
opened to you the doors of every establishment that you wanted
to see and have shown you just what we are doing, and I hope you
have gained the right impression as to why we are doing it. We are
doing it, gentlemen, so that the world may never hereafter have to
fear the only thing that any nation has to dread--the unjust and
selfish aggression of another nation.
Some time ago, as you probably all know, I proposed a sort of
Pan-American agreement. I had perceived that one difficulty in
our past relations with Latin America was this: The famous Monroe
Doctrine was adopted without your consent and without the consent
of any Central American or South American States. If I may adopt a
term that we so often use in this country, we said: "We are going
to be your big brother whether you want us to be or not."
We did not ask whether it was agreeable to you that we should be
your big brother. We said we are going to be. Now, that was all
very well as far as protecting you from aggression from the other
side of the water, but there was nothing in it that protected you
from aggression from us, and I have repeatedly seen an uneasy
feeling on the part of representatives of States of Central and
South America that our self-appointed protection might be for our
own benefit and our own interest and not for the interest of our
neighbors. So I have said:
"Very well, let us make an arrangement by which we will give
bonds. Let us have a common guarantee that all of us will sign a
declaration of political independence and territorial integrity.
Let us agree that if any one of us, the United States included,
violates the political independence or territorial integrity of
any of the others, all others will jump on her."
I pointed out to some gentlemen who were less inclined to enter
into this arrangement than others that that was, in effect, giving
bonds on the part of the United States that we would enter into an
arrangement by which you would be protected from us.