Remarks in Cutuco, El Salvador

Excellency:

I have already stated today that my purpose is to pay a call of friendship on behalf of the people of the United States. The relations between neighbors require that nothing should be omitted to upbuild those contacts and that sentiment which create understanding. Out of such understanding comes that mutual respect which is the foundation of all sound international relations. We perhaps hear more of economic and trade relations between countries than any other one subject in the field of international life. This may be easily explained, for out of our economic life do we build up the foundations upon which other progress rests. And our international economic relations can have but one real foundation. They can grow only out of the prosperity of each of us. They cannot flourish in the poverty or degeneration of any of us. Our economic progress is mutual. It is not competitive. We each of us have the responsibility to carry forward such policies within our own countries which, in the long view, will contribute to our individual prosperity. The long view of our prosperity must, however, embrace the recognition of the mutuality of prosperity among the whole of us.

But economic development does not and should not be the sole basis of exchange between nations but rather the incident of it. We have the mutual problems of strengthening the foundations of peace, building up confidence and friendship, and the institutions and ideals of each of our nations. The exchange of our social and political accomplishments, of our advances in education, of scientific thought, all of those things which contribute to the higher aspects of life, is perhaps of first importance. Each and every one of us has made some of these great contributions to human advancement. The larger exchange and the larger understanding of these contributions becomes the enduring basis of mutual respect.

The most precious possession of each of us is our love of country, of race, our traditions, and our institutions. We have in this hemisphere a parallel of struggle for independence, in conflict with nature, in the creation of institutions of freedom and liberty which in themselves are an imperishable bond.