centuries they maintained the heroic struggle which saved Europe
and the Christian world from the baneful invasion of African
hordes.

Spain will apply to the arts of peace, to the conquests of
progress, that same and indomitable spirit which enabled her to
enrich the Old World with a new one, over whose brilliant
destinies she watches and ever will watch with intense and
undying interest.

Spain hails with pleasure an opportunity like your future
exposition will afford of showing her peaceful conquests in the
domains of labor, and is especially bent on attracting toward
her the benefits to be derived from this growing tendency of her
people to an everlasting commercial, agricultural, and
industrial interchange. She, more than over anxious to cultivate
and strengthen her friendly relations with the world, could not
but welcome with sympathy the announcement of this vast
enterprise as a right step toward that blending of her material
and moral interests with those of other nations, to that better
understanding among them which she will indefatigably strive to
attain.

You can therefore rest assured, Mr. President, that my country
will contribute to the World's Fair and enhance with its varied
exhibits its universal and historical features. I am, in fact,
authorized to inform you that His Majesty's Government has
decided to ask for the requisite appropriation as soon as
Parliament assembles. Spain will appear before you, if not in
all the splendor that the requirements of her wise, economical
programme now forbid, at least in the manly garb of a nation
meaning to show you and to show the world that her gloriously
checkered career, instead of impairing our vitality, has
retempered the ever-elastic steel of our national fiber and
concentrated and directed all its latent energies toward the
modern conquests of progress, labor, and civilization to which
the city of St. Louis is now erecting a temple worthy of the
city itself and of the auspicious event we are now
commemorating.

And now, Mr. President, in wishing success to your noble
undertaking, in thanking you and this city for its cordial
hospitality, I beg to acknowledge also my gratitude for the
numerous tokens and expressions of good will toward Spain which
have been uttered during this solemn celebr