MONTEVIDEO

Speech of His Excellency JosÉ Romeu

Minister for Foreign Affairs

At a Banquet given by him to Mr. Root, August 10, 1906

When, after plowing through the waters of the Caribbean Sea and running along the eastern coast of Brazil the North American cruiser Charleston entered the magnificent bay of Rio de Janeiro, I had the opportunity of sending to the illustrious representative of the United States, who today is our distinguished guest, a telegraphic greeting on the occasion of his arrival in South America and expressing the desire that his arrival might be the beginning of an era of fraternity and intercourse advantageous to all the nations of the American Continent.

The words of the telegram, the significant reply of the Secretary, and the very eloquent words he delivered before the Pan American Congress at Rio de Janeiro, are not a mere act of international courtesy; they are, in my judgment, the expression of the popular sentiment. They constitute the aspiration of all America. They express, at the least, the fervent desires of the Uruguayan people and of its Government, who see in the visit of the illustrious Secretary of State the foreshadowing of progress, of culture, and fraternity, which will bring the peoples closer together, contributing to their prosperity and to their greatness, through which they may figure with honor in the concert of civilized nations.

These sentiments, as is well known, have been increasing with the events that have made a vigorous people of the great northern republic, capable of preponderating in the destinies of humanity on account of the enterprising genius of all its sons, on account of the irresistible force of its energies and of its abundant riches; and, very especially, on account of its redeeming influence of republican virtues, a characteristic mark of the Puritan and the other elements which organized the Federal Government on the immovable base of liberty, justice, and democracy.

The pages of history show that the ideals of its own Constitution, like every great and generous ideal, passing over the distance from the Potomac to the banks of the River Plata, penetrated immediately to the farthest corner of the American Continent. There soon afterwards arose a new world of free countries where the undertakings of SolÍs or Pizarro and CortÉs will initiate a civilization destined to prosper in the life-giving blast of liberty and in the vigorous impulse which democracy infused into the old organizations of the colonial rÉgime. The example of the United States and its moral assistance animated the patriots.

Put to the proof in the memorable struggle for emancipation, its fortitude and its heroism overturned all obstacles until the desired moment of the consolidation, by its own effort, of the independence of the American Continent. Indeed, the influence of the United States in the diplomatic negotiations which preceded the recognition of the new nationalities, and the chivalrous declaration which President Monroe launched upon the world, contributed efficaciously to assure the stability of the growing republic. Its development and its greatness were, from that instant, intrusted to the patriotism of its sons, to the fraternity of the American peoples, and to the fruitful labor of the coming generations.

In spite of such social upheavals, which bring with them the ready-made collisions of arms, the antagonism of interests, and the struggle of ideas—inherent factors of every movement of emancipation—the nations of the new continent should not, nor will they, ever forget that from Spanish ground Columbus's three-masted vessel—a Homeric expedition—set forth, founders of numerous peoples and flourishing colonies, leaving in our land mementos, languages, customs, sentiments and traditions, which the evolutions of the human spirit do not easily obliterate. From noble France and its glorious revulsion against the remnants of feudalism arose the declaration of the rights of man and equitable ideas, which are faithfully portrayed in our democratic institutions. Italy, Germany, and Spain send to America a valuable contingent of their emigration. The currents of commerce and progress were at one time, and they are at the present time, largely fomented by the shipping and the capital of Great Britain. From the foreign office of that nation, among all the powers of old Europe, came the first disposition toward the recognition of American independence. All these circumstances are bonds which tie us to the European countries, but which do not hinder, nor can they hinder, our relations with the great northern republic, as with all those of Latin origin, always being cordially maintained, strengthened, and increased toward the ends of highly noble and patriotic progress, developing a world policy of wise foresight, tending to consolidate the destinies of the American countries.

Difficulties, soon to disappear, due to distance and lack of rapid and direct communications, have impeded the active interchange between the United States and this country, barring which no reason exists why their social and commercial relations may not be extended with reciprocal advantages.

In giving welcome to Mr. Root on his arrival in Uruguayan territory, I consider as one of my most pleasing personal gratifications the fact of having initiated the idea of inviting our distinguished guest to visit the River Plata countries.If, as I do not doubt, the visit of the distinguished member of the Government of the United States shall make the peoples of the north and the south know one another better; if the era of Pan American fraternity takes the flight to which we should aspire; if these demonstrations of courtesy are to tend, therefore, toward the progress of the nations of the continent and the mutual respect and consideration of their respective governments, the satisfaction of having promoted some of these benefits and the honor of a happy initiative, deferentially received by the illustrious Secretary of State, to whom the oriental people today offer the testimony of their esteem and sympathy, belong, at least in part, to the Uruguayan foreign office.

I drink, ladies and gentlemen, to Pan American fraternity, to the greatness of the United States of North America, to the health of His Excellency President Roosevelt, to the happiness of Mr. Elihu Root and of his distinguished family.

Reply of Mr. Root

I have already thanked you for that welcome message which greeted my first advent in the harbor of Rio de Janeiro. I have now to add my thanks, both for the gracious invitation which brings me here and for the surpassing kindness and hospitality with which I and my family have been welcomed to Montevideo. It is most gratifying to hear from the lips of one of the masters of South American diplomacy, one who knows the reality of international politics, so just an estimate of the attitude of my own country toward her South American sisters. The great declaration of Monroe, made in the infancy of Latin American liberty, was an assertion to all the world of the competency of Latin Americans to govern themselves. That assertion my country has always maintained; and my presence here is, in part, for the purpose of giving evidence of her belief that the truth of the assertion has been demonstrated; that, in the progressive development which attends the course of nations, the peoples of South America have proved that their national tendencies and capacities are, and will be, on and ever on in the path of ordered liberty. I am here to learn more, and also to demonstrate our belief in the substantial similarity of interests and sympathies of the American self-governing republics.

You have justly indicated that there is nothing in the growing friendship between our countries which imperils the interests of those countries in the Old World from which we have drawn our languages, our traditions, and the bases of our customs and our laws.

I think it may be safely said that those nations who planted their feeble colonies on these shores, from which we have spread so widely, have profited far more from the independence of the American republics than they would have profited if their unwise system of colonial government had been continued. In the establishment of these free and independent nations in this continent they have obtained a profitable outlet for their trade, employment for their commerce, food for their people, and refuge for their poor and their surplus population. We have done more than that. We have tried here their experiments in government for them. The reflex action of the American experiments in government has been felt in every country in Europe without exception, and has been far more effective in its influence than any good quality of the old colonial system could have been. And now our prosperity but adds to their prosperity. Intercourse in trade, exchange of thought in learning, in literature, in art—all add to their power and their prosperity, their intellectual activity, and their commercial strength. We still draw from their stores of wealth commercially, spiritually, intellectually, and physically, and we are beginning to return, in rich measure, with interest, what we have got from them. We have learned that national aggrandizement and national prosperity are to be gained rather by national friendship than by national violence. The friendship for your country that we from the North have is a friendship that imperils no interest of Europe. It is a friendship that springs from a desire to promote the common welfare of mankind by advancing the rule of order, of justice, of humanity, and of the Christianity which makes for the prosperity and happiness of all mankind. It is not as a messenger of strife that I come to you; but I am here as the advocate of universal friendship and peace.

Address of His Excellency JosÉ Batlle y OrdÓÑez

President of Uruguay

At the Banquet given by him at the Government House, August 11, 1906

We celebrate an event new to South America—the presence in the heart of our republics of a member of the Government of the United States of the North. That grand nation has wished thus to manifest the interest her sisters of the South inspire in her and her purpose of strongly drawing together the links that bind her to them.

Born on the same continent and in the same epoch, ruled by the same institutions, animated by the same spirit of liberty and progress, and destined alike to cause republican ideas to prevail on earth, it is natural that the nations of all America should approach nearer and nearer to each other, and unite more and more amongst themselves; and it is natural, also, that the most powerful and the most advanced amongst them should be the one to take the initiative in this union.

Your grand republic, Mr. Secretary of State, is consistent in confiding to you this mission of fraternity and solidarity with the ideas and intentions manifested by her at the dawn of the liberty of our continent. The same sentiment that inspired the Monroe Doctrine brings you to our shores as the herald of the concord and community of America.

We welcome you most cordially. You find us earnestly laboring to make justice prevail, enamored of progress, confident in the future. Far removed from the European continent, whence emerges the wave of humanity that peoples the American territories and becomes the origin of nations so glorious as yours, the growth and organization of the peoples in these regions have been slow; and public and social order has been frequently upset in our distant and scarcely populated prairies. But in the midst of these disturbances that have likewise afflicted, in their epochs of formation, almost all the present best constituted nations, sound tendencies and true principles of order and liberty prevail, nationalities are constituted in a definite manner, and republican institutions are consecrated.

Your great nation, Mr. Secretary of State, is not new to this work. She has had important participation in it. I do not refer to the Monroe Doctrine that made the elder sister the zealous defender of the younger ones. I speak of the radiant example of your republican virtue, your industrial initiative, your economic development, your scientific advances, your ardent and virile activity that has reËnforced our faith in right, in liberty, in justice, in the republic, and has animated us—as a noble and victorious example does animate—in our dark days of disturbance and disaster.

Yes, the epoch of internal convulsions is drawing to its close in this part of America, and the peoples, finding themselves organized and at peace, are dedicating themselves to all those tasks that exalt the human mind and originate, in modern times, the greatness of nations. You tread upon a land that has recently been watered abundantly with blood—upon one in which, nevertheless, the love of liberty, within the limits of order, the love of well-being, and the love of progress under legal governments is intense; upon one in which we live earnestly dedicated, in all branches of activity, to the labor that dignifies and fortifies, certain that for us has commenced an honorable era of internal peace. You have said it, Mr. Secretary of State: Out of the tumult of wars strong and stable governments have arisen; law prevails over the will of man; right and liberty are respected.

But this progress of public reason must be complemented. It is not sufficient that internal peace should be assured; it is necessary to secure external peace also. It is necessary that the American nations should draw near to each other; should know, should love each other; it is requisite to drive away, to suppress the danger of distrust, of rivalry, and of international conflicts; that the same sentiment that repudiated internal struggles should rise within as against the struggles of people against people, and that these should also be considered as the unfruitful shedding of the blood of brethren; that the calamitous armed peace may never appear in our land, and that the enormous sums used to sustain it on the European and Asiatic continents shall be employed amongst us in the development of industries, commerce, arts, and sciences.

The work may be realized by determination and constancy. The republican institutions that everywhere prevail on our continent are not propitious to the Caesars who make their glory consist in the sinister brilliancy of battles and in the increase of their territorial domains. These same institutions give voice and vote in the direction of public affairs to the multitudes, whose primordial interest is ever peace, the sparing of their own blood, so unfruitfully shed in the great catastrophes of war.

America will be, then, the continent of peace, of a just peace, founded on respect for the rights of all nations, a respect which—as you, Mr. Secretary of State, have said in tones that have resounded all over the surface of the earth, deeply moving all true hearts—must be as great for the weakest nations as for the most powerful empires. This Pan American public opinion will be created and will be made effective, a public opinion charged to systematize the international conduct of the nations, to suppress injustice, and to establish among them relations ever more and more profoundly cordial.

Your country and your Government fulfill the part, not of the false friend that incites to anarchy and weakens her friends that she may prevail over them and dominate them, but that of the faithful and true friend who exerts herself to unite them; and, that they may become good and strong, concurs with all her moral power in the realization of this work of the Pan American Congresses, destined to become a modern amphictyon to whose decisions all the great American questions will be submitted, already giving prestige thereto by such words as you have spoken to the Congress of Rio de Janeiro, which present to the American world new and grand perspectives of peace and progress.

Mr. Secretary of State, ladies and gentlemen, in the presence of deeds of this magnitude, inspired and filled with enthusiasm by them, let us pour out a libation to the United States of the North, to its vigorous President, to you and to your distinguished family, the herald of continental friendship, and to the American fatherland, from the Bering Straits to Cape Horn.

Reply of Mr. Root

I thank you for the kind reference to myself, and I thank you for the high terms in which you have spoken of my country, from which I am so far away. Do not think, I beg you, sir, if I accept what you have said regarding the country I love, that we, in the north, consider ourselves so perfect as your description of us. We have virtues, we have good qualities, and we are proud of them; but we ourselves know in our own hearts how many faults we have. We know the mistakes we have made, the failures we have made, the tasks that are still before us to perform. Yet from the experiences of our efforts and our successes, and from the experiences of our faults and our failures, we, the oldest of the organized republics of America, say to you of Uruguay, and to all our sisters, "Be of good cheer and confident hope."

You have said, Mr. President, in your eloquent remarks this evening, that the progress of Uruguay has been slow. Slow as measured by our lives, perhaps, but not slow as measured by the lives of nations. The march of civilization is slow; it moves little during single human lives. Through the centuries and the ages it proceeds with deliberate and certain step. Look to England, whence came the principles embodied in your constitution, and ours, where first were developed the principles of free representative government. Remember through how many generations England fought and bled in her wars of the White and the Red—her blancos and colorados—the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster, before she could win her way to the security of English law.

Look to France, whence came the great declarations of the rights of man and remember—I in my own time can remember—the Tuileries standing in bright and peaceful beauty, and then in a pile of blackened ruins bearing the inscription, "Liberty, equality, and fraternity," doing injustice to liberty, to equality, and to fraternity. These nations have passed through their furnaces. Every nation has had its own hard experience in its progressive development, but a nation is certain to progress if its tendency is right. It is so with Uruguay. You are passing through the phases of steady development. The restless and untiring soul of JosÉ Artigas, who made the independence of Uruguay possible, did its work in its time, but its time is past; it is not the day of Artigas now.The genius of the two great men, for the love of whom your political parties crystallized upon one side and upon the other, had its day, but that day has passed away. Step by step Uruguay is taking its course, as the elder nations of the earth have been taking theirs, steadily onward and upward, seeking more perfect justice and ordered liberty.

One of the most deeply seated feelings in the human heart is love of approbation. May we not have such relations to each other that the desire for each other's approbation shall sustain us in the right course and warn us away from the wrong, and help us in our development to preserve high ideals, the ideals of justice and humanity necessary to free self-government? It is with that hope that I am here, your guest. It is with that desire that my people send the message of friendship to yours.

In the name of my President, Theodore Roosevelt, I offer you, Mr. President, the most sincere assurance of friendship and confidence.

Speech of Doctor Zorrilla de San MartÍn

At a Breakfast by the Reception Committee, in the Atheneum at Montevideo August 12, 1906

Before we rise from the table I have the pleasant task of saying to you a few words to reflect and perpetuate the sentiment which has caused us to desire to share with you the bread of Uruguay and to drink in your company the wine which gladdens the heart of man, according to the expression of the Holy Book.

Yes, Mr. Secretary, we are glad and happy to have you among us, and we wish that this repast, at which, as you see, a representative group of the ladies of Montevidean society surrounds and bestows graceful attention upon your most worthy spouse and your daughter, may be a symbol of the intense affection which can be shown to a welcome guest, that of opening to you the door of our home, that of introducing you into the affections of our household.Yes, we are glad, sir, not only because we have the honor of knowing you to be a gentleman and an illustrious personage who is a glory among the glories of our America, but because—I must be very frank with you now,—because we are convinced that this visit of yours will redound to the honor as well as the benefit of that which is dearest to us, of that which we love above all else on earth, our good mother-country, Uruguay, this good sovereign mother of ours who is the mistress of our life and whom we cannot help believing, under pain of ceasing to be her sons, to be the greatest, the most beautiful and the most amiable of mothers, just as you think of yours, sir; just as you feel regarding your excellent American land. We, sir, being perhaps carried away by an ingenuous filial illusion, are persuaded that to know our Uruguay is to love her; and for this reason we have desired that you should know her; for this reason we cherish the hope that, when you have returned to your country and recall the sum of reminiscences of your memorable voyage, pleasant and lucid recollections will burst forth of this people which has been the first to shake your hand upon your setting foot on the soil of a republic of sub-tropical America, and which offers you its bread and drinks with you the wine of friendship in a sincere transport of enduring sympathy.

We thought, Mr. Secretary, that we saw you respectfully kiss the brow of our mother when, in a moment which should be considered historical, you defined at the Pan American Congress of Rio de Janeiro the object and character of your visit to the Spanish-American republics, to these favorite daughters who are advancing slowly but surely up the steep mountain at whose summit the ideal of self-government, freedom, and order, and the reign of internal justice and peace awaits them; these are the foundation and real guaranty of the reign of international justice and peace, to which we aspire.Yes, Mr. Secretary, you spoke the truth in your memorable speech at Rio de Janeiro, and your words seem like corner stones. Sovereign states are not merely coexisting on the face of the earth, but are members of one great palpitating organism, collective persons who, obeying the same natural law which groups together physical persons into civil and political society, also instinctively group themselves together in order to form the body, the life, and the thought of the international world. Just as social life, far from disparaging the essential attributes of the sacred human person, constitutes the ambient medium necessary to the life, the development, and the attainment of the inalienable destiny of man, so this great commonwealth of nations, whose permanent establishment in America is the earnest desire of the Congress at Rio de Janeiro, should have as its inviolable basis and essential purpose the life, the honor, the prosperity, and the glory of the sovereign states which constitute it.

You have proclaimed democracy, sir, as the most powerful bond which unites the republics of America. But democracy is nothing else than the equality of men before the law, and is consequently above all the triumphant vindication of the right of the weak in their relations with the strong. Therefore, sir, in pronouncing this name of our common mother, you did so only in order to proclaim, as the American ideal in the relations of states, the same noble principle which governs the relations of free men, and which is the essence of our being; you proclaimed, then, a species of international American democracy in the bosom of which all persons should be persons with full self-consciousness, with an individual destiny independent of the destiny of others, with the moral and material means to accomplish this destiny, with freedom, with dignity, and with all the attributes which characterize and ennoble the person and distinguish it from inferior beings.To elevate the moral level of this great international democracy which you have proclaimed, and of which our America should be the prototype, there is but one means, namely, to elevate the level of all and every one of the units which compose it, and to stimulate in all and every one of them a consciousness of and pride in their own destiny, an undying love for the abstract idea of country, and a deep conviction that in the sphere of peoples, just as in that of the orbs, there is no star, no matter how powerful, which can perturb the gravitation of the other stars; for over the entire body of the worlds stands the immutable law which governs them, and over this law is the sovereign will of the Supreme Legislator of orbs and of souls.

This was the echo in my mind, Mr. Secretary, of what you said at Rio de Janeiro and are confirming among us. Your words were great and good because they were yours, without any doubt; but they were so, above all, because they were in accord with the ideal of justice in pursuit of which humanity is slowly marching—with that solemn diapason hung between heaven and earth which furnishes the pitch from time to time to men and peoples and worlds, in order that they may not depart from the universal harmony.

Your words have reverberated like a friendly voice in the depths of the soul of this people, which has acclaimed you without reserve because it has understood you, sir. And for this reason, because I have thought that I interpreted all the generous intensity of your attitude and of your speeches, I have not told you at this time, as would have appeared natural, how much we in Uruguay love and admire your wonderful American country, whose stars shine perhaps without precedent in the sky of human history, but rather how much we respect and with what a passion we love our good Uruguayan mother-country, whose sun is also a star; how glad we are to see it honored by your visit, and how we cherish the hope that you will bear away a remembrance of us as a sincerely friendly people—a people very conscious of its own destinies, of its rights, and of its duties; in a word, a people very much in accord with that grand harmony which exists among sovereign states which respect and love one another, and which you have proclaimed in the name of your country as the supreme ideal of our free America.

Ladies and gentlemen, let us fill our glasses with the most generous wine, with the wine which most gladdens and cheers the heart of man—with the wine of hope—and let us drink to the health of our illustrious guest and messenger who represents here the intelligence and the thought of the heart, and to the health of his wife and daughter, who are the amiable symbol thereof; to the greater brilliancy of the stars of his country, our glorious friend; to the realization, on the American continent and throughout the world, of his exalted ideas of peace, fraternity, and justice.

Reply of Mr. Root

I am deeply sensible of the honor you confer upon me and upon my family by this bounteous, hospitable, and graceful festival. It is a special honor that the banquet to which we are invited should be presided over by a gentleman who has such high esteem in the public life of your own country; that the flattering, the too flattering words which have been addressed to my poor self—words of just and kindly esteem regarding my great and noble country, should be spoken by a poet who breathes in his verses the spirit of Uruguay wherever his own world-known literature is found.

It is a cause of happiness to receive this distinguished consideration here in this temple devoted to science, to literature, to the arts, to those pursuits which dignify, ennoble, and delight mankind, which give the charm and grace to life, which make possible the continuance of mankind in the paths of civilization. Here in this Atheneum, in this atmosphere of scientific and literary discussion and thought, already exists that world-wide republic which knows no divisions of territorial boundary, of races, or of creed. Upon the platform you have erected here, the men of North and the men of South America can stand in fraternal embrace.

I have been preaching for the past few weeks in many places and before many audiences the gospel of international fraternization. I know there are many incredulous; there are many who think practical considerations alone rule the efforts of men—profit in trade, the almighty dollar, the balance of bookkeeping, or the checks in the counting house. There are many who think that this is all there is to life, and that he is an idle dreamer and an insincere orator who talks of the constancy of international friendship, who talks of love of country rising above the love of material things, who talks of sentiment as controlling the affairs of men. That may be true so far as their own short and narrow lives are concerned; but it is not an idle dream that the world through the course of ages is growing up from material to spiritual, to moral, and to intellectual life. It is not an idle dream that moral influences are gradually, steadily in the course of centuries taking the place of brute force in the control of the affairs of men. Sentiment rules the world today—the feelings of the great masses of mankind; the attractions and repulsions that move the millions rule the world today; and as generation succeeds generation progress is ever from the material to the moral. We cannot see it in a day; we cannot see it in a single lifetime, as we cannot see the movements of the tide. We see the waves, but the tide moves on imperceptibly. The progress, the steady and irresistible progress of civilization is ever onwards.

Mr. Chairman, and you, SeÑor Zorrilla de San MartÍn, in your eloquent, your more than eloquent, your poetic words, do honor to the idea of peace and justice and friendship and the rule of moral qualities in the relations of nations. When you do honor to the representative of that idea you are doing your work in your day and generation to advance the great cause that proceeds through the ages to the better and higher life of mankind. We are nothing; our lives are but as moments; our personal work is inappreciable in this world; but slowly, imperceptibly, we, each individually, add a little to or detract a little from human rights, human liberty, human justice.

I do not know how sufficiently to thank you, to thank the people of Montevideo, for all that you and they have done for me and my family during our brief—our all too brief—visit here. I believe that your kindness, your generous hospitality, will find response in the breasts of my countrymen; I believe that it will be an example to the people of South America and of North America; I believe that it will be evidence to the whole world that the ideas of friendship—of international friendship and courtesy—rule here in Uruguay; that Uruguay is a part of the great brotherhood of man, not selfish, but heart open to the best and brightest influences of humanity, doing her part in her time to advance the cause of civilization. I know that when tomorrow morning we sail away from Montevideo we shall all carry with us the most delightful visions of a fair and bright land, of a white city and a beautiful bay; memories of hospitality and friendship, and memories of the most beautiful women. We can never repay you, for your hospitality has been of the kind that asks for no payment; it has been true hospitality. We can only thank you, and thank you we do now and thank you we shall continue to do as long as we live.