intimately acquainted; and it is owing to this fact that you decided to
come in person to visit and to know the Latin Americans by your own
observation and study. No doubt you carry with you a joyful impression
of the progress and nobleness of disposition of our southern brothers,
together with the assurance that your mission will achieve a new and
splendid triumph for that American diplomacy whereof you are the skilled
director, and the principal object of which is the accomplishment of the
desire of which I have already spoken.

Being desirous to cooperate in the aims you have in view and with the
hope of dispelling certain existing misunderstandings concerning the
motives and intentions which originated our present pleasant relations,
in a statement which I recently addressed to your government through its
minister plenipotentiary here, I recounted the historical events which
engendered our national existence and those special relations which link
us to your country, in order that when the seal of diplomatic silence is
removed, and that statement becomes public property, the world may know,
through the unimpeachable testimony of history, that only ideals of the
highest altruism served as a guide to the foundation of our republic and
to the celebration of the treaty concerning the construction of the
interoceanic canal for our benefit and _pro mundi beneficio_.

Panama offers you a splendid field to promote the wise international
policy which animates your mind. We being of similar conditions to our
Latin American brothers, being linked to your country by the closest
ties that can exist between two independent nations, you having the
means of exerting decisive influence upon our future life and we being
situated in the constant path of universal transit, shall be an evident,
shining example of the benefit which your country can confer upon the
countries of our race.

The fruits of your influence are already felt and seen. Peace, which we
consider a blessing, is a permanent fact. Under its shelter, and under
the assurances given us by your illustrious President in his famous
letter of October 18, 1904, addressed to the Secretary of War, Panama
has entered with firm step upon the path of material, intellectual, and
moral development. Those who knew us a little over two years ago,
disheartened and ruined by bad government and civil war, and see today
the change that has taken place in such a short time, carry to the n