Latin America and the United States / Addresses by Elihu Root

by Elihu Root

PERU

BANQUET AT THE GOVERNMENT PALACE, LIMA

Speech of His Excellency José Pardo y Barreda

President of the Republic

September 10, 1906

With the most sincere good will, I cordially welcome you in the name of my country and of its Government, and I believe I faithfully interpret the sentiments that rule in Peru in telling you of its sincere good will toward the United States, their illustrious President, and toward your own distinguished person. These feelings which unite the two countries began in the dawn of independence, because the founders of the great republic showed our forefathers the way to become free; and they strengthened us from the first days of our independent life by the safeguard which the admirable foresight of another great statesman of your country placed around American soil.

Since then the closest friendship has united the two nations. Peru has received from the United States proofs of a very special deference, and has appreciated the efforts made by your government to establish political relations between the American peoples upon the basis of right and justice. In this most noble aspiration, worthy of the greatness of your country, Peru, on her part, unreservedly acquiesces.

The lofty ideas which you have expressed since your arrival in South America, the frank expressions of cordiality, the concepts of stimulus and aid to induce us, the Americans of the South, to work in the same way as those of the North, with earnestness and unflinching hope in the future, have found in every breast the most pleasing echo, and they direct toward your person the most lively sympathy.

Closely associated fellow-worker with the illustrious statesman who rules the destinies of your country, to you belongs, in a great measure, the acclamation with which America and the entire world would greet the great nation that has constituted the most perfect democratic society, that has made the most surprising progress in industrial and economic order, and that has placed the prestige of its greatness at the service of peace all over the world.