BRAZIL (continued 2)
Reading edition
We suppose, Mr. Root, that it does not come only from you. We are sure that you would not take this far-reaching step unless you counted, without a shadow of doubt, upon the sanction of American opinion. And knowing as we do that the United States are, from every standpoint, the most complete and dazzling success among modern nations, admiring them as the honor and pride of our continent, we rejoice, we exult, to open our homes, our bosoms, the arms of our modest and honest hospitality, to the giant of the republics, to the mother of American democracies, in the person of her own Government, one of whose strongest and noblest functions centers in the person of her Secretary of State.
Our life as an independent nation is not yet a long one. We are, as such, only about eighty years old, albeit this may not be a very brief period in these days of ours, when time should not be measured by the number of years, inasmuch as not a great deal more than a century has been enough for the United States to become one of the greatest powers in the world. Short as it is, however, our national existence has not been devoid of noble dates, of fruitful and memorable events.
Amidst them, Mr. Root, this one will stand forever as a blessed landmark, or rather as the gushing-out of a new political stream, whose waves of peace, of freedom, of morality, shall spread by and by all over the immensity of our continent.
This is our wish, I will not say our dream, but our hope. You must have felt it, and will continue to feel it, at the throbbing of our national arteries, in Recife, in Bahia, now in this capital, and tomorrow in São Paulo.
Do not see in my words the looming of a momentous sensation. No! They do not tell my own impressions as an individual. They convey truthfully the voice of the people through the lips of a man who does not serve other interests. They only anticipate, I believe, what you shall hear from our legislative representation, in the highest demonstration of public feeling possible under a popular government; may the historic scene of Lafayette, the liberal French soldier, the fellow-helper in American independence, being received in the American House of Representatives, find a worthy imitation in the reception of the great American Minister, the daring promoter of union in the American continent, by the two Houses of our National Congress.
So let us raise our cup to the northern colossus, the model of liberal republics, the United States of America, in their living and vigorous personification, in their image visible and cherished among us, Mr. Elihu Root.