THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY

Speech of His Excellency Ricardo Arias

Secretary of Government and Foreign Relations

In the National Assembly, at Panama, September 21, 1906

You have just visited the wealthiest capitals of South America, real emporiums of its richness; there you have been received with great magnificence. Our outward manifestations of joy on the occasion of your visit may, therefore, appear to you very humble; but you can rest assured that none of them will surpass us in the intensity of sympathetic feeling toward your person and toward the noble American people that you so worthily represent.

We Panamanians always remember with gratitude the interest we inspired in you from the very first days of our national existence, and we bear in mind very specially your timely speech delivered before the Union League Club of Chicago,[4] when our destiny was pending on the scales of a decision of your Senate; and therefore we avail ourselves of this joyful opportunity to receive you with the cordiality due to an old and good friend.

It has been, and it is yet, the vehement desire of your country to bring into closer ties, as far as possible, its political and commercial relations with the Latin American countries. The similarity of traditions and institutions, the vicinity and continuity of their territories, and the vast field of commercial expansion which they offer, fully justify that natural, legitimate desire, which is also mutually beneficial; but there being between yours and the latter countries essential differences of language, race, disposition, and education, there is bound to exist in them the suspicion which is naturally engendered by the unknown, and thus it is that the first steps taken toward the accomplishment of your desire should have been the removal of that suspicion by means of friendly intercourse and mutual acquaintance.

With the tact brought forth by your vast intelligence and learning, you fully understood that those do not love each other well who are not intimately acquainted; and it is owing to this fact that you decided to come in person to visit and to know the Latin Americans by your own observation and study. No doubt you carry with you a joyful impression of the progress and nobleness of disposition of our southern brothers, together with the assurance that your mission will achieve a new and splendid triumph for that American diplomacy whereof you are the skilled director, and the principal object of which is the accomplishment of the desire of which I have already spoken.

Being desirous to coÖperate in the aims you have in view and with the hope of dispelling certain existing misunderstandings concerning the motives and intentions which originated our present pleasant relations, in a statement which I recently addressed to your government through its minister plenipotentiary here, I recounted the historical events which engendered our national existence and those special relations which link us to your country, in order that when the seal of diplomatic silence is removed, and that statement becomes public property, the world may know, through the unimpeachable testimony of history, that only ideals of the highest altruism served as a guide to the foundation of our republic and to the celebration of the treaty concerning the construction of the interoceanic canal for our benefit and pro mundi beneficio.Panama offers you a splendid field to promote the wise international policy which animates your mind. We being of similar conditions to our Latin American brothers, being linked to your country by the closest ties that can exist between two independent nations, you having the means of exerting decisive influence upon our future life and we being situated in the constant path of universal transit, shall be an evident, shining example of the benefit which your country can confer upon the countries of our race.

The fruits of your influence are already felt and seen. Peace, which we consider a blessing, is a permanent fact. Under its shelter, and under the assurances given us by your illustrious President in his famous letter of October 18, 1904, addressed to the Secretary of War, Panama has entered with firm step upon the path of material, intellectual, and moral development. Those who knew us a little over two years ago, disheartened and ruined by bad government and civil war, and see today the change that has taken place in such a short time, carry to the north and south the gratifying news of our regeneration and thereby contribute to dispel unfounded suspicions regarding yourselves.

These good results are the forerunners of greater benefits in the future, and of the effect of the coÖperation of the agents of your government in the progress of the country in general, of their friendly and timely advice, and of their decided moral support whenever there has been need thereof.

I will profit by this opportunity to convey to you the gratitude of the government and people of Panama for the special consideration which has been extended to them by the government of your country. This has been evidenced principally by the diplomatic staff sent to us, from the very able Honorable William I. Buchanan, your first minister plenipotentiary, to the popular Honorable Charles E. Magoon, who can hardly be replaced, and whose separation from the post he occupies with general satisfaction has caused great regret in the country; and later you sent us, doing us an unmerited honor, in the first place, by special order of your very noble President, your Secretary of War, Honorable William H. Taft, who established the relations between our two countries on the happy basis of mutual cordiality and justice, on which they are now established; and now, Mr. Secretary, you do us the great honor of coming yourself on a visit, placing us on a level with the powerful Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay; and, furthermore, which appears to be the extreme limit of what is possible, you allow us to look forward to the coming visit of your great President, the most distinguished of existing rulers—a special honor which has not been vouchsafed even to the most powerful nations of the world. Panama, overwhelmed with so many marks of appreciation, will preserve them as an everlasting remembrance of gratitude toward your noble country; and in return, though it be but partial, we will follow your advice, we will coÖperate without reserve and with enthusiasm in the great work of the interoceanic canal, which is bound to be the most magnificent monument of the grandeur of your people; and we will likewise support you in the mission of American brotherhood which you have undertaken, founding a nation which shall distinguish itself by its love of work, of honor, of order, and of justice.

Reply of Mr. Root

I thank you for your kind welcome to me and for the friendship to my country expressed in that welcome, and I thank you for the honor conferred upon me by this reception in the legislative body which is charged with the government of this republic. You have truly said, sir, that I am deeply interested in the affairs of the people of Panama. At the time of the events which led to your independence, I studied your history carefully and thoroughly from original documents, in order to determine in my own mind what the course of my country ought to be. From that study have resulted a keen sense of the manifold injuries and injustices under which the people of Panama have suffered in years past, a strong sympathy with you in your efforts and aspirations toward a better condition, a fervent hope for your prosperity and welfare.

It is with the greatest pleasure that I have heard the expressions of friendship for my country, because of my feeling toward you and because of the special relations which exist between the two countries. We are engaged together in the prosecution of a great, a momentous enterprise—an enterprise which has been the dream not only of the early navigators who first colonized your coasts, but of the most progressive of mankind for four centuries. Its successful accomplishment will make Panama the very center of the world's trade; you will stand upon the greatest highway of commerce; more than the ancient glories of the isthmus will be restored; and there lies before you in the future of this successful enterprise wealth, prosperity, the opportunity for education, for cultivation, and for intercourse with all the world such as has never before been brought to any people. The success of the enterprise will unite the far-separated Atlantic and Pacific coasts in my country; it will give to us the credit of great deeds done, and make the Atlantic and Pacific for us as but one ocean; and the success of this enterprise will give to the world a new highway of commerce and the possibility of a distinct and enormous advance in that communication between nations which is the surest guaranty of peace and civilization.

The achievement of this work is to be accomplished by us jointly. You furnish the country, the place, the soil, the atmosphere, the surrounding population among which the people who do the work are to live and where the work is to be maintained. We furnish the capital and the trained constructive ability which has grown up in the course of centuries of development of the northern continent. The work is difficult and delicate; the two peoples, the Anglo-American and the Spanish-American, are widely different in their traditions, their laws, their customs, their methods of thinking and speaking and doing business. It often happens that we misunderstand each other; it often happens that we fail to appreciate your good qualities and that you fail to appreciate ours; and that with perfectly good intentions, with the best of purposes and kindliest of feelings, we clash, we fail to understand each other, we get at cross purposes, and misconception and discord are liable to arise. Let us remember this in all our intercourse; let us be patient with each other; let us believe in the sincerity of our mutual good purposes and kindly feelings, and be patient and forbearing each with the other, so that we may go on together in the accomplishment of this great enterprise; together bring it to a successful conclusion; together share in the glory of the great work done and in the prosperity that will come from the result.

Mr. President and gentlemen, let me assure you that in the share which the United States is taking and is to take in this work, there is and can be but one feeling and one desire toward the people of Panama. It is a feeling of friendship sincere and lasting; it is a feeling of strong desire that wisdom may control the deliberations of this assembly; that judgment and prudence and love of country may rule in all your councils and may control all your actions; it is a desire and a firm purpose that so far as in us lies, there shall be preserved for you the precious boon of free self-government. We do not wish to govern you or interfere in your government, because we are larger and stronger; we believe that the principle of liberty and the rights of men are more important than the size of armies or the number of battleships. Your independence which we recognized first among the nations of the earth, it is our desire to have maintained inviolate. Believe this, be patient with us, as we will be patient with you; and I hope, I believe, that at some future day we shall all be sailing through the canal together, congratulating each other upon our share in that great and beneficent work.

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