ADDRESS OF WELCOME TO DR. LAURO MÜLLER,
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

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. MÜller, 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. MÜller 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. MÜller'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. MÜller, 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. MÜller, 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.