NO SELFISH AGGRESSION
So I hope you can carry back to your homes something better than assurances and words. You have had contact with our people. You know of your own personal reception. You know how gladly we have opened to you the doors of every establishment that you wanted to see and have shown you just what we are doing, and I hope you have gained the right impression as to why we are doing it. We are doing it, gentlemen, so that the world may never hereafter have to fear the only thing that any nation has to dread—the unjust and selfish aggression of another nation.
Some time ago, as you probably all know, I proposed a sort of Pan-American agreement. I had perceived that one difficulty in our past relations with Latin America was this: The famous Monroe Doctrine was adopted without your consent and without the consent of any Central American or South American States. If I may adopt a term that we so often use in this country, we said: "We are going to be your big brother whether you want us to be or not."
We did not ask whether it was agreeable to you that we should be your big brother. We said we are going to be. Now, that was all very well as far as protecting you from aggression from the other side of the water, but there was nothing in it that protected you from aggression from us, and I have repeatedly seen an uneasy feeling on the part of representatives of States of Central and South America that our self-appointed protection might be for our own benefit and our own interest and not for the interest of our neighbors. So I have said:
"Very well, let us make an arrangement by which we will give bonds. Let us have a common guarantee that all of us will sign a declaration of political independence and territorial integrity. Let us agree that if any one of us, the United States included, violates the political independence or territorial integrity of any of the others, all others will jump on her."
I pointed out to some gentlemen who were less inclined to enter into this arrangement than others that that was, in effect, giving bonds on the part of the United States that we would enter into an arrangement by which you would be protected from us.
PEACE BY MUTUAL TRUST
Now, that is the kind of agreement that will have to be the foundation of the future life of the nations of the world, gentlemen. The whole family of nations will have to guarantee to each nation that no nation shall violate its political independence or its territorial integrity. That is the basis—the only conceivable basis—for the future peace of the world, and I must admit that I was anxious to have the States of the two Continents of America show the way to the rest of the world as to how to make a basis of peace.
Peace can only come by trust. If you can once get a situation of trust then you have got a situation of permanent peace. Therefore, every one of us, it seems to me, owes it as a patriotic duty to his own country to plant the seeds of trust and confidence instead of seeds of suspicion.
That is the reason I began by saying to you that I had not had the pleasure of meeting a group of men who are more welcome than you are, because you are our near neighbors. Suspicion on your part, or misunderstanding on your part, distresses us more than we would be distressed by similar feelings on the part of those less near to us.
It is you who can see how Mexico's future must depend upon peace and honor, so that nobody shall exploit her. It must depend upon every nation that has any relation with her and the citizens of any nation that has any relations with her keeping within the bounds of honor and fair dealing and justice, because so soon as you can admit your own capital and the capital of the world to the free use of the resources of Mexico it will be one of the most wonderfully rich and prosperous countries in the world.
And when you have foundations of established order and the world has come to its senses again we shall, I hope, continue in connections that will assure us all permanent cordiality and friendship.
In Flanders Fields
By Lieut. Col. JOHN D. McCRAE
[Written during the second battle of Ypres,
April, 1915. The author,Dr. John McCrae of
Montreal, Canada, was killed on duty in
Flanders, Jan. 28, 1918.]
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amidst the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow.
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe!
To you from falling hands, we throw
The torch. Be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
America's Answer
By R. W. LILLARD
[Written after the death of
Lieut. Col. McCrae, author of "In Flanders
Fields," and printed in The New York Evening Post.]