LUNCHEON BY THE AMERICAN COLONY
Speech of General C. H. M. y Agramonte
At the Mexican Country Club, October 4, 1907
As chairman of a committee of the American colony, the pleasant duty devolves upon me to welcome, in behalf of the colony, an illustrious countryman, and a prominent member of the official family of the President of the United States, the Secretary of State.
The opportunity has been afforded us through one of those many acts of exquisite courtesy for which the Government of Mexico is noted in its intercourse with those of us from north of the Río Grande, and to which unfailing courtesy we can all bear witness.
For the kindly spirit that actuated the Mexican Government in breaking in upon the official program for the entertainment of its guest—our countryman—and placing him in our hands for this occasion, we are extremely grateful. For the graceful act of the Mexican Country Club in permitting us the use of this magnificent building in which to entertain our guest there is no lack of appreciation.
As Americans, knowing our own people and our own country as we do, and keenly alive to everything that may obtain for its weal or its woe, our very absence from it making our hearts grow fonder of it, the joy we feel in welcoming one who has held the bright banner of our country full high advanced, is greater than any words of mine can express.
We love our country; we love it as the blessed consummation of human hopes. The world has been full of sorrow. The tearful eyes of humanity have never been dry; but in this western world, on this new continent, stretching from ocean to ocean, in the maturity of the ages has come forth a nation whose institutions and example shall aid in lifting the nations of the world into the sunlight of God's glorious liberty.
We have no king, no royal family upon which can be centered the loyal emotions of a great people. To us the only representative of the whole people is the glorious banner "thick sprinkled" with stars and striped with vivid red and white.
You, sir, have held aloft that banner. You have added to the glory of our country.
On the sacred field of Gettysburg, ground consecrated by torrents of American blood, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, gave to us a classic which will live while our country exists. You, sir, in your exposition of the attitude of the United States toward other countries, have enunciated a classic that also will live and be a bond of friendship between us and all the nations of this hemisphere.
Gentlemen, I will read to you that classic:
We wish for no victories but those of peace; for no territory except our own; for no sovereignty except the sovereignty over ourselves. We deem the independence and equal rights of the smallest and weakest member of the family of nations entitled to as much respect as those of the greatest empire; and we deem the observance of that respect the chief guaranty of the weak against the oppression of the strong. We neither claim nor desire any rights or privileges or powers that we do not freely concede to every American republic.
With such dignified sentiments resounding in our ears, have we not reason to be proud of our guest?
And now, sir, in the name of the American colony of Mexico, I bid you welcome. Yes, thrice welcome! May every choice blessing attend upon you and those you hold dear.
It is a long way from the Bowery, but I feel quite at home! It is delightful to feel that my country is represented in this land of beauty by so many handsome and cheerful-looking men; it is delightful to see the evidences of prosperity in every American here, and it is delightful to see that that subtle, indefinable quickening of spirit that comes from separation has given to each of you, exiles in a foreign land, a new significance in every star and stripe and every reference to the old flag and the old home.
Your welcome is very grateful to me; your kind expressions I most heartily reciprocate. I do not wish to return evil for good by preaching, but it occurs to me that you have—I will not say that you have left your country for your country's good—you have not abandoned your opportunities to serve her; you have rather reached the position where you have new opportunities for service as American citizens. One serious fault which formerly existed to a very great extent among Americans, and which has been growing less, was a certain provincial and narrow way of looking at foreigners. There was a good deal of truth underlying the observations and characterizations of Mr. Dickens which made our people so angry sixty or seventy years ago. One of our American humorists refers to the people of a western mining camp as looking upon a newcomer with the idea that he had the defective moral quality of being a foreigner. Now the residuum of that old feeling stands in the way of American trade and American intercourse generally with other nations. No one can do more to hasten the disappearance of that attitude than you who have experienced the friendship and kindliness of the people of this foreign country; you who have learned by your personal experience how many and how noble are the characteristics of this foreign people; you who have been able to see how much we Americans may well learn from them; you can, each one of you, be a teacher of your countrymen in your continued intercourse with your homes and your home associates in the gospel of courtesy and kindliness toward all mankind.
There is one other thought that comes naturally to my mind. You not only have not abandoned your duties toward your country by coming to this foreign land, but you have acquired new duties toward the community and the nation which has given you welcome and shelter and prosperity. There is underlying all the materialism and the hard practical sense of the American people regulating its own government for its own interests—there is underlying that a certain idealism which carries a conception of a missionary calling to spread through the length and breadth of the world the blessing of justice and liberty and of the institutions which we believe make for human happiness and human progress. That mission is to be fulfilled, not by making speeches and the giving of advice, the writing of books, or even the publication of newspapers; it can best be fulfilled by personal influence and intercourse of men one with another. No American who is in a foreign land can help representing his country; its honor and its good name rest upon each one of us the moment we cross the border. You not only represent your country, but you have a duty to perform toward the country in which you live, giving to her and to her people through your efforts and all your association the best contribution that your training as American citizens, that the traditions of centuries of American life enable you to give, toward the maintenance of law and order, toward the promotion of all ideas that you have been taught in your youth to consider sacred, toward holding up the hands of authority, toward the inculcation of the sentiment of loyalty, toward the perpetuity of the government which gives you security for your lives and your property in your new home.
I have one prominent thought in meeting you today; it is, while you continue to be good, loyal American citizens, you should be good and loyal Mexican residents. I can no better voice the sentiment of all of my countrymen here I know, and I can no better represent the feelings of our friends who remain at home, than by asking you to rise and join me in drinking to the long continuance of life, strength, and usefulness for the man who, more than any other, or all others, has given you the opportunities that you now enjoy, President Porfirio Díaz.