Latin America and the United States / Addresses by Elihu Root :: THE CENTRAL AMERICAN PEACE CONFERENCE

THE CENTRAL AMERICAN PEACE CONFERENCE

In December, 1907, a Central American Peace Conference was held at Washington, between delegates representing the five Central American republics—Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Salvador. Mexico and the United States were invited to participate in a friendly capacity and accepted the invitation. The conference grew out of the initiative taken during the previous summer by the presidents of the United States and Mexico, in an endeavor to secure an adjustment of then pending disputes between several of these republics, in some form that would secure permanent peace among them and foster their development. The conference was called together by the following note of the Secretary of State, addressed to the delegates:

Department of State,
Washington, November 11, 1907.

Excellencies: The plenipotentiaries of the five Central American republics of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Salvador, appointed by their respective Governments in pursuance of the protocol signed in Washington on September 17, 1907, having arrived in the city of Washington for the purposes of the conference contemplated in the said protocol, I have the honor to request that the said plenipotentiaries, together with the representatives of the United Mexican States and of the United States of America, appointed pursuant to the second article of said protocol, convene in the building of the Bureau of American Republics in the city of Washington, on the fourteenth day of November, instant, at half past two in the afternoon.

I avail myself of this opportunity to offer to Your Excellencies the assurances of my highest consideration.

Elihu Root.

The formal sessions of the conference began December 13, and closed December 20. During this period nine treaties and conventions were concluded between the five republics, as follows:

1. A general treaty of peace and amity.

2. A convention additional to the general treaty of peace and amity.

3. A convention for the establishment of a Central American court of justice.

4. A protocol additional to the convention for the establishment of a Central American court of justice.

5. An extradition convention.

6. A convention for the establishment of an International Central American Bureau.

7. A convention for the establishment of a Central American pedagogical institute.

8. A convention concerning future Central American Conferences.9. A convention concerning railway communications.

The most important were the general treaty of peace and amity, and the convention for the establishment of a Central American court of justice. The texts of these various conventions are found in Malloy's Treaties and Conventions of the United States, Volume II, pp. 2391-2420.

The Mexican Government was represented by His Excellency SeÑor Don Enrique C. Creel, ambassador at Washington, and the United States by Honorable William I. Buchanan.

At the opening session of the conference Mr. Root made the following address:

ADDRESS OPENING THE CENTRAL AMERICAN PEACE CONFERENCE, DECEMBER 13, 1907

Usage devolves upon me as the head of the Foreign Office of the country in which you are assembled to call this meeting together; to call it to order and to preside during the formation of your organization. I wish to express to you, at the outset, the high appreciation of the Government of the United States of the compliment you pay to us in selecting the city of Washington as the field of your labors in behalf of the rule of peace and order and brotherhood among the peoples of Central America. It is most gratifying to the people of the United States that you should feel that you will find here an atmosphere favorable to the development of the ideas of peace and unity, of progress and mutual helpfulness, in place of war and revolution and the retardation of the principles of liberty and justice.

So far as a sincere and friendly desire for success in your labors may furnish a favorable atmosphere, you certainly will have it here. The people of the United States are sincere believers in the principles that you are seeking to apply to the conduct of your international affairs in Central America. They sincerely desire the triumph and the control of the principles of liberty and order everywhere in the world. They especially desire that the blessings which follow the control of those principles may be enjoyed by all the people of our sister republics on the western hemisphere, and we further believe that it will be, from the most selfish point of view, for our interests to have peaceful, prosperous, and progressive republics in Central America.

The people of the United Mexican States and of the United States of America are now enjoying great benefits from the mutual interchange of commerce and friendly intercourse between the two countries of Mexico and the United States. Prosperity, the increase of wealth, the success of enterprise—all the results that come from the intelligent use of wealth—are being enjoyed by the people of both countries, through the friendly intercourse that utilizes for the people of each country the prosperity of the other. We in the United States should be most happy if the states of Central America might move with greater rapidity along the pathway of such prosperity, of such progress; to the end that we may share, through commerce and friendly intercourse, in your new prosperity, and aid you by our prosperity.

We cannot fail, gentlemen, to be admonished by the many failures which have been made by the people of Central America to establish agreement among themselves which would be lasting, that the task you have before you is no easy one. The trial has often been made and the agreements which have been elaborated, signed, ratified, seem to have been written in water. Yet I cannot resist the impression that we have at last come to the threshold of a happier day for Central America. Time is necessary to political development. I have great confidence in the judgment that in the long course of time, through successive steps of failure, through the accompanying education of your people, through the encouraging examples which now, more than ever before, surround you, success will be attained in securing unity and progress in other countries of the new hemisphere. Through the combination of all these, you are at a point in your history where it is possible for you to take a forward step that will remain.It would ill become me to attempt to propose or suggest the steps which you should take; but I will venture to observe that the all-important thing for you to accomplish is that while you enter into agreements which will, I am sure, be framed in consonance with the most peaceful aspirations and the most rigid sense of justice, you shall devise also some practical methods under which it will be possible to secure the performance of those agreements. The mere declaration of general principles, the mere agreement upon lines of policy and of conduct, are of little value unless there be practical and definite methods provided by which the responsibility for failing to keep the agreement may be fixed upon some definite person, and the public sentiment of Central America brought to bear to prevent the violation. The declaration that a man is entitled to his liberty would be of little value with us in this country, were it not for the writ of habeas corpus that makes it the duty of a specific judge, when applied to, to inquire into the cause of a man's detention, and set him at liberty if he is unjustly detained. The provision which declares that a man should not be deprived of his property without due process of law would be of little value were it not for the practical provision which imposes on specific officers the duty of nullifying every attempt to take away a man's property without due process of law.

To find practical definite methods by which you shall make it somebody's duty to see that the great principles you declare are not violated, by which if an attempt be made to violate them the responsibility may be fixed upon the guilty individual—those, in my judgment, are the problems to which you should specifically and most earnestly address yourselves.

I have confidence in your success because I have confidence in your sincerity of purpose, and because I believe that your people have developed to the point where they are ready to receive and to utilize such results as you may work out. Why should you not live in peace and harmony? You are one people in fact; your citizenship is interchangeable—your race, your religion, your customs, your laws, your lineage, your consanguinity and relations, your social connections, your sympathies, your aspirations, and your hopes for the future are the same.

It can be nothing but the ambition of individuals who care more for their selfish purposes than for the good of their country, that can prevent the people of the Central American states from living together in peace and unity.

It is my most earnest hope, it is the hope of the American Government and people, that from this conference may come the specific and practical measures which will enable the people of Central America to march on with equal step abreast of the most progressive nations of modern civilization; to fulfill their great destinies in that brotherhood which nature has intended them to preserve; to exile forever from that land of beauty and of wealth incalculable the fraternal strife which has hitherto held you back in the development of your civilization.

ADDRESS CLOSING THE CENTRAL AMERICAN PEACE CONFERENCE, DECEMBER 20, 1907

I beg you, gentlemen, to accept my hearty and sincere congratulations. The people of Central America, withdrawn to a great distance from the scene of your labors, may not know, but I wish that my voice might reach each one of them to tell them that during the month that has passed their loyal representatives have been doing for them in sincerity and in the discharge of patriotic duty a service which stands upon the highest level of the achievements of the most advanced modern civilization. You have each one of you been faithful to the protection of the interests of your several countries; you have each one of you exhibited patience, kindly consideration, regard for the rights and feelings of others, and a willingness to meet with open mind the opinions and wishes of your fellow-countrymen; you have pursued the true method by which law, order, peace, and justice are substituted for the unrestrained dominion of the strong over the weak, and you have reached conclusions which I believe are wise and are well adapted to advance the progress of each and all of the Central American republics toward that much-to-be-desired consummation in the future of one great, strong, and happy Central American republic.

May the poor husbandman who cultivates the fields of your five republics, may the miner who is wearing out his weary life in the hard labors of your mines, may the mothers who are caring for the infant children who are to make the peoples of Central America in the future, may the millions whose prosperity and happiness you have sought to advance here, may the unborn generations of the future in your beloved countries, have reason to look back to this day with blessings upon the self-devotion and the self-restraint with which you have endeavored to serve their interests and to secure their prosperity and peace.

With this hope the entire body of my countrymen will join, and with the expression of this hope I declare the Peace Conference of the Republics of Central America, convened in the city of Washington in this year nineteen hundred and seven, to be now adjourned.

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