thout due process of law would be of little value were it not
for the practical provision which imposes on specific officers the duty
of nullifying every attempt to take away a man's property without due
process of law.

To find practical definite methods by which you shall make it somebody's
duty to see that the great principles you declare are not violated, by
which if an attempt be made to violate them the responsibility may be
fixed upon the guilty individual--those, in my judgment, are the
problems to which you should specifically and most earnestly address
yourselves.

I have confidence in your success because I have confidence in your
sincerity of purpose, and because I believe that your people have
developed to the point where they are ready to receive and to utilize
such results as you may work out. Why should you not live in peace and
harmony? You are one people in fact; your citizenship is
interchangeable--your race, your religion, your customs, your laws, your
lineage, your consanguinity and relations, your social connections, your
sympathies, your aspirations, and your hopes for the future are the
same.

It can be nothing but the ambition of individuals who care more for
their selfish purposes than for the good of their country, that can
prevent the people of the Central American states from living together
in peace and unity.

It is my most earnest hope, it is the hope of the American Government
and people, that from this conference may come the specific and
practical measures which will enable the people of Central America to
march on with equal step abreast of the most progressive nations of
modern civilization; to fulfill their great destinies in that
brotherhood which nature has intended them to preserve; to exile forever
from that land of beauty and of wealth incalculable the fraternal strife
which has hitherto held you back in the development of your
civilization.

ADDRESS CLOSING THE CENTRAL AMERICAN PEACE CONFERENCE, DECEMBER 20, 1907

I beg you, gentlemen, to accept my hearty and sincere congratulations.
The people of Central America, withdrawn to a great distance from the
scene of your labors, may not know, but I wish that my voice might reach
each one of them to tell them that during the month that has passed
their loyal representatives have been doing for them in sincerity and in
the discharge of patriotic duty a service which stands upon the highest
level of the achievements of the m