Excellency:
I come to pay a call of friendship. In a sense I represent on this occasion the people of the United States extending a friendly greeting to our fellow democracies on the American Continent. I would wish to symbolize the friendly visit of one good neighbor to another. In our daily life, good neighbors call upon each other as the evidence of solicitude for the common welfare and to learn of the circumstances and point of view of each, so that there may come both understanding and respect which are the cementing forces of all enduring society. This should be equally true amongst nations. We have a desire to maintain not only the cordial relations of governments with each other but the relations of good neighbors. Through greater understanding that comes with more contact we may build up that common respect and service which is the only enduring basis of international friendship. It is also my desire to learn more of our common problems in the Western Hemisphere that I may be better fitted for the task which lies before me. And we are, all of us in the west, interested in one great common task. That task is the advancement of the welfare of the people of our respective countries. We are, each of us, pledged through the blood of our forefathers to national independence, to self-government, to the development of the individual through ordered liberty as the only sound foundation of human society. We know it is the only true road to human progress and we know that the nations and the institutions we have created can flourish only in peace and mutual prosperity. In turn, we know that these institutions and these ideals themselves form the greatest security of peace.
We of the Western Hemisphere, all of us, believe in these principles with a devotion which has arisen from the proofs of our century of common experience.
We of this hemisphere have not been free from the misfortune of war, but the record of a century shows we have been vastly more free from it than any other part of the world. Each of our nations has developed in its own traditions, its own pride of country under these great doctrines. Each of our democracies has become a laboratory of human welfare, the daily experience of which is a common contribution to the advancement of all of our nations. We in the United States have gained much from the experience of our Latin American neighbors. And we in turn take pride in our contributions to the common pool of human advancement in these 150 years.
Therefore, I have felt that the larger personal acquaintance both with our neighboring countries and with their points of view and, above all, with the men who have been elected to responsibility in their governments would be valuable in the task which lies before me. It would perhaps enable me to better cooperate with you. Those who know the United States know also that we have only one desire and that is to cooperate to a constantly improving understanding, to common progress, and to common attainment.
NOTE: President-elect Hoover spoke at the Custom House of Amapala in response to remarks of welcome by Augusto Coello, Foreign Minister of Honduras. Later in the day he was greeted at Casa Rossner in Amapala by President-elect Vicente Mejia Colindres.
A translation of the remarks by Minister Coello and President-elect Colindres, follows:
FOREIGN MINISTER COELLO
Excellency:
We are bearers of a cordial message from the President of the Republic extending, in harmony with the sentiments of the people and the government of Honduras, his most fervent welcome on your arrival to these, our shores, and expressing his wishes for the success of your noble country and the personal welfare of yourself as well as that of your distinguished companions.
The legitimate representative of the great people who have just honored you by electing you to their Presidency, thereby rendering homage to your enlightened virtues, none is better qualified than you to interpret the ideals and aspirations which animate your people in their relations with the other countries of the earth. This also explains the inspiration which has caused you to undertake the tour you now inaugurate by paying a visit to a country, disturbed at times by misfortune, but in which the desires for peace, liberty, and redemption have been maintained in all their integrity.
You will feel, at close range, the heartbeats of these peoples scattered throughout the length of the continent; and if in their heartbeats can be noted the anxiety which comes from perennial agitation, the expert eye such as yours will divine in that agitation the secret but abiding impulse of conquering the future and establishing their lives in new and more enduring spiritual forms.
You will also be able to appreciate how, in our slow march towards the future, we shall need the cooperation of our brothers in Pan Americanism, all united in the ideal of a common destiny. We shall need especially the moral cooperation of your great country in order to strengthen our purpose to reach economic and political stability, and to permanently guarantee to our institutions that peace and liberty which are the glory of the American people.
Such are the heartfelt impressions produced by your presence in these countries and your imminent ascendancy to the Presidency of the United States of America—from which exalted position you will be able to accomplish a generous and fruitful labor which will unite, in liberty and justice, the fond expectations of the peoples of America and the noble ideals by which the great democracy of your country is inspired.
In bringing you this message of welcome we also bring you the sincere congratulations of the President of Honduras for your well-deserved election and his best wishes for the most brilliant success in your future work. To these we join our personal wishes, as well as our respectful homage to your very distinguished wife, and our cordial greetings to all those who, with you, are today guests not only of our country but in our affection.
PRESIDENT-ELECT COLINDRES
Most Excellent Mr. President-elect:
Welcome to Honduran soil—a soil which in the generous sense of continental solidarity is as much yours as it is ours.
Your visit to Honduras has for us the highest significance; it is the herald of an even better time than the present, a time when the friendship of your Government and our Government, of your people and our people, will be more cordial, will be more fruitful and better understood. Your visit, moreover, constitutes a great step forward in the noble work of Pan Americanism, whose aspirations in this way become living, palpitating flesh and blood.
In the name of the Honduran people, who have elected me President of the Republic for the coming term, I have the high honor of congratulating in your most worthy person the people of the United States of America who, today, as in the past, have had the wisdom to elect to the office of Chief Magistrate of the nation the foremost of its citizens.
Your Excellency, when you are again in your own great country—great in its magnificent economic potentialities, great in its stupendous progress, and superlatively great in that its people have achieved that best of rights in the life of a democracy, the right of being free—when you, I repeat, are once more in your own country, pause a moment, sir, in your labors as statesman, to recall that you are being remembered in Honduras with admiration and affection.
I beg, Most Excellent Mr. Hoover, to express my most fervent good wishes for the prosperity of your great nation, for God's guidance in your administration of the Government which you will within a short time assume, and for your personal happiness.
Herbert Hoover, Remarks in Amapala, Honduras Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/372895
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