certain that for us has commenced an honorable era of internal peace.
You have said it, Mr. Secretary of State: Out of the tumult of wars
strong and stable governments have arisen; law prevails over the will of
man; right and liberty are respected.

But this progress of public reason must be complemented. It is not
sufficient that internal peace should be assured; it is necessary to
secure external peace also. It is necessary that the American nations
should draw near to each other; should know, should love each other; it
is requisite to drive away, to suppress the danger of distrust, of
rivalry, and of international conflicts; that the same sentiment that
repudiated internal struggles should rise within as against the
struggles of people against people, and that these should also be
considered as the unfruitful shedding of the blood of brethren; that the
calamitous armed peace may never appear in our land, and that the
enormous sums used to sustain it on the European and Asiatic continents
shall be employed amongst us in the development of industries, commerce,
arts, and sciences.

The work may be realized by determination and constancy. The republican
institutions that everywhere prevail on our continent are not propitious
to the Caesars who make their glory consist in the sinister brilliancy
of battles and in the increase of their territorial domains. These same
institutions give voice and vote in the direction of public affairs to
the multitudes, whose primordial interest is ever peace, the sparing of
their own blood, so unfruitfully shed in the great catastrophes of war.

America will be, then, the continent of peace, of a just peace, founded
on respect for the rights of all nations, a respect which--as you, Mr.
Secretary of State, have said in tones that have resounded all over the
surface of the earth, deeply moving all true hearts--must be as great
for the weakest nations as for the most powerful empires. This Pan
American public opinion will be created and will be made effective, a
public opinion charged to systematize the international conduct of the
nations, to suppress injustice, and to establish among them relations
ever more and more profoundly cordial.

Your country and your Government fulfill the part, not of the false
friend that incites to anarchy and weakens her friends that she may
prevail over them and dominate them, but that of the faithful and true
friend who exerts herself to unite them; and,