It is with unaffected pleasure that I find myself here to-day. I once
before had the pleasure, in another southern city, of addressing the
Southern Commercial Congress. I then spoke of what the future seemed to
hold in store for this region, which so many of us love and toward the
future of which we all look forward with so much confidence and hope.
But another theme directed me here this time. I do not need to speak of
the South. She has, perhaps, acquired the gift of speaking for herself.
I come because I want to speak of our present and prospective relations
with our neighbors to the south. I deemed it a public duty, as well as a
personal pleasure, to be here to express for myself and for the
Government I represent the welcome we all feel to those who represent
the Latin-American States.
The future, ladies and gentlemen, is going to be very different for this
hemisphere from the past. These States lying to the south of us, which
have always been our neighbors, will now be drawn closer to us by
innumerable ties, and, I hope, chief of all by the tie of a common
understanding of each other. Interest does not tie nations together; it
sometimes separates them. But sympathy and understanding does unite
them, and I believe that by the new route that is just about to be
opened, while we physically cut two continents asunder, we spiritually
unite them. It is a spiritual union which we seek.
I wonder if you realize, I wonder if your imaginations have been filled
with the significance of the tides of commerce. Your Governor alluded in
very fit and striking terms to the voyage of Columbus, but Columbus took
his voyage under compulsion of circumstances. Constantinople had been
captured by the Turks, and all the routes of trade with the East had
been suddenly closed. If there was not a way across the Atlantic to open
those routes again, they were closed forever; and Columbus set out not
to discover America, for he did not know that it existed, but to
discover the eastern shores of Asia. He set sail for Cathay and stumbled
upon America. With that change in the outlook of the world, what
happened? England, that had been at the back of Europe with an unknown
sea behind her, found that all things had turned as if upon a pivot and
she was at the front of Europe; and since then all the tides of energy
and enterprise that have issued out of Europe have seemed to be turned
westward across the Atlantic. But you will notice that they have turned
westward chiefly north of the Equator, and that it is the northern half
of the globe that has seemed to be filled with the media of intercourse
and of sympathy and of common understanding.
Do you not see now what is about to happen? These great tides which have
been running along parallels of latitude will now swing southward
athwart parallels of latitude, and that opening gate at the Isthmus of
Panama will open the world to a commerce that she has not known before,
a commerce of intelligence, of thought, and sympathy between North and
South. The Latin-American States which, to their disadvantage, have been
off the main lines will now be on the main lines. I feel that these
gentlemen honoring us with their presence to-day will presently find
that some part, at any rate, of the center of gravity of the world has
shifted. Do you realize that New York, for example, will be nearer the
western coast of South America than she is now to the eastern coast of
South America? Do you realize that a line drawn northward parallel with
the greater part of the western coast of South America will run only
about one hundred and fifty miles west of New York? The great bulk of
South America, if you will look at your globes (not at your Mercator's
projection), lies eastward of the continent of North America. You will
realize that when you realize that the canal will run southeast, not
southwest, and that when you get into the Pacific you will be farther
east then you were when you left the Gulf of Mexico. These things are
significant, therefore, of this, that we are closing one chapter in the
history of the world and are opening another of great, unimaginable
significance.
There is one peculiarity about the history of the Latin-American States
which I am sure they are keenly aware of. You hear of "concessions" to
foreign capitalists in Latin America. You do not hear of concessions to
foreign capitalists in the United States. They are not granted
concessions. They are invited to make investments. The work is ours,
though they are welcome to invest in it. We do not ask them to supply
the capital and do the work. It is an invitation, not a privilege; and
States that are obliged, because their territory does not lie within the
main field of modern enterprise and action, to grant concessions are in
this condition, that foreign interests are apt to dominate their
domestic affairs, a condition of affairs always dangerous and apt to
become intolerable. What these States are going to see, therefore, is an
emancipation from the subordination, which has been inevitable, to
foreign enterprise and an assertion of the splendid character which, in
spite of these difficulties, they have again and again been able to
demonstrate. The dignity, the courage, the self-possession, the
self-respect of the Latin-American States, their achievements in the
face of all these adverse circumstances, deserve nothing but the
admiration and applause of the world. They have had harder bargains
driven with them in the matter of loans than any other peoples in the
world. Interest has been exacted of them that was not exacted of anybody
else, because the risk was said to be greater; and then securities were
taken that destroyed the risk--an admirable arrangement for those who
were forcing the terms! I rejoice in nothing so much as in the prospect
that they will now be emancipated from these conditions; and we ought to
be the first to take part in assisting in that emancipation. I think
some of these gentlemen have already had occasion to bear witness that
the Department of State in recent months has tried to serve them in that
wise. In the future they will draw closer and closer to us because of
circumstances of which I wish to speak with moderation and, I hope,
without indiscretion.
We must prove ourselves their friends and champions upon terms of
equality and honor. You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon
the terms of equality. You cannot be friends at all except upon the
terms of honor. We must show ourselves friends by comprehending their
interest whether it squares with our own interest or not. It is a very
perilous thing to determine the foreign policy of a nation in the terms
of material interest. It not only is unfair to those with whom you are
dealing, but it is degrading as regards your own actions.
Comprehension must be the soil in which shall grow all the fruits of
friendship, and there is a reason and a compulsion lying behind all this
which is dearer than anything else to the thoughtful men of America. I
mean the development of constitutional liberty in the world. Human
rights, national integrity, and opportunity as against material
interests--that, ladies and gentlemen, is the issue which we now have to
face. I want to take this occasion to say that the United States will
never again seek one additional foot of territory by conquest. She will
devote herself to showing that she knows how to make honorable and
fruitful use of the territory she has, and she must regard it as one of
the duties of friendship to see that from no quarter are material
interests made superior to human liberty and national opportunity. I say
this, not with a single thought that anyone will gainsay it, but merely
to fix in our consciousness what our real relationship with the rest of
America is. It is the relationship of a family of mankind devoted to the
development of true constitutional liberty. We know that that is the
soil out of which the best enterprise springs. We know that this is a
cause which we are making in common with our neighbors, because we have
had to make it for ourselves.
Reference has been made here to-day to some of the national problems
which confront us as a nation. What is at the heart of all our national
problems? It is that we have seen the hand of material interest
sometimes about to close upon our dearest rights and possessions. We
have seen material interests threaten constitutional freedom in the
United States. Therefore we will now know how to sympathize with those
in the rest of America who have to contend with such powers, not only
within their borders but from outside their borders also.
I know what the response of the thought and heart of America will be to
the program I have outlined, because America was created to realize a
program like that. This is not America because it is rich. This is not
America because it has set up for a great population great
opportunities of material prosperity. America is a name which sounds in
the ears of men everywhere as a synonym with individual opportunity
because a synonym of individual liberty. I would rather belong to a poor
nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love
with liberty. But we shall not be poor if we love liberty, because the
nation that loves liberty truly sets every man free to do his best and
be his best, and that means the release of all the splendid energies of
a great people who think for themselves. A nation of employees cannot be
free any more than a nation of employers can be.
In emphasizing the points which must unite us in sympathy and in
spiritual interest with the Latin-American peoples we are only
emphasizing the points of our own life, and we should prove ourselves
untrue to our own traditions if we proved ourselves untrue friends to
them. Do not think, therefore, gentlemen, that the questions of the day
are mere questions of policy and diplomacy. They are shot through with
the principles of life. We dare not turn from the principle that
morality and not expediency is the thing that must guide us and that we
will never condone iniquity because it is most convenient to do so. It
seems to me that this is a day of infinite hope, of confidence in a
future greater than the past has been, for I am fain to believe that in
spite of all the things that we wish to correct the nineteenth century
that now lies behind us has brought us a long stage toward the time
when, slowly ascending the tedious climb that leads to the final
uplands, we shall get our ultimate view of the duties of mankind. We
have breasted a considerable part of that climb and shall presently--it
may be in a generation or two--come out upon those great heights where
there shines unobstructed the light of the justice of God.