e constantly and
laboriously seeking to remedy them; but we do have underneath as the
firm foundation of constitutional freedom, the sentiments which were
expressed in the quotations which you have made.

No government in the United States could maintain itself for a moment if
it violated those principles; no act of unjust aggression by the United
States against any smaller and weaker power would be forgiven by the
people to whom the government is responsible.

Mr. Minister, my journey in South America is drawing to a close. After
many weeks of association with the distinguished men who control the
affairs of the South American republics, after much observation of the
widely different countries I have visited, it is with the greatest
satisfaction that I find, in reviewing the new records of my mind, that
the impressions with which I came to South America have been
confirmed--the impression that there is a new day dawning, a new day of
industry, of enterprise, of prosperity, of wider liberty, of more
perfect justice among the people of the southern continent.

I find that the difference between the South America of today and the
South America as the records show it to have been a generation ago, is
as wide as the difference marked by centuries in the history of Europe.
Why is it? You are the same people--not so much better than your
fathers. The same fields offered to the hand of the husbandman their
bounteous harvests then as now; the same incalculable wealth slept in
your mountains then as now; the same streams carried down from your
mountain sides the immeasurable power ready to the hand of man for the
production of wealth then as now; the same ocean washed your shores
ready to bear the commerce of the world then as now. Whence comes the
change? The change is not in material things, but in spiritual things.
The change has come because in the slow but majestic progress of
national development, the peoples of South America have been passing
through a period of progress necessary to their development, necessary
to the building of their characters, up from a stage of strife and
discord, of individual selfishness, of unrestrained ambition, of
irresponsible power, and out upon the broad platform of love for
country, of national spirit, of devotion to the ideal of justice, of
ordered liberty, of respect for the rights of others; because the
individual characters of the peoples of the South American republics
have been dev