Latin America and the United States / Addresses by Elihu Root

by Elihu Root

I shall not attempt to analyze in their essence these five glorious victories of civilization. My mind is dazed by the victory of democracy through the true action of the suffrage. This is the germ, the primary origin of your greatness as a people, which makes you the beacon for the eager gaze of all those who, down-trodden by power or by poverty, seek under the shelter of your wise laws, the guarantee of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to quote the sacred formula of your Declaration of Independence; this it is which explains why neither the difference of race and language, nor the morbid influence produced in the mind by secular despotism, nor the infinite diversity of religion, is an obstacle to the hundreds of thousands of helpless beings whom year by year the Old World is casting on your shores, to be transformed into citizens and become identified with the new fatherland, as if the national spirit had breathed into the souls of these new arrivals love for your glorious traditions and your lofty ideals of liberty, justice, and progress. The American fatherland is not hemmed in by battlements; it is the redeemer of all miseries, it is the refuge of all those who, in their flight from tyranny, like your illustrious Carl Schurz, exclaim: ubi libertas, ibi patria!

We, less blessed by fortune, but no whit less rich in ideals and lofty aspirations, find pleasure in studying your people. We shall endeavor to reap benefits from the lessons of your success, and we shall try to avert the great evils which are born of a prosperity such as yours, and which would undermine the walls of your civilization, did there not arise from out of your midst men of great virtue and indomitable strength of will, armed for the fray against guilt, combating evil, true apostles of right. Theodore Roosevelt is such a man, the most conspicuous of our times, the ardent devotee of justice, who claims for good citizens, for the rich and the poor, the proud and the humble, perfect equality and liberty unrestrained, without which lawful energies may not expand; and demands alike for all equal justice, equal treatment, "a square deal"—to use his own concise and vigorous phrase.

This it is which explains the whole-hearted prestige won by your Chief Executive within the limits of your own country, and which has passed the bounds of your territory and been merged in the international prestige accorded to him by all cultured nations. And, in no small measure, did you with your knowledge, your ceaseless labor and your delicate tact contribute to this happy end. Thus the world has seen how the voice of Theodore Roosevelt, outreaching the roar of the cannons of Mukden, put an end to the war which in shame to human culture heralded the dawn of the twentieth century; it has seen how, in deference to his initiative, the cultured nations of the world hastened to meet at The Hague Conference, and how, as a reward for his constant efforts, united with those of the glorious Chief Executive of this republic, who now receives you with every mark of honor, the disorders in the neighboring republics to the south were pacified, and these are now making ready for a work of peace and harmony,—the beginning of that longed-for era of prosperity.

The international importance achieved by your government and your country had its beginning when President Monroe gave to the world his famous doctrine, so debated, so misunderstood, and perhaps so dangerous, if—as has sometimes been thought—it might be used as a means of illegitimate preponderance at the expense of the sovereignty of other nations. The Monroe Doctrine embodies, nevertheless, and we should not hesitate to say so, the first principle of international law of a great part of this continent, if not the whole. This it means for us Mexicans, ever since the President of the Republic announced it to Congress in his memorable message of April, 1896, received with general acclamation by the national representatives, and later by the whole country. The integrity of the nations of this continent is of vital interest to all, collectively, and not alone to the country immediately affected. Any attack on this integrity should constitute an offense in the eyes of the other nations of America. Accordingly, one of our great thinkers and statesmen has wisely said: "America for Americans means each country for its own people, to the exclusion of all foreign interference, whether this comes from other countries of this continent or whether it comes from any other nation whatsoever. And we in our trying struggles of the past have given ample proof to the whole world of our homage to independence and our hatred of all foreign intervention"—to use President Díaz's own words.

From among the various formulas adopted by the interpreters of the Monroe Doctrine, we Latin American nations should gather and keep as a precious pledge, that which Theodore Roosevelt embodied in his famous speech delivered on the occasion of the opening of the Buffalo Exposition. Addressing the republics of the New World, the illustrious statesman, then Vice-President of the United States of America, said:

I believe with all my heart in the Monroe Doctrine. This doctrine is not to be invoked for the aggrandizement of any one of us here on this continent at the expense of any one else on this continent. It should be regarded simply as a great international Pan American policy, vital to the interests of all of us. The United States has and ought to have, and must ever have, only the desire to see her sister commonwealths in the western hemisphere continue to flourish, and the determination that no Old World power shall acquire new territory here on this western continent. We of the two Americas must be left to work out our own salvation along our own lines; and if we are wise we will make it understood as a cardinal feature of our joint foreign policy that, on the one hand, we will not submit to territorial aggrandizement on this continent by any Old World power, and that, on the other hand, among ourselves each nation must scrupulously regard the rights and interests of the others, so that, instead of any one of us committing the criminal folly of trying to rise at the expense of our neighbors, we shall all strive upward in honest and manly brotherhood, shoulder to shoulder.

And you, honored sir, have not been less explicit. Your words, pronounced on a memorable occasion during your recent visit to South America, before all the free peoples of this continent gathered together at the third Pan American Conference, should be disclosed, should reach the ears of my fellow-citizens, for these very words of yours, as President Roosevelt solemnly declared in his last message to the Congress of the United States, have revealed to all who doubted the spirit of complete equality which inspired the Monroe Doctrine, what is the attitude of the United States towards the other American republics, and what its purposes. You declared then:

We wish for no victories but those of peace; for no territory except our own; for no sovereignty except the sovereignty over ourselves. We deem the independence and equal rights of the smallest and weakest member of the family of nations entitled to as much respect as those of the greatest empire; and we deem the observance of that respect the chief guaranty of the weak against the oppression of the strong. We neither claim nor desire any rights or privileges or powers that we do not freely concede to every American republic. We wish to increase our prosperity, to expand our trade, to grow in wealth, in wisdom, and in spirit; but our conception of the true way to accomplish this is not to pull down others and profit by their ruin, but to help all friends to a common prosperity and a common growth, that we may all become greater and stronger together.

You spoke words of truth, and know, honored sir, that those are also our aspirations, those our aims; and thither we wend our way, with the constant steadiness which the Mexican people showed in its struggles for liberty and the attainment of the great principles already embodied in our constitution and laws. Deign to believe it, and when you return to the fatherland, pray do not ever forget that, if we have showered on you the hospitality such as is only offered to a friend, it is because your ideals are ours, because we citizens of this land, no less than those of yours, accept as the supreme dogma of our political religion the immortal words of President Lincoln, that "government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."

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