Chapter 3

SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY BARON DO RIO BRANCO

MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Rio de Janeiro, July 28, 1906

The enthusiastic and cordial welcome you have received in Brazil must certainly have convinced you that this country is a true friend of yours.

This friendship is of long standing. It dates from the first days of our independence, which the Government of the United States was the first to recognize, as the Government of Brazil was the first to applaud the terms and spirit of the declarations contained in the famous message of President Monroe. Time has but increased, in the minds and hearts of successive generations of Brazilians, the sympathy and admiration which the founders of our nationality felt for the United States of America.

The manifestations of friendship for the United States which you have witnessed come from all the Brazilian people, and not from the official world alone, and it is our earnest desire that this friendship, which has never been disturbed in the past, may continue forever and grow constantly closer and stronger.

Gentlemen, I drink to the health of the distinguished Secretary of State of the United States of America, Mr. Elihu Root, who has so brilliantly and effectively aided President Roosevelt in the great work of the political _rapprochement_ of the American nations.

REPLY OF MR. ROOT

I thank you again and still again for the generous hospitality which is making my reception in Brazil so charming.

Coming here as head of the department of foreign affairs of my country and seated at the table of the minister of foreign affairs of the great Republic of Brazil, where I am your guest, I am forcibly reminded of the change which, within the last few years, has taken place in the diplomacy of the world, leading to a modern diplomacy that consists of telling the truth, a result of the government of the people by the people, which is in our days taking the place of personal government by sovereigns. It is the people who make peace or war; their desires, their sentiments, affections, and prejudices are the great and important factors which diplomacy has to consult, which diplomats have to interpret, and which they have to obey. Modern diplomacy is frank, because modern democracies have no secrets; they endeavor not only to know the truth, but also to express it.

And in this way I have come here as your guest; not because the fertile or ingenious mind of some ruler has deemed it judicious or convenient, but because my visit naturally represents the friendship which the eighty million inhabitants of the great Republic of the North have for the twenty million people of Brazil; and it is a just interpretation of that friendship. The depth of sentiment which in me corresponds to your kind reception results from the knowledge I have that the cordiality which I find here represents in reality the friendship that Brazilians entertain for my dear country. Not in my personal name or as representative of an isolated individual, but in the name of all the people of my country and in the spirit of the great declaration mentioned by you, Mr. Minister, the declaration known by the name of Monroe, and which was the bulwark and safeguard of Latin America from the dawn of its independence, I raise my glass, certain that all present will unite with me in a toast to the progress, prosperity, and happiness of the Brazilian Republic.

SPEECH OF DR. JAMES DARCY

The same deep and profound emotion which I, as a Brazilian and an American, feel in this hour is undoubtedly felt by all here on the floor--representatives of the nation, and identical with the nation itself. When the Chamber of Deputies sees the Secretary of State of the United States of America in the gallery it cannot go on with its regular work even for a minute longer. So great and extraordinary have been the demonstrations occasioned by the presence in our country of the eminent envoy of the great republic of the United States that it is necessary that the Chamber, in this hour unequaled in the whole life of the American Continent, manifest without delay its feelings of sympathy with the work for the closer _rapprochement_ of the American nations.

In Scandinavia, the land of almost perpetual fogs and mists, there died not long ago an extraordinary man. Ibsen, by some called revolutionary, by others evolutionary, dreamed in all his works of a new day of peace and concord for all mankind. This dream did not exist in the poet's brain alone, for it has imbedded itself in the mind and heart of a great American politician--Elihu Root.

From the moment he set foot on Brazilian soil he has been received with loud acclamations of joy, in which all Brazilians have joined. The demonstration which the student-body of Brazil made a short time ago, which for enthusiasm and spontaneity of feeling has never been equaled, manifested our feeling toward Mr. Root.

In his speech at the third Conference of the American Republics, the statesman, the philosopher, the sociologist, the great humanitarian that Elihu Root is, opened up a new era for the countries of the continent of such an order that the old standard of morality has fallen to the ground in ruins. On the public buildings, on the fortresses and masts of war vessels, waves the same flag--a white flag, reminding the American people that a new epoch of fraternity has risen for them.

Nothing has ever done so much for peace as this visit of Elihu Root among us. It forms a spectacle that must mark an epoch in our national life. The Chamber of Deputies, interpreting the unanimous sentiment of the nation, from north to south, of old and young alike, has suggested that I offer a motion, which is already approved in advance, and make the request that Mr. Elihu Root be invited to take a seat on the floor of the Chamber, as a mark of homage in return for the honor he has done us in making a visit to this House.

The memory of this visit will live forever in our hearts. He who bestows all favors will undoubtedly reward those who have done so much for American peace and fraternity by setting them up as models for the whole world.

REPLY OF MR. ROOT

I thank you sincerely for the flattering expressions which, through your able and happy spokesmen, you have made regarding myself. I thank you still more deeply for the expressions of friendship for my country. I beg you to permit me in my turn to make acknowledgment to you, the representatives of the people of Brazil--acknowledgment which I can make to the President of the Republic, which I can make personally to your distinguished and most able Secretary for Foreign Affairs, but which I wish to make on this public occasion to the people of Brazil. I wish to thank the Brazilian people for sending to my country a man so able and so successful in interpreting his people to us as my good friend Mr. Nabuco. I wish to thank the people of Brazil--its legislators, its educated men of literature and of science, its students in their generous and delightful enthusiasm, and its laboring people in their simple and honest appreciation--for the reception which they have given me, overwhelming in its hospitality and friendship; for the courtesy, the careful attention to every detail that could affect the comfort, the convenience, and the pleasure of myself and my family; for the abundant expressions of friendship which I have found in your streets and in your homes; for the bountiful repasts; for the clouds of beautiful flowers with which you have surrounded us; and, more than all, for the deep sense of sincerity in your friendship which has been carried to my heart. I wish to make this acknowledgment directly to you, the direct and immediate representatives of the people.

We, who in official life have our short day, are of little consequence. You and I, Mr. President, Baron Rio Branco, the President of the Republic himself--we are of little consequence. We come and go. We cannot alter the course of nations or the fate of mankind; but the people, the great mass of humanity, are moving up or down. They are marching on, keeping step with civilization and human progress; or they are lapsing back toward barbarism and darkness. The people today make peace and make war--not a sovereign, not the whim of an individual, not the ambition of a single man; but the sentiment, the friendship, the affection, the feelings of this great throbbing mass of humanity, determine peace or war, progress or retrogression. And coming to a self-governing people from a self-governing people, I would interpret my fellow-citizens--the great mass of plain people--to the great mass of the plain people of Brazil. No longer the aristocratic selfishness, which gathers into a few hands all the goods of life, rules mankind. Under our free republics our conception of human duty is to spread the goods of life as widely as possible; to bring the humblest and the weakest up into a better, a brighter, a happier existence; to lay deep the foundations of government, so that government shall be built up from below, rather than brought down from above. These are the conceptions in which we believe. True, our languages are different; true, we draw from our parent countries many different customs, different ways of acting and of thinking; but, after all, the great, substantial, underlying facts are the same, humanity is the same. We live, we learn, we labor, and we struggle up to a higher life the same--you of Brazil and we of the United States of the North. In the great struggle of humanity our interests are alike, and I hold out to you the hands of the American people, asking your help and offering you ours in this great struggle of humanity for a better, a nobler, and a happier life. You will make mistakes in your council, that is the lot of humanity; no government can be perfect--till the millennium comes; but year by year and generation by generation substantial advance toward more perfect government, more complete order, more exact justice, and more lofty conceptions of human duty will be made.

God be with you in your struggle as He has been with us. May your deliberations ever be ruled by patriotism, by unselfishness, by love of country, and by wisdom for the blessing of your whole people, and may universal prosperity and growth in wisdom and righteousness of all the American republics act and react throughout the continents of America for all time to come.

SPEECH OF SENATOR RUY BARBOSA

In the Federal Senate of Brazil, at Rio de Janeiro, August 2, 1906

If your excellency will permit me, Mr. President, I will call your attention and that of the Senate to the fact that at this moment this House is honored by the presence of Mr. Elihu Root, Secretary of State of the United States.

For a week his stay among us has been spreading interest throughout the country and filling the capital with joy, causing excitement among the neighboring nations, and fixing the eyes of Europe on this obscure part of the world. The fact is that we are not only in the presence of an individual of great renown, who is one of the highest personages among contemporaneous statesmen, with a reputation which is dear to the western hemisphere, but we are experiencing an event of the most far-reaching international importance, in the sense in which this word corresponds to the common interests of the human race.

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.