RECEPTION AT THE MUNICIPAL PALACE
Speech of Governor Guillermo de Landa y Escandón
October 3, 1907
Last year, in accordance with the wishes of your President, you undertook to visit and become acquainted with Latin America, and for that purpose you made an extended voyage which was fruitful in happy results.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century adventurous Spanish and Portuguese navigators sailed from the Atlantic into the Pacific, effecting important discoveries of which the object was to rescue from darkness populous regions which, since then, have become part of the civilized world. You have sailed over nearly the same route four centuries later, proclaiming a message of peace and concord in all those regions whose inhabitants greeted you with acclamations from the northern ports of Brazil around to those of Colombia and Panama.
You are now crowning your mission by visiting the Mexican Republic, and you arrive at this capital animated by the same aspirations which actuated you when you set foot on the cruiser Charleston in the port of New York on July 4, 1906.
Your aims are so noble and great that they cannot but be sincere. The course you have set before yourself would not be possible for one whose head did not harbor the loftiest ideals, and whose heart did not quicken to the finest sentiments.
Your President is a great man; rectitude and loyalty are the dominant features of his character. A soldier, and a brave one, he knows what war is, and therefore he abhors it with all the force of his large heart; the war which engages his thoughts is war upon war itself.
It would not befit me at this moment, much as I should wish to do so, to extol the character of the supreme magistrate of my country. But I may say that, though a soldier like your own President, he detests war in the same degree, and that the ideals and aims of both these great men are alike directed toward an object sublime and desired of all men—peace.
The nations which both statesmen govern follow their lead in this respect with energetic unanimity; and it is safe to augur the happiest results from a concert so auspicious.
You, sir, second the purposes of both of those leaders with a zeal which nothing can cool; your mind has been formed at the bar—in the school of justice; and, like our two Presidents, you abominate injustice and insincerity.
You also know what war is, and you share the aversion of the two great American statesmen who are the standard bearers of peace in the new world.
Welcome, excellency, to this ancient capital of the empire of Montezuma. She opens her gates to you and to your family, and offers you the sincerest hospitality, hoping you may preserve of her recollections as lasting as will be her memory of the visit of one whose happy mission it has been to carry everywhere the spirit of peace, good-will, and fraternity.
Mr. Root's Reply
Governor Landa, your welcome now is as it has been from the first instant of my visit, both graceful and grateful. I have been most delighted by the many interesting things I have seen here.
Above all things, I feel impelled to say that the most interesting thing in Mexico, so far as my knowledge goes, is your President. It has seemed to me that of all the men now living, Porfirio Díaz, of Mexico, is best worth seeing. Whether one considers the adventurous, daring, chivalric incidents of his early career; whether one considers the vast work of government which his wisdom and courage and commanding character have accomplished; whether one considers his singularly attractive personality, no one lives today whom I would rather see than President Díaz. If I were a poet, I would write poetry; if I were a musician, I would compose triumphal marches; if I were a Mexican, I should feel that the steadfast loyalty of a lifetime could not be too much in return for the blessings that he had brought to my country. As I am neither poet, musician, nor Mexican, but only an American who loves justice and liberty and hopes to see their reign among mankind progress and strengthen and become perpetual, I look to Porfirio Díaz, the President of Mexico, as one of the great men to be held up for the hero worship of mankind.