Chapter II: Part 2

In the organization of the Government of the United States, the portfolio of Secretary of State constitutes a notably characteristic and peculiar feature. The Secretary is not merely a minister for foreign affairs, but is the guardian of the seals of state, the medium through whom the laws are promulgated, the depositary of the government archives, and the first assistant of the Chief Executive. Tradition has conferred upon him a dignity next to that of President, the law making him second in the order of succession to the presidency by vacancy of the office, while it has become the custom for the President to invite him to participate in the performance of his duties rather as a colleague and associate than as an adviser and servant. The triumphant candidate in a presidential election has at times called to this office his vanquished opponent, thus showing the homage paid by party spirit to the value of merit. Being popularly designated as head of the Cabinet, and granted the honors of precedence at diplomatic functions, his high political entity inscribes him, together with the head of the nation, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the chairmen of the two great financial committees of Congress, among the five or six personalities whose influence usually directs the Government of the United States.

But a true idea of this eminent position cannot be formed without some light on its history; for the line of Secretaries of State sparkles with the almost continuous luster of a long, luminous zone, in which irradiate the dazzling names of Jefferson, one of the patriarchs of independence in the foundation and organization of the United States, the philosopher, the writer, the statesman, the creator of parties, the systematizer of popular education, and the twice-elected successor of Washington; of Randolph, through whose initiative the stain produced by the word "slavery" was effaced from the provisional draft of the American Constitution; of Marshall, the most eminent jurist in the Republic, the oracle of the Constitution and the constructor of the Federal law; of Madison, the emulator of Hamilton in the editing of _The Federalist_; of Monroe, the asserter of the international doctrine of the independence of this continent; of John Quincy Adams, the pioneer of abolitionism in his radical condemnation of slavery; of Clay, the warm defender of the South American colonies in their struggle for emancipation; of Webster, the Demosthenes of the Union and of American liberty; of Seward, the rival for election of Lincoln, but who, being defeated by the latter, was invited by him to form part of his Cabinet; of Forsyth, Calhoun, Everett, Marcy, Evarts, Blaine, Bayard, and Hay. It is a path of stars, at the termination of which the administration of Mr. Elihu Root does not pale.

The annals of the United States could be traced by the route of this numerous constellation, whose radiant points sparkle around yon apex, to send forth their beams today from yon gallery, illumining the Brazilian Senate, transfiguring the scene of our ordinary deliberations, and realizing, with the pomp of the evocation of this glorious past, the spectacle of the visit of one nation to the other which the illustrious Secretary of State presented before our eyes when, a few days ago, he said in response to our eminent and worthy Minister for Foreign Relations, that his coming in the official capacity of his office to the land of the Cruzeiro constitutes a natural expression of the friendship which the eighty millions of inhabitants of the great Republic of the North feel toward the twenty million souls of the Republic of Brazil.

It is not, then, a diplomatic representation; it is not an embassy. It is the Government of the United States itself in person, in one of its predominant organs--an organ so exalted that it holds almost as high a position there in the national sentiment as the Presidency itself. For the first time is the North American Union visiting another part of the continent--Latin America. And this direct, personal and most solemn visit of one America to the other has now as its scene the Brazilian Senate, assuming, within the brief dimensions of this chamber, the magnificent proportions of a picture for which our nation constitutes the frame and the attentive circle of the nations the gallery.

For the modest importance of our nation, the event is of incomparable significance. None other can be likened to it in the history of our existence as a republic. After sixteen years of embarrassments, perils, and conflicts, the latter appears to be receiving its final consecration in this solemnity. It is the grand recognition of our democracy, the proclamation of the attainment of our majority as a republic. The stability of the government, its prestige, its honor and its vigor, could not have received a greater attestation before the world. Replying to the doubts, the negations, and the affronts with which our '89 was received, amidst passions at home and prejudices abroad, it signifies the irrevocable triumph of our revolution, closes forever the era of monarchical reassertions and opens up our future to order, confidence, and labor.

Almost all of us who compose this assembly, Mr. President, belong to that generation who were opening their eyes to public life, or were preparing for it by their higher studies, when the struggle was going on in the United States between slavery and freedom--that campaign of Titans which tore the entrails of America and shook the globe for many years.

Washington, Jefferson, and Madison had died, despairing of the extinction of slavery. This being openly proclaimed as the corner stone of the Confederacy, which gloried in having as its basis and in holding as a supreme truth the subjection by Providence of one race to the other, it looked as if the work of the patriarchs of 1787 was doomed to inevitable destruction against the black rock, thus consummating the Jeffersonian prophecy.

But Christian order prevailed against the chaos of servile interests, showing that the Constitution of the United States was not that "league with death" and that "compact with hell," as was boldly declared by Garrison upon the breaking out of the abolitionist reaction. And when the Union rose again, still clinging to liberty, on the ruins of slavery and dismemberment, we who had heard the earthquake, we who had witnessed the opening of the abyss, we who had seen swallowed up in it a million lives and an incalculable amount of wealth, and knew of the misfortunes and tears it had caused, were surprised by the divine dawn which finally appeared with the consoling victory of justice; and we felt the penetration of its rays here into the depths of the Brazilian conscience, realizing, with a holy horror of the tragedy of which we had just been the witnesses, that we were still a country of slaves.

Very soon, however, the law of September 28, 1874, immediately thereafter Brazilian abolitionism, and shortly thereafter the brilliant stroke of abolition in 1888, responded to the splendid American lesson by our purification from this stigma.

And if we adopted this lesson in 1889 and 1891, when we embraced the federal system and framed a republican constitution, it was not, as has been said, in obedience to the wishes, caprices, or predilections of theorists. Ever since the beginning of the past century, the liberal spirit among us had become imbued with Americanism through reading _The Federalist_. The idea of federation carried away the Brazilian Liberals in 1831. The condemnation of the monarchy in Brazil involved fundamentally that of administrative centralization and the single-headed form of government which were embodied in that régime. The United States gave us the first model, and up to that time had furnished us the only example of a republican form of government, extending over a territorial expanse such as only monarchies had previously shown themselves capable of governing. The dilemma was inevitable. We had either to adhere to the European solution, which is a constitutional monarchy, or else establish a republic on the American model.

We are still today as far from the perfect model which the United States present of a federal republic, as we were from a likeness to England under the parliamentary monarchy, although England was the example we followed in that régime, just as the United States is our example in our present government. But just as our backwardness in parliamentary customs was no cause for us to revert from a constitutional to an absolute monarchy, so the insufficiency of our republican customs constitutes no reason for abandoning the federal republic. There are no conditions more favorable for the political education of a nation than those presented by our constitutional mechanism, modeled after the American type; nor could a practical schooling be offered us for such education equal to that of an intimate approximation between us and our great model, our relations of all kinds with the United States being drawn closer and multiplied.

Between them and us there was interposed the stupid, sullen wall of prejudices and suspicions with which weakness naturally imagines to shelter and protect itself from force. But this wall is cracking, tottering, and beginning to crumble to ruins under the action of the soil and the atmosphere--under the influx of the sentiments awakened by this great movement of friendship on the part of the United States toward the other American nations.

In this attitude, in the transparent clearness of its intentions, in the eloquence of its language, and in the manifest frankness of its promises, there stands forth a broad image of truthfulness, which may be likened to those breezes in the sky on bright and sunny days which clear the horizon, cause the azure of the firmament to pervade our souls, and communicate the energy of life to our lungs. May God sustain the strong spirit of magnanimity, which is as advantageous to themselves as to the weak; and may He illumine the minds of the weak with an understanding of a situation which, mutually comprehended and maintained with firmness and honesty, will be productive of incalculable benefits for both parties!

The United States would already, long ago, have exhausted the admiration of the universe by the constant marvels of their greatness, if they were not continually surpassing themselves.

I do not allude to their wonderful fecundity, which in a hundred years has raised their population from five to eighty millions of souls. I do not speak of the greatness of their expansion, which has almost quintupled their territorial area in one century; I do not refer to the greatness of their military prowess, which has never yet met a conqueror either by land or sea. Neither am I occupying myself with the greatness of their opulence, which is tending to transfer from London to New York the center of capital and the money market of the world. I am thinking only of their benefits to democracy, to right, and to civilization.

Their fundamental principles as colonies were based on religious freedom. Their first charters embodied the essence of liberty in the British constitution. Their Federal Constitution is considered by the best judges as the highest product of political genius extant among mankind. The five years of their civil war constituted a most tremendous sacrifice, made by the superhuman heroism of a nation in the higher interests of humanity, for the principle of human freedom. Their international influence is frequently exerted in the great causes of Christianity and civilization, first struggling as they did against piracy in the Mediterranean; then opening the doors of Japan to the commerce of the world in the Pacific, or fighting for the Armenians against Ottoman despotism, or intervening in behalf of the Jews against the tyranny of the Muscovite; here sympathizing with South America against Spain, with Greece against Turkey, and with Hungary against Austria; there promoting that memorable peace between the Russians and Japanese at Portsmouth, which terminated one of the most horrible hecatombs of peoples on record in the history of warfare. The methods and rules of their teaching, the inspiration of their inventors, the penetrating nature of their institutions, the reproductive influence of their example, the contagious activity of their doctrines, the active proselytism of their reforms, the irresistible fascination of their originality, the exuberant florescence of their Christianity, all exert a profound influence upon European culture and on the morals, the politics, and the destinies of the world, and guide, improve, and transform the American nations.

Nothing, however, could be conceived which would more magnificently crown this miraculous career and assure forever to that nation the title, _par excellence_, of the civilizer among nations, serving the interests of its own prosperity as well as ours by a sincere, effective, and tenacious adherence to the doctrine announced by Mr. Root, namely the doctrine of mutual respect and friendship, of progressive coöperation among the American States, large or small, weak or strong; abandoning foolish race prejudices and admitting the superior power of imitation, science, and modern inventions, which are the moral factors in the development of peoples; and recognizing the natural truth that the growing evolution of the human race must embrace in its orbit of light all the civilized nations on this and the other continents.

Everything in the visit of Mr. Root, everything in his words, in his acts, in the impressions left among us by his person, everything speaks to us with absolute sincerity and resolute mind of devotion to this auspicious program. Our eminent guest has seen how Brazil receives the living message of the people of the United States; and, when he returns, a faithful witness of our civilization, which is so little known, so ill-treated, and so calumniated abroad, he will in all probability carry with him a conviction of having found in this disliked South America, between the Oyapoc and the Plata, the Atlantic and the Andes, a non-indigenous, although new sister of the United States, in which the opinion of public men and popular sentiment have but one ambition in regard to the policy now inaugurated--that it may become rooted for centuries and that it may shelter our future under its branches.

I wished, gentlemen--and all the members of this Senate wished--that Mr. Root might hear from the mouth of the man of experience, authority, and austere demeanor who is to preside over us, the most eloquent and highest of these expressions of good wishes.

For this purpose I move that the Senate do now resolve itself into a committee of the whole, and that the Secretary of State of the United States be invited to take the post of honor in this assembly. In this manner the proceedings of the Brazilian Senate and its traditions will preserve the memory of this date forever. For it is not one of those dates which flash and vanish into the past like falling meteors, but it is of those which seek the future by luminously furrowing the horizon of posterity like ascending stars.

And if the future is to be a substitution of right in place of might, of arbitration in place of war, of congresses in place of armies, of harmony, coöperation, and solidarity among the American peoples, in place of hostile rivalries, we may, on seeing seated here today at the right of our President, the Secretary of State of the United States, affirm to him, as Henry Clay did on the reception of Lafayette, with a different intention but just as truthfully, that he is seated in the midst of posterity.

SPEECH OF SENATOR ALFREDO ELLIS

The Federal Senators, representatives of the Brazilian nation, representing the people of twenty states of the Union and of the Federal District, here congregated to receive you, through me, salute you, and through you, salute President Roosevelt and the whole people of the United States of America. You are truly welcome amongst us, and you are welcome amongst us because we know your history; we know the history of your country; we know the history of your great men, from Washington to Roosevelt. You are truly and sincerely welcome amongst us, because you are the fortunate messenger, the happy harbinger of a coming civilization that is looming already in the not-far-distant future, bringing in your hands the snowy and brilliant credentials of brotherhood and peace. Though you come here, Mr. Root, amid the cannon's roar, or the din of popular acclamations, the echo in its grand unanimity that these words awaken in the hearts of the Brazilian people throughout all the land, from north to south, from east to west, should convince you that we, the Brazilian people, trust that the great work that is now being done through the delegates of the nineteen American republics assembled here for the Third Conference of the Pan American Congress, will bear fruit--that it will bear fruit just the same as that of which the basis was laid a long time ago in Philadelphia, on July 4, 1776, written by Thomas Jefferson and signed by the delegates of nine out of the thirteen colonies that had risen in arms against the mother-country. On that eventful and never-to-be-forgotten day, Pennsylvania's delegate--the great, the wise, the noble Benjamin Franklin--with his heart full of sad misgivings, full of sad forebodings about the final issue of the war, raising himself from the chair on which he had been sitting, observed on its back, embroidered on the tapestry, the figure of a beaming sun with its golden rays. "I do not know," he said, "if this is the image of a rising or a setting sun; please God Almighty that it may be that of a rising sun, enlightening the birth of a free and prosperous people!" And it was--and it was. His wish--his dear wish--was fulfilled; his prophecy was realized. The country you represent, Mr. Root, is now the wonder of the world for its greatness, for its power, for its prosperity.

What we desire--what the Brazilian people desire--what we hope, is that in your case, the same prophecy may be made and the same prophecy may be realized in relation to the results we expect from the Pan American Conference, strengthening with indissoluble bonds of harmonious concord and a very lasting peace, American brotherhood; banishing from the lands of the New World all ambition of conquest and the bloody strife of fratricidal wars.

To the American people, our brothers, our friends, and our companions, the Brazilian nation, treading the same paths and controlled by the same great desire to attain its destinies in the history of the world, sends through you its most affectionate, its most fraternal, its most hearty salutation.

ADDRESSES IN THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES

SPEECH OF DOCTOR PAULA GUIMARÃES

August 2, 1906

The Chamber of Deputies feels itself honored by the presence of Mr. Elihu Root, Secretary of State of the United States of America.

The distinguished member of the Government of our great sister republic, whose coming to this country is a mark of regard and esteem which is very flattering to us and which will never be forgotten, has already had opportunity to ascertain how deep and sincere are the sentiments of sympathy which the people of Brazil feel for the North American republic, in the extraordinary demonstrations of joy and gratitude which have everywhere attended him, and which are an eloquent proof of the sincerity and cordiality of our traditional friendship and disinterested admiration.

The entrance of Brazil into the family of republics of the American Continent has resulted in closer ties of confraternity among the nations of the New World. As a result of the policy of approximation, happily adopted by the Government of Brazil, we have the meeting in this capital of the Pan American Congress, where the distinguished delegates of the sister republics have been given a warm and hearty welcome. From the White House, where President Roosevelt firmly maintains the traditions of great American names, there has come to us on a mission of peace an eminent and highly esteemed statesman, bringing us political ideas of a new mould and the frank diplomacy of modern democracies. In words of the highest significance, which are unsurpassed for precision and frankness, the far-seeing statesman has revealed to us the ideal of justice and peace to which humanity in the near future is to attain, because the rule of force "is losing ground," and "sentiment, feeling and affection are gathering more and more sway over the affairs of men." The words of the distinguished American are familiar to the whole world, but here they are firmly engraved on our loyal hearts.

Differences disappear before the great historic fact at which it is our good fortune to be present at this moment, the beginning of a new era which is bound to bring great benefits to our country. The students, full of hope and enthusiasm, the orderly working people--all classes of society, in short, unite with public officials in unanimity of approval.

Gentlemen, it is to confirm these sentiments which every Brazilian feels, to proclaim the national aspirations of harmony, conciliation, and union, that I arise to thank, in behalf of the Chamber of Deputies, the representatives of the popular will, Mr. Elihu Root, for his presence among us, and to greet in his person the great and glorious republic of the United States of North America, greater for the example it gives us of liberty, energy, and order than for its extraordinary material strength. Glory to the Stars and Stripes!

REPLY OF MR. ROOT

I beg you to believe in the depth of sensibility with which I have received the honor you do me, and the honor you do my country. The similarity of our institutions is such that I come into the presence of this august body with full appreciation of its dignity and its significance. I feel that I am in the presence of the great lawmaking body to which is intrusted, by its representation of the separate states of Brazil, the preservation of local self-government throughout this vast empire; so that the people of each one of your twenty states, and each one of the many states to be erected hereafter, as your population increases, may govern itself in its local affairs without the oppression which inevitably results from the absolute rule of a central power, ignorant of the necessities and of the feelings of each locality; and so that also, consistently with that local self-government, the nationality of Brazil shall be preserved and the principle of national power, the dignity and power of the nation that protects all local self-governments in their liberty, shall never be decreased. I feel also that I am in the presence of the body from which must come, not only in the present but in the great future of Brazil, that conservative force which is so essential to regulate the action of a democracy. By your constitution, by the necessities of your existence, it will be your function to prevent rash and ill-considered action, to see that all the expedients of government, all the theories that are suggested, are submitted to the test of practical experience and sound reason.

And so, with the deepest interest in the continued success of the Brazilian experiment in self-government, I am most deeply impressed with the honor you have done me. The encomiums which have been passed here upon my country are such that to know of them must in itself be an incentive to deserve them. I hope that every word which has been spoken here about that dear republic from which I come, may go to the knowledge of every citizen of the United States of America, and may lead him to feel that it is his duty to see that this good opinion of our sister republic is justified.

Senator Ruy Barbosa has justly interpreted the meaning of my visit. I come not merely as the messenger of friendship; I come as that, but not merely as that. When democratic institutions first found their place in the protests of the New World against a colonial government that bound us all hand and foot; when the plain people undertook to govern themselves without any Heaven-sent superior force to control them, how gloomy were the prognostications, how unfriendly were the wishes, how uncomplimentary were the expressions which, upon the other side of the Atlantic, greeted the new experiment--that we should have rule by the mob, that disorder and anarchy would ensue, that plain men were incapable and always would be incapable, of maintaining an orderly and peaceful government. Lo, how the scene has changed! The conception of man's capacity to govern himself, gaining year by year credit, belief, demonstration, in the new fields of virgin lands, north and south, has been carried back across the Atlantic until the old idea of a necessary sovereign is shaken to the base. No longer is it man's conception of government that it must be by a superior force, pressing down what is bad; but that the pressure shall be from beneath, with all the good impulses and capacities of human nature pressing upward what is good. I come here not only to hold out the right hand of friendship to you from my country, but also to assert in the most positive, the most salient way the solidarity of republican institutions in the New World, the similarity of results, the mutual confidence that is felt by my country in yours, and by yours in mine; to assert before all the world that the great experiment of free self-government is a success north and south, the whole New World over. From the realization of this fact--this certain and indisputable fact--that republican institutions are successful, will come that confidence which underlies wealth, the security of property that is the basis of our civilization, the certainty that the fruits of enterprise will be secure, which is the incentive to activity, the independence of the people from the hard stress of poverty--the independence that comes from ample means of support, and is a condition of growth and enjoyment in life. More than wealth, more than production, more than trade, more than any material prosperity, there will come with them learning, universal education, literature, arts, the charms and graces of life. I would think but little of my country if it had merely material wealth. I would think but little of my country if the conception of its people was that we were to live like the robber baron of the Middle Ages, who merely gathered into his castle for his own luxury the wealth that he had taken from the surrounding people.

A land of free institutions, in which wealth and prosperity are made the basis upon which to build up the arts, graces, and virtues of life, and in which there is a noble and generous sympathy with every one laboring in the same cause--that, indeed, is a country of which one may be proud; that is a country which is the natural result of free institutions.

So I come to you to say: Let us know each other better; let us aid each other in the great work of advancing civilization; let the United States of North America and the United States of Brazil join hands, not in formal written treaties of alliance, but in the universal sympathy and confidence and esteem of their peoples; join hands to help humanity forward along the paths which we have been so happy as to tread. Let us help each other to grow in wisdom and in spirit, as we have grown in wealth and prosperity.

Mr. Chairman, my poor words are all too ineffective to express the depth of sentiment and height of hope that I experience here. I believe this is not an idle dream; I believe it is not merely the kindly expression or enthusiasm of the moment, but that after this day there will remain among both our peoples a sentiment which will be of incalculable benefit to the great mass of mankind, which shall help these two great nations to preserve and promote the rule of ordered liberty, of peace and justice, and of that spirit, which underlies all our Christian civilization, the spirit of humanity, higher than the spirit of nationality, more precious than material wealth, indispensable to the true fulfillment of the mission of liberty.

SÃO PAULO

SPEECH OF THEODOMIRO DE CAMARGO

At a Mass-Meeting of Students of the Law School, in front of the Palacio Chaves, August 4, 1906

The Law School of São Paulo is the tabernacle of our proudest ideals, of our most grateful traditions. Thence departed the first champions of liberty for the holy crusade of the slaves' liberation; there expanded and strengthened the republican ideas that caused the fall of the monarchy; thence have come almost all our rulers and leading men.

It is in the name of that school, sir, that I salute you and give you welcome, not only as the eminent statesman but also and specially as the loyal and dedicated friend of Brazil.

I can assure you that common to all Brazilians are the sentiments of true sympathy and great admiration for the noble country which has in you so worthy a representative. This sympathy and this admiration, common to all Brazilians, are well deserved by the wonderful people which liberated Cuba with the precious blood of her sons; are well deserved by the generous nation which contributed so much in raising in the Orient the banner of peace, putting an end to one of the most sanguinary struggles registered in universal history. The deep joy with which you have been received since you set foot on Brazilian soil is sufficient to assert what I say.

We rejoice to receive your visit because it is a proof that our feelings are reciprocated, and also because it will be a stronger link to bind forever the two great republics that are destined to lead their American sisters through the wide path of progress and civilization.

President McKinley wisely said: "The wisdom and energy of all the nations are not too great for the world's work"; so our earnest vows are that your voyage coöperates for the true fraternity of the American republics, that they may work together in the pursuit of the highest and noblest endeavor of humanity, which is universal peace.

SPEECH OF MR. GALAOR NAZARETH DE ARUJO, OF THE NORMAL SCHOOL

"Be welcome, distinguished visitor!" This phrase, so often addressed to you during your voyage in Brazil, may now be said again to express the sincerity with which the people of São Paulo receive the visit of one of the greatest statesmen of modern America.

Amongst the institutions of education of this city there is the Normal School, which has always tried to follow the methods and systems in use in your great country.

In the name of this institution and representing my colleagues, I come before you, sir, to repeat, with all my heart, the words you have heard so many times in Brazil: "Welcome, Mr. Root!"

SPEECH OF MR. GAMA, JR., OF THE COMMERCIAL SCHOOL

A representative of a peaceful people is always welcome to Brazil. You know already our traditional policy. From the beginning of our existence as a nation we have accustomed ourselves to see in your glorious country the nation which, first of all, substituted for military imperialism the beneficent and civilizing policy of free commercial expansion, joining producers and consumers without any link of dependence.

We followed with ardent sympathy your liberal and eminently humane action in the Chinese Empire, at the moment when that monarchy seemed doomed to dismemberment.

And you, sir, were the first to make understood the need of the maintenance of the administrative and territorial _status quo_ of that empire, to which, as well as to other nationalities of the Far East, you are today the securest guaranty of national integrity.

You come to us, therefore, with the credentials of a peaceful people, and of a people that respects the autonomy of other nations, no matter how weak they may be.

In this quality we open to you our arms, and we heartily meet your wishes in the assurance that we contribute to the development of the ideas of peace and steadiness, without which the evolution of a people can only be accomplished imperfectly and at the cost of many centuries of hard effort.

The United States of Brazil acknowledged the advantages of a perfect communion of views in commercial matters with their great sister of North America. They were aware that essentially opposite points of view regarding commercial interchange separate them from some of the nations of the Old World.

So long as on the other side of the Atlantic an almost invincible barrier of customs duties impedes the entry of our products into markets naturally hostile to South American productions, our country has only two alternatives: either to continue the very irksome commercial relations with those markets, or to look for others with evident loss of a part of the harmony that ought to exist between nations affiliated by origin and for so many years united by the most intimate links of sympathy and intellectual solidarity.

Consequently, we adopted the legitimate defense of protectionism, while remaining faithful to those friendly feelings, and very naturally we turned to the continental nation that better understood the advantages of a free exchange of products; we looked unsuspiciously to the friendly people who conceived the idea of making in America, united and strong, a large neutral area devoted to peace amidst the possible divergencies that may perchance in time separate in aggressive antagonism a rejuvenated and martial Orient and the nations of the West.

We understood at once the difficult task to be accomplished, in order, by your side and with your aid, to secure the neutralization of America, so desirable and so necessary for the final reconciliation of nations still militarized, and for the establishment of a secure standpoint for the general fraternization of mankind.

All the enthusiastic appreciation of the twenty-one democracies that follow and love your deed, and all the facilities and coöperation that they can offer for its accomplishment, you will find, sir, should you visit them as you now do one of their number, in the corresponding twenty-one Brazilian capitals.

The Commercial School of São Paulo, from which very likely will come later commercial agents of Brazil, sincerely espouses your policy of peace and solidarity on the American continent; and in the person of its eminent chancellor salutes the noble North American nation.

REPLY OF MR. ROOT

I thank you, students of São Paulo, for your greeting and for your generous sympathy.

I am here upon a mission of friendship and of appreciation. I am here in order that my country may know more of the people of Brazil, and in order that the people of Brazil may learn more of my country, believing that the cause of almost all controversy between nations, the most fertile source of weakness and of war, is national misunderstanding and the prejudice that comes from misunderstanding.

I shall go back to my country and tell my people that I have found in this famous city of learning, São Paulo, a great body of young men who are gathering inspiration in the cause of learning and of human rights from the atmosphere of liberty and independence.

I shall tell them that here, where the independence of Brazil was born, the spirit of that independence still lives in the youth of Brazil.

I shall tell them that here in the birthplace of presidents more young Brazilians are treading the first steps in the pathway of patriotism and greatness, pressing on to take the place, to take up and continue the great work of the men born in São Paulo, who have contributed so mightily to the greatness of Brazil.

Let me say one word, young gentlemen, as to the lessons that you may draw from your country's glorious past.

Noble and inspiring as are the victories Brazil has won in war; remarkable, eloquent, unsurpassed as are the great things done in the past by the Paulistas, greater and nobler victories of peace await the people of Brazil and São Paulo.

You have, as my country had, a vast continent with savage nature to subdue. You have, as my country had, with almost immeasurable forests fit for human habitation, to welcome to your free land the millions of Europe seeking to escape from hard conditions of grinding poverty. You have before you that noblest product of our time, that chief result of our institutions, the open path to progress and success for every youth of Brazil. Because this is a free land, because you are a republic, because you are a self-governing people, there is no limit to what each one of you may accomplish by the exercise of your own knowledge, determination, and ability. It is the free spirit that keeps open the door of that limitless expanse, and that will conquer the wilderness and make Brazil a refuge for the poor of other lands, and a country rich and teeming with people, prosperous, learned, and happy in the years and centuries to come.

SPEECH OF MR. ROOT

On Presenting a Football Trophy, São Paulo, August 4, 1906

The pleasant and honorable duty of presenting to you this prize of success in the fine and rapid and skillful game we have just witnessed has been delegated to me by the kindness and consideration of the President and Government of the state of São Paulo.

It is a fitting act with which to signalize my first visit to this historic and famous city, this ancient center of activity and manly vigor, this state famous for centuries for its great and noble deeds, and known now throughout the world for its successful industry and commerce, known also as the home of great men and great patriots in the history of Brazil.

May the generous emulation of this courteous and gentlemanly game which you have been playing, be a symbol of activity in the commercial, industrial, and social life of the country; above all, may it be a symbol of your lives as patriots, as citizens of Brazil. Let the best man ever win. Let activity and skill and pluck ever have their just rewards. Do for your country always as you have done for your rival teams in this game of football. Do always your best, and do it always with good temper and kindly feeling, whatever be the game.

I congratulate you, sir, and your associates, upon being citizens of a country and of a state--both you of Rio de Janeiro and you Paulistas,--where the rewards of enterprise and activity are secure, and where there is open to every youth the pathway of success by deserving success. May this prize be an incentive to you and your comrades to exercise every manly effort, both for yourselves and for your country.

SANTOS

SPEECH OF DOCTOR REZENDE

At the Commercial Association of Santos, August 7, 1906

On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Commercial Association of Santos, I bid you welcome.

The men gathered in this hall to greet you are cosmopolitan in character--Americans, Europeans, and Brazilians--men who have united their best efforts in the great movement of distributing coffee throughout the whole world.

Coffee is our staple product, and for many years to come is bound to be the backbone of our financial system.

The value of this great product is, however, much greater than is shown by the simple figures of statistics.

In order to understand its true value, we must add to it the other articles which are produced with it, and which are unknown to the commercial world.

Coffee also means corn, beans, rice, cattle, etc., which are abundantly raised by our coffee planters; coffee means also all of our infant industries, and those prosperous towns which dot the romantic shores of the Tieté, Paranahyba, and the Mogy-Guasú. For us, sir, coffee means plenty, prosperity, and perhaps greatness.

It is therefore easy to see how deeply we are interested in the growth of American commerce and civilization. The American people need for their trade nearly eleven million bags of coffee per annum, or almost all of an average crop of the state of São Paulo.

It is not necessary to lay special stress on this main fact, production and consumption; one is the complement of the other, and the development of both our activities and interests are so identified that we cannot talk of coffee without thinking of its greatest consumer, the American people.

Seventeen years ago, in 1889, James G. Blaine, one of your most distinguished statesmen, called together the first Pan American Congress in Washington. It is a long time for us business men to wait. We feel, however, that the ideals of that great statesman have not yet been realized. The great distance which separates us is perhaps somewhat responsible for the want of closer relations between our peoples; and when your visit to our shores was first announced, we Brazilians all felt that your presence in Brazil meant a new departure in American-Brazilian relations.

We are looking forward with eagerness for the results of the sessions of the Pan American Congress in Rio; and this interest has been greatly augmented by the high honor you confer upon us in selecting this opportunity to visit our people and our country, thus strengthening the ties of friendship between Americans and Brazilians; and though we belong to a class accustomed to consider only facts and cold figures, we are deeply touched by this high distinction, and, representing the Santos Board of Trade and the coffee planters of São Paulo--the greatest coffee producers of the world--I offer most hearty greetings to you, and through you to the great American people, the chief consumers of coffee in the world.

REPLY OF MR. ROOT

It is a great pleasure to represent here in this great commercial city the best and largest customer you have. The United States of America bought in the last fiscal year, the statistics of which have been made public, from the United States of Brazil about $99,000,000 worth of goods, and we sold to Brazil about $11,000,000 worth of goods. I should like to see the trade more even; I should like to see the prosperity of Brazil so increase that the purchasing power of Brazil will grow; and I should like to see the activity of that purchasing power turned towards the markets of the North American republic. I am well aware that the course of trade cannot be controlled by sentiment or by governments. It follows its own immutable laws and is drawn solely in the direction of profit. But there are many ways in which the course of trade can be facilitated, can be stimulated, can be induced and increased. Mutual knowledge leads to trade. All the advertisement in the world which pays is but the means of carrying information, knowledge, and suggestion to the mind that reads the advertisement. Mutual knowledge as between the people of North America and the people of Brazil--knowledge as between the individual people--will increase the trade. Our people will buy more coffee and more sugar and more rubber from the people they know, from the various trading concerns that they know about, than they will from strangers. Mutual knowledge cannot exist without mutual respect. I believe so much in the goodness of humanity that I think no two people can know each other without respecting each other.

There is the friendliest feeling in the United States of America for the people of Brazil, and we believe that there is great friendliness in this country for the people of the United States. We wish to be good friends and ever better friends; to enlarge our mutual trade to the advantage of both; and it is to express that feeling to you from my people with all the kindliness and friendship possible, that I am here in Brazil. It has been a great privilege to see something of your great coffee production--from the coffee plant on its red platform of the peculiar soil of São Paulo to the bags of coffee being carried to the steamer in which it is to be transported to the markets of the world. It is pleasing to me to see that the great commercial port of Santos has by the improvement of its harbor facilities become more and more great, and has done away with the unhealthiness that once existed. I congratulate you upon the fact that you have made your port and your city so healthy that yellow fever no longer exists.

This is probably the last word I shall utter in public before I leave the coast of Brazil, and as I pass from among you, I shall endeavor to make my last word an expression of grateful appreciation for all the courtesy, the kindliness, and the friendliness which has surrounded me every hour, from the moment I first landed at Pará three weeks ago today. My reception and that of all my family--the attentions that have been paid to us, the kindness that has been exhibited--far exceed anything that I anticipated or had hoped for; and I beg you to believe that we shall never forget it. We shall make it known to our people when we return home. I believe that it will increase the friendship they feel for the people of Brazil; and it is with the greatest satisfaction that I shall feel entitled upon my return to say to the people of the United States that I have found in the republic of Brazil a country to which the laborers of the world may come to make new homes and to rear their families in prosperity and in happiness; that I may say to my people that I have found in the republic of Brazil a country where capital is secure, where the rights of man are held sacred, and the rewards of enterprise may be reaped without hindrance. I shall go from you with the hope that in my weak way I may do what it is possible for one man to do in return for all the friendship that you have shown me throughout Brazil--may give my evidence to aid in turning towards your vast and undeveloped resources that immigration and that capital which have been the means of building up and developing the vast riches of my own country. I hope that the same brilliant and prosperous success that has blessed my own land may for many generations visit the people of Brazil. I hope that for many a year to come the two peoples, so similar in their laws, their institutions, their purposes, and the great task of development that lies before them, may continue to grow in friendship and in mutual help. And so, gentlemen, I make to you, and through you to the people of Brazil, my grateful and appreciative farewell.

PARÁ

SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY AUGUSTO MONTENEGRO

GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF PARÁ

In the City of Pará (Belem), at a Breakfast given by him to Mr. Root July 17, 1906

I will say but a few words in offering the health of Mr. Root, the very illustrious Secretary of State of the United States of North America. I regret exceedingly that Mr. Root should have only a few hours available to remain among us; but I know that his time is limited and that he cannot remain among us without inconvenience; however, I hope that these few hours which His Excellency has devoted to Pará will have been sufficient for him to carry away a good impression of this region. I also fervently hope that Mr. Root's visit may mark the beginning of a new era in the diplomacy of the two Americas, and that, if possible, it may contribute still further to a strengthening of the friendly ties which already bind the two republics together. I hope that Mr. Root will gather the very best impressions of the whole country from his other visits. I am certain that he will be received everywhere with that cordiality, hospitality, and affection which we proudly proclaim as being among the chief characteristics of the Brazilians. I drink to the health of Mr. Root and of the great and noble President of the United States of North America.

REPLY OF MR. ROOT

I thank you most sincerely for your kind expressions and for your gracious hospitality. It is with the greatest pleasure that I have come to the great republic of Brazil, that I might by my presence testify to the high consideration entertained by the Republic of the North for her sister republic; that I might testify to the strong desire of the United States of America for the continuance of the growth of friendship between her and the United States of Brazil. Both of us--both of our countries,--have of recent years been growing so great and rich that we can afford now to visit our friends, and also to entertain our friends. Let us therefore know each other better. I am sure that the more intimately we know each other the better friends we shall be. I know that because I know the feelings of my countrymen, and I know it because I experience your whole-hearted hospitality.

It has been a delight for me to see your beautiful, bright, and cheerful city, which, with its people happy and giving evidence of well-being and prosperity, with its comfortable homes, with its noble monuments, with its great public buildings and institutions of beneficence, with its beautiful flowers and noble trees, justifies all that I had dreamed of in this august city of the great empire which reaches from the Amazon to the Uruguay.

I thank you for your reference to the President of the United States. His great, strong, human heart beats in unison with everything that is noble in the heart of any nation and with every aspiration of true manhood. Every effort tending to help a people on in civilization and in prosperity finds a reflex and response in his desire for their happiness. He is a true and genuine friend of all Americans, north and south. In his name I thank you for the welcome you have given me, and in his name I propose a toast to the President of the United States of Brazil.

PERNAMBUCO

SUMMARY OF SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY SIGISMUNDO GONÇALVEZ

GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF PERNAMBUCO

At a Breakfast given by him to Mr. Root, in the City of Pernambuco (Recife), July 22, 1906

His Excellency Sigismundo Gonçalvez, Governor of Pernambuco,
said that he had never felt so strong a desire to speak
English in order to express the satisfaction he felt at
receiving the distinguished visitor, and after wishing the
Secretary a very pleasant and prosperous voyage, proposed
the health of President Roosevelt.[2]

REPLY OF MR. ROOT

I regret in my turn that I cannot respond to you in the language of the great race which has made the great country of Brazil. I thank you both for myself and in behalf of my country for your generous hospitality and the friendship you have exhibited. It is the sincere desire of the President and of all the people of the United States to maintain with the people of Brazil a firm, sincere, and helpful friendship. Much as we differ, in many respects we are alike. Like yours, our fathers fought for their country against savage Indians. Like yours, our fathers fought to maintain their race in their country against other European races. It is a delight for me on these historic shores to come to this famous place, made glorious by such centuries of heroic, free, and noble patriotism. It is especially delightful for me to be welcomed here, where the cause of human freedom received the powerful and ever-memorable support of a native of Pernambuco, whose name is dear to me, Joaquim Nabuco--a name inherited from a distinguished ancestry by my good friend, your illustrious townsman, the present ambassador of Brazil to the United States. It is the chief function of an ambassador from one country to another to interpret to the people to whom he goes the people from whom he comes; and Joaquim Nabuco has presented to the people of the United States a conception of Brazilians, and especially of the men of Pernambuco, admirable and worthy of all esteem. He is our friend, and because he is our friend we wish to be your friends. I ask you to join me now in drinking to the health of the President of the republic of Brazil.

BAHIA

SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY SENHOR DOCTOR JOSÉ MARCELINO DE SOUZA

GOVERNOR OF BAHIA

At a Banquet given by him to Mr. Root, at Bahia, July 24, 1906

It is not without reason that the entire world is elated at the grand spectacle exhibited in the New World congregating its free and independent peoples in order to lay the foundations of a lasting peace.

In fact, the Old World looks on with sincere admiration at the complete demolition of the ancient precepts of international law. Ever since the right of the stronger has ceased to supersede the sound principles of justice; ever since the divine philosophy of the Jews taught men brotherly love for one another, the ancient international law underwent profound transformations.

Notwithstanding this, however, for a long time armies and costly navies continued to weigh down our public treasuries and the cannon continued to decide questions arising among nations.