Excellency:
I regret that I cannot respond in the language of the great race who pioneered the Western World. That language so beautifully lends itself to expressions of the friendship which I know lies deep in the hearts of my countrymen toward the people of Peru.
I thank you both for myself and in behalf of my country for your generous hospitality and for your renewed evidence of friendship to my country. I share your desire and I know it is the ardent desire of all the people of the United States, in common with the people and the Government of Peru, to sustain indissoluble and helpful friendship. I treasure your reference to the idealism of my countrymen and the rectitude of our Government. I know it will meet a graceful response from my country. It but marks the consistent friendship that your Excellency has shown to the United States.
You, Mr. President, did my country the honor to visit us some years ago and I would be indeed happy if my visit could leave so memorable an impression of good will as that which you conveyed to the people of the United States.
It is an especial delight for me to visit this historic city—a city which was not alone one of the first settlements in the Western Hemisphere but which has been for more than four centuries a great center of civilization and of radiating culture. This needs no further proof than the continued beneficence of the dean of American institutions of learning— the University of San Marcos, which is the elder by a century of any university in my country.
But as you state, Mr. President, I have come for other purposes than recreation or to receive personal satisfactions of travel. I have had the hope and the aspiration that I could serve in some way to further reinforce the structure of peace and friendship, the unity of ideals which have remained unbroken since the birth of our republics. I have thought that I could better prepare myself for the task by a widened knowledge of the men and problems of our sister republics.
Your Excellency's letter of welcome, transmitted to Guayaquil by the initial flight of the new Peruvian airmail service, carries a larger significance than even its own generous terms of welcome. Its manner of transmission signifies the possibility of one of the most potential steps in progress of our relations. The amazing development of practical commercial aviation in our different countries in the past 12 months removes all doubt of its practicability as a routine service of transportation. In the days of early settlement of the Western World it would have required 3 months for the journey from Washington to your great capital. Had I come direct, it would have required perhaps 12 days. By air we should be able to traverse this distance in less than 2 days.
Mr. President, it is impossible to estimate the important consequences of this revolution in communication and transportation between our peoples. It is a benevolent paradox that to destroy the distance between peoples is to construct friendship between them.
Every expansion in transmission of intelligence and in daily contacts of our peoples adds to that precious growth of understanding and mutual respect which makes for mutual interest and good will. I should be proud indeed if I might contribute to the furtherance of so great a development.
Therefore, I should like to take this occasion to suggest that the time has come when by mutual cooperation of each of our Governments it is feasible to secure at once this further important link between our peoples. I am convinced that by a few practical steps in the organization of airways and at no great public outlay we can secure the establishment of this service through the enterprise of the citizens and aviators of each of our countries. It is not impossible that were the representatives of each of the governments en route to sit around the council table we could quickly devise those mutual undertakings by which we would realize such a service within another 12 months.
This new tool in world progress is significant of our times. It, with many others, brings to us new problems in government, but the great purpose of government in free peoples remains the same. That is to maintain that justice, that ordered liberty which gives security to life, security to the home, and security to individual accomplishments. From these foundations government may foster and stimulate the beneficent processes of commerce and industry, may upbuild the cultural, the moral, and the spiritual fiber of our people which are the forces which make for human happiness. It is not the mere assertion of idealists that the world grows better and that it makes progress. I know of no better proof than the steady and majestic progress of South America in the past century in political stability, in freedom and liberty, in peace, in increasing material wealth, in increasing human comfort and happiness. A century is but a short span in history. We who are public servants can do but little in our time. Our minute part of a few years is soon forgotten. But if we can contribute to diminish destructive forces, if we can strengthen the forces of material and spiritual progress, if we can upbuild the institutions of government which assure liberty and freedom we shall have served our part. These are the ideals of Peru equally with my own country. And I wish to express to your Excellency my confident belief in the great and glorious future of this nation to whose progress your Excellency has so greatly contributed.
NOTE: President-elect Hoover spoke at the Government Palace in Lima in response to remarks of welcome by President Augusto B. Leguia. A translation of President Leguia's remarks follows:
Mr. President-elect of the United States of America, gentlemen:
Nature's volcanic forces which caused the American continent to emerge from the bottom of the ocean; the fanatical struggle for the cause of liberty under the victorious flags of Washington and Bolivar; and the inherent horror of all conquest which inspired Monroe's challenge to the enslaving powers of the world: these, gentlemen, are the chief causes of the American Union.
The intrigues of international feudalism were powerless to destroy this Union. Neither the distrust of those who condemn the healthy vigor and exuberant energy of youth, nor the clamorous outcry of those who dispute with the Colossus of the North his role of leader, were able to prevail against this Union, not even under the cloak of a transformed Monroe Doctrine in favor of intervention, when, in reality, this doctrine has been and continues to be a bulwark of our liberty and a guarantee of our capacity to develop the characteristics of our culture.
Even as the union of the peoples of America finds its geographical expression in continental bonds, so also is its international expression found in the Pan American formula.
Pan Americanism was the great Utopia of the statesmen who organized the countries of America. Above all, it was a fair vision which, born in the enlightened mind of Bolivar, creator of The Congress of Panama, took the shape of a constructive purpose in the spirit of Blaine, the never-to-be-forgotten Secretary of State of 1889.
Up to 1914, Pan Americanism was little more than a dream; after that date, it was no longer a Utopia, but a reality. The madness of the Great War in which millions of men met their doom, in which the accumulated wealth of long centuries was dissipated, in which women and children suffered untold sorrows and hunger—succored and relieved from time to time by superior and generous men such as you, Mr. Hoover, as demonstrated by the gratitude of the Belgians, the recompense of your splendid charity and that of your countrymen, and the reward of your merits—that great and criminal madness of war which dimmed the resplendent brightness of ancient cultures did, on the other hand, strengthen the Pan American Doctrine, because it heralded a world resurrection here in the heart of America, the continent united by ties of labor and peace and destined to serve as a guiding beacon through the darkness which wrought such ruin and destruction.
The palpitating and historical gift of Pan Americanism, derived from the breaking-up of ancient and obsolete artificial systems of international politics, naturally gave rise to criticism, the unreasonable and loquacious criticism of Americans themselves, as, also, to the hostile criticism of those who still harbor fantastic dreams of reconstructing the historical forms of an ancient economic and moral tutelage. Thus it happens that Pan Americanism is now undergoing a cleansing process by reason of this very criticism. But let us leave to others the blind illusion that Pan Americanism is doomed to destruction, and let us jealously guard our conviction that true Pan Americanism, without either selfish limitations or absurd and harmful enhancement, will be the creed of the future.
Your visit, Mr. President, is an act of good will which will result in incalculable consequences for the future of the Pan American Union, whatever may be the extent of its duration in these countries. A stay of 8 days, which you might make in each of them, would not suffice for the study of either our political or our economic life. But what we most value and appreciate is your decision to come here, not as the tourist in search of antiquities, nor yet as the businessman desirous of making lucrative investments, but to bring us the highest representation of the world's greatest democracy, and this in the solemn moments when, by the will of your fellow countrymen, you are about to scale the heights of a power unparalleled in the world's history.
You are a representative man of your people in that you have divined the future of the Americas, united and fraternal, the golden future of this boundless reserve of land and men destined to rejuvenate and renew the life of mankind. You are the completion of Monroe's purpose. He proclaimed the personality of America in the midst of liberty, and you, through your visit, will guarantee it in the midst of economic expansion.
Your country has always produced great men in the hour when they were needed. Washington was born for the achievement of liberty; for the emancipation of slaves, Lincoln came into being; Cleveland was inspired at the critical moment to exalt international justice; Roosevelt was used to correct the errors of geography; and for the defense of right, Wilson was created. You, Mr. Hoover, by the orientation of your life and by virtue of your public activities, are the man pre-ordained to weld together by friendship and justice these peoples of America, each different in origin but all united by the clear vision of an identical future.
Gentlemen, let us raise our glasses to Mr. Hoover, President-elect of the United States of America, and to the health of the gentle comrade of his life, Mrs. Hoover, with the earnest wish that his government may be fruitful in every kind of prosperity and well-being, and that America as a whole may derive benefit from his present visit. And, finally, let us drink, gentlemen, to the great people of the United States of America, who have accomplished the miracle of uniting thought with action, the ideal with the reality.
Gentlemen, your good health!
Herbert Hoover, Remarks in Lima, Peru Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/372890
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