RECEPTION BY AMERICAN AND ENGLISH RESIDENTS
Speech of Mr. Francis B. Purdie
At St. George's Hall, August 16, 1906
Americans resident in Buenos Ayres and in the Argentine Republic are sensible of the honor you have done them by accepting their invitation for this evening, and they appreciate most highly the courtesy of the Argentine Government, whose distinguished guest you are, in allowing them this coveted privilege. As Americans we welcome you to Buenos Ayres, and it is our earnest hope that your visit here will bind more closely the ties of friendship which unite the great republics of the North and of the South, and that the knowledge you will gain of this great country and of its magnificent resources will lead to more familiar intercourse and to that good understanding which should exist between nations governed by like principles, living under constitutions framed in a like spirit, and having similar national aims.
This gathering is the result of a public meeting called immediately after it was learned that you had accepted the invitation of the Argentine Government to visit this city. It was a meeting typically American, which had no dividing line on the question that our Secretary of State was a man whom we would all delight to honor. The executive committee of the North American Society of the River Plata was intrusted with the arrangements. We believe you should know something of that society. Organized only last November, it embraces in its membership practically every American in Buenos Ayres. For its age, I am not afraid to say that it is the most flourishing social organization that has ever been established in this country. What is the object of the society? Not, I conceive, such as will arouse antagonism or jealousy in the mind of any man. As set forth in the preamble to its constitution, it is: "To keep alive the love of country and foster the spirit of patriotism,... and for such other purposes as will advance the interests of our country, encourage and maintain friendly relations with the country of our residence, and assist in promoting closer commercial union between the United States and the countries of the River Plata."
It is an organization framed in the spirit of our beloved Lincoln, "with malice toward none." The society has no political aim or purpose. It plots for nothing but the well-being of all, and wishes for nothing less than the prosperity of the home land and the land of our residence. Its members are imbued with that spirit which is the characteristic American attitude toward all nations and peoples, the spirit of "live and let live." Apart from all that your visit may mean in international comity, it means much to us here; for you, Mr. Secretary, are the very living embodiment of the spirit to which I have referred, that broad Americanism which does not seek to advantage itself by intruding on the rights of others. Every speech made by you since leaving home has been an inspiration to us, and has strengthened us in our determination to live up to the principles upon which our society is founded.
But it is not alone the Americans in Buenos Ayres who have come here tonight to greet you, and who have wished to do you honor. Your kinsmen from across the sea are here in their hundreds, for when it became known that such a reception as this was contemplated, the requests for the privilege of joining with us were so great in number that the sincerity of the English-speaking people could not be questioned, and the American society welcomed the opportunity to invite as its guests as many of the representative British and other English-speaking residents of Buenos Ayres as this hall can hold; and there is represented here every important public interest and private enterprise in this republic, and I have the honor, in their name as well as in the name of your countrymen, to assure you that you are in the house of your friends.
I have told you, Mr. Root, what your countrymen feel about your coming here; I have referred to the cordial sympathy shown by the English-speaking residents; and it is with feelings of genuine pleasure that I now make reference to the attitude of the Argentine Government and the Argentine people. This reference will not be my personal view alone; it is the expression of the feelings of representative Americans in this city which has been voiced at every meeting we have held within the past few weeks. The Argentine people are, and wish to remain, the friends of the United States. Our committees have had the privilege of holding interviews with high officials of the government, with various committees of the leading citizens; and we have been convinced of the genuine nature of the reception prepared for you. This is too proud a nation to pretend that which it does not feel, and the history of Buenos Ayres will convince any student that this city has never been afraid to speak out, to applaud or condemn as its judgment dictated. The government officials have been sincerely cordial, and they have not been content merely to express their wish to give us every friendly help; they have, apart from their own magnificent preparations, given the Americans here material assistance.
The world owes much of its progress to opposing views, and the healthiest nations have the strongest political parties taking differing views upon questions of national policy, and these parties reach the public by means of the newspapers. The Argentine Republic is not an exception, but I doubt if there has ever been a theme upon which the press of this country has been so united as that honor should be shown to you. I speak for Americans when I say that in the Argentine Republic we have found a home where absolute freedom is ours,—freedom in every walk of life; freedom for conscience; freedom to live, move, and have our being as God and our own wills may lead us. There are Argentines here tonight who are not one whit behind us in their enthusiasm for you and for all that you represent, and there is a group here of Argentines who have graduated from American colleges, who wish to say to you that next to their own country they revere the United States of America. You now know, Mr. Root, what friends you have before you, and we all bid you welcome, thrice welcome, to Buenos Ayres.
Mr. Chairman, my countrymen, my countrywomen, my friends from the land whence my fathers came, I need not say that I am glad to meet you. No one far away from his own land needs to be told that the looks, faces, the sound of voice, of one's own countrymen are a joy to the wanderer in strange lands. Yet I do not find this such a strange land. I find here so many things to remind me of home, so many things that are like our own country, that it seems a little like coming home. Such is the similarity in conditions, in spirit, in purpose; such is the impress of the same institutions and the same principles, that I cannot feel altogether a stranger; and when I meet you here at home almost I feel the warmth of my own fireside.
I am glad to meet you because I think that perhaps to many of you who have been long in this distant land I may bring pleasant memories of cities and farms and homes, left behind many a year ago. But I hope that the new home you have found, the new duties you have taken up, have made you happy, prosperous, useful, full of the ambitions, activities, and satisfactions of life. There have been great changes in the United States of America—of North America, perhaps I must call it,—since most of you left your old homes. When you, Mr. President, left us, we were a debtor nation; we were borrowing money from Europe to develop our own resources, to build up our own country. Most of the money was coming from our English friends. That capital built up our railways to make possible the wonderful development that has made the United States what it is. We had no capital, no time, no energy, to devote to anything but the task before us, to conquer our West and to develop our empty lands. In that distant day, when Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams espoused the cause of the infant republics of South America, we could have no relations with them but those of political sympathy, because we were too concentrated in the work that lay before us at home. Twenty years ago, when that far-seeing and sanguine statesman, Mr. Blaine, inaugurated his South American policy and brought about the first American Conference at Washington, and the establishment of the Bureau of American Republics, we were still a debtor nation, with no surplus capital, and engrossed in doing our work at home. It was still impossible for us to have any relations with South America, except those of political sympathy.
But since Mr. Blaine, times have changed. We have paid our debts; we have become a creditor rather than a debtor nation. We have for the first time within the last ten years begun to accumulate surplus capital, and it has accumulated with a wonderful rapidity,—a surplus capital to enable us to go out and establish new relations with the rest of the world. We now are beginning to be in a position where we can take the same relations towards other countries that England took towards us. We have paid our debts to England; the use of her capital in developing the United States has resulted in great advantage to both of us; and with the payment of the debt there has been left a warm and, I believe, enduring friendship between England and the United States. I should like to see the same kind of friendship between the United States and South America. I should like to see the great surplus capital which we are accumulating in the United States of North America turn southwards, to see it used to develop the vast resources of this country, with mutual advantage to both, so that when the time comes in the future, as it will come, when the people of Argentina, with their resources developed, with their population increased, have accumulated all the capital they need and paid their debts, we shall have had our share both in their development and in their prosperity, and an enduring friendship may exist between us.
Now it has seemed to me, sir, that possibly the opportunity afforded by the kind and courteous invitation of the Argentine Government to visit this country might enable me to do something to this end, just at this juncture when a change in the attitude of the United States toward the rest of the world is taking place, when the change from the debtor to the creditor nation, is made; from the borrower of money to develop resources, to a country with surplus capital to send out to the world;—it seemed to me possible that I might by this visit help to establish the relations which I should like to see existing. I should like to be able to qualify myself to say in the most public way that this is a land to which the poor of all the world, who have enterprise without money, can come and find homes and prosperity, so that by the thousands, by the millions, they may come from the Old World and build up Argentina as they have built up the United States. I feel able to say that this is a shore to which the emigrants from the Old World may come with a certainty of finding homes, occupations, and opportunities for prosperity; that it is a country to which the capital of the United States may come with the certainty that it will be secure, will be protected, and will find profitable employment. I look forward to the time when the wonderful development that is going on here now—not confined alone to this country, but progressing here with an amazing rapidity,—will be as great a wonder to the world as the advance which has taken the United States of North America, expanding from the feeble fringe of colonists along the Atlantic shore to a great nation of eighty millions, stretching from ocean to ocean. Argentina will take some of our markets from us, but what are they? They will be markets she is entitled to; and with her prosperity, and with the right understanding and relations between the two countries, our commercial relations with her will more than take the place of the markets she takes away from us. We have nothing to fear in the growing prosperity of Argentina. We have no cause but for rejoicing in her prosperity; no cause but to aid her in every way in our power in her onward progress; and that I believe to be the sincere desire of the whole of the people of the United States.
Mr. President, a heavy responsibility rests upon the citizen of our country who lives in a foreign land. We can misbehave at home and it makes little difference; but every American citizen in a foreign land, every American citizen in the Argentine Republic, is the representative of his country there. He needs no commission; no power can prevent his holding a commission to represent before all the people of Argentina the character of his own countrymen. You represent our beloved land to the people of Argentina. What you are they will believe us to be. As they study your character and conduct their estimate of us rises, and it is with the greatest pleasure that I find here among this people whom I respect so highly, whose good opinion for my country I so greatly desire, a body of Americans, a body of my countrymen, so worthy, so estimable, so high in reputation, so well fitted to maintain the standard of the United States of America, high, pure, unsullied, worthy of all honor.