This voyage of yours demonstrates practically to the whole world your good faith as a statesman and your broad sympathy as an American; it shows the conscientiousness and the care with which you wish to place before the President and the country the fundamental points of your national external policy.
You are now exploring political seas never navigated before, lands not yet revealed to the genius of your statesmen and toward which they were attracted, as we are all attracted one to another, by an irresistible continental gravitation. We feel certain, however, that at the end of your long journey you will feel that, in their ideals and in their hearts, the American republics form already a great political unit in the world.
I beg you to believe that I highly appreciate and thank you for the honor you do me.
I bring from my country a special greeting to her elder sisters in the civilization of America.
Unlike as we are in many respects, we are alike in this, that we are all engaged under new conditions, and free from the traditional forms and limitations of the Old World in working out the same problem of popular self-government.
It is a difficult and laborious task for each of us. Not in one generation nor in one century can the effective control of a superior sovereign, so long deemed necessary to government, be rejected, and effective self-control by the governed be perfected in its place. The first fruits of democracy are many of them crude and unlovely; its mistakes are many, its partial failures many, its sins not few. Capacity for self-government does not come to man by nature. It is an art to be learned, and it is also an expression of character to be developed among all the thousands of men who exercise popular sovereignty.
To reach the goal toward which we are pressing forward, the governing multitude must first acquire knowledge that comes from universal education; wisdom that follows practical experience; personal independence and self-respect befitting men who acknowledge no superior; self-control to replace that external control which a democracy rejects; respect for law; obedience to the lawful expressions of the public will; consideration for the opinions and interests of others equally entitled to a voice in the state; loyalty to that abstract conception--one's country--as inspiring as that loyalty to personal sovereigns which has so illumined the pages of history; subordination of personal interests to the public good; love of justice and mercy, of liberty and order. All these we must seek by slow and patient effort; and of how many shortcomings in his own land and among his own people each one of us is conscious!