Latin America and the United States / Addresses by Elihu Root

by Elihu Root

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.