WASHINGTON, DECEMBER 30, 1915
Mr. Root's interest in and knowledge of the American republics is not of yesterday, nor does it date from his secretaryship of state. It antedated and has survived official position. In 1893 it inspired his address of welcome to the officers of the foreign and United States squadrons which escorted the Spanish caravels to New York. It colors with a touch of personal feeling his address on the Codification of International Law, delivered before the joint sessions of the American Society and the American Institute of International Law, and is beautifully expressed in the following brief passage from his remarks at the dinner of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to the delegates of the Second Pan American Scientific Congress.
Gentlemen of the Pan American Scientific Congress, and our guests: I cannot refrain, in opening the postprandial exercises of this evening, from expressing the great satisfaction which I feel in taking part in the transformation of the serious and sometimes dry exercises of our meetings into this social function. It is especially agreeable to me because I cherish such rich and precious memories of hospitality received from our South American guests.
I have said many times to my own countrymen, without ever provoking resentment on their part, that I wish they could all learn a lesson in courtesy and the generosity of friendship from our brothers in South America. I should have felt that my own participation in this congress was imperfect and lacked an important element, if I could not have met you, my old friends of South America, in this gathering, which excludes the serious and the scientific, and seeks to cultivate and satisfy only the generous sentiments of friendship.
Although his address on the Codification of International Law is contained in Mr. Root's Addresses on International Subjects, it reinforces the views expressed by him, as secretary of state, in the address before the Third International American Conference, and its concluding paragraphs are here reprinted, as a fitting close to the volume of addresses dealing with the relations of the United States to our sister republics of the South.
The presence here of Dr. Maurtua, whom it is a great pleasure for me to hail as a colleague in the Faculty of Political and Administrative Science of the University of San Marcos, at Lima, and of the distinguished Ambassador from Brazil, my old friend from Rio de Janeiro, lead me to say something which follows naturally from my reflections regarding the interests of the smaller nations. It is now nearly ten years ago when your people, gentlemen, and the other peoples of South America, were good enough to give serious and respectful consideration to a message that it was my fortune to take from this great and powerful republic of North America to the other American nations. I wish to say to you, gentlemen, and to all my Latin American friends here in this congress, that everything that I said in behalf of the Government of the United States at Rio de Janeiro in 1906 is true now as it was true then. There has been no departure from the standard of feeling and of policy which was declared then in behalf of the American people. On the contrary, there is throughout the people of this country a fuller realization of the duty and the morality and the high policy of that standard.
Of course, in every country there are individuals who depart from the general opinion and general conviction, both in their views and in their conduct; but the great, the overwhelming body of the American people love liberty, not in the restricted sense of desiring it for themselves alone, but in the broader sense of desiring it for all mankind. The great body of the people of these United States love justice, not merely as they demand it for themselves, but in being willing to render it to others. We believe in the independence and the dignity of nations, and while we are great, we estimate our greatness as one of the least of our possessions, and we hold the smallest state, be it upon an island of the Caribbean or anywhere in Central or South America, as our equal in dignity, in the right to respect and in the right to the treatment of an equal. We believe that nobility of spirit, that high ideals, that capacity for sacrifice are nobler than material wealth. We know that these can be found in the little state as well as in the big one. In our respect for you who are small, and for you who are great, there can be no element of condescension or patronage, for that would do violence to our own conception of the dignity of independent sovereignty. We desire no benefits which are not the benefits rendered by honorable equals to each other. We seek no control that we are unwilling to concede to others, and so long as the spirit of American freedom shall continue, it will range us side by side with you, great and small, in the maintenance of the rights of nations, the rights which exist as against us and as against all the rest of the world.
With that spirit we hail your presence here to coöperate with those of us who are interested in the international law; we hail the formation of the new American Institute of International Law and the personal friendships that are being formed day by day between the men of the North and the men of the South, all to the end that we may unite in such clear and definite declaration of the principles of right conduct among nations, and in such steadfast and honorable support of those principles as shall command the respect of mankind and insure their enforcement.