deserve nothing but the
admiration and applause of the world. They have had harder bargains
driven with them in the matter of loans than any other peoples in the
world. Interest has been exacted of them that was not exacted of anybody
else, because the risk was said to be greater; and then securities were
taken that destroyed the risk--an admirable arrangement for those who
were forcing the terms! I rejoice in nothing so much as in the prospect
that they will now be emancipated from these conditions; and we ought to
be the first to take part in assisting in that emancipation. I think
some of these gentlemen have already had occasion to bear witness that
the Department of State in recent months has tried to serve them in that
wise. In the future they will draw closer and closer to us because of
circumstances of which I wish to speak with moderation and, I hope,
without indiscretion.

We must prove ourselves their friends and champions upon terms of
equality and honor. You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon
the terms of equality. You cannot be friends at all except upon the
terms of honor. We must show ourselves friends by comprehending their
interest whether it squares with our own interest or not. It is a very
perilous thing to determine the foreign policy of a nation in the terms
of material interest. It not only is unfair to those with whom you are
dealing, but it is degrading as regards your own actions.

Comprehension must be the soil in which shall grow all the fruits of
friendship, and there is a reason and a compulsion lying behind all this
which is dearer than anything else to the thoughtful men of America. I
mean the development of constitutional liberty in the world. Human
rights, national integrity, and opportunity as against material
interests--that, ladies and gentlemen, is the issue which we now have to
face. I want to take this occasion to say that the United States will
never again seek one additional foot of territory by conquest. She will
devote herself to showing that she knows how to make honorable and
fruitful use of the territory she has, and she must regard it as one of
the duties of friendship to see that from no quarter are material
interests made superior to human liberty and national opportunity. I say
this, not with a single thought that anyone will gainsay it, but merely
to fix in our consciousness what our real relationship with the rest of
America is. It is the relationship