Remarks at the Monument of Columbus in Genoa, Italy

In standing in front of this monument, sir, I fully recognize the significance of what you have said. Columbus did do a service to mankind in discovering America, and it is America's pleasure and America's pride that she has been able to show that it was a service to mankind to open that great continent to settlement, the settlement of a free people, of a people, because free, desiring to see other peoples free and to share their liberty with the people of the world. It is for this reason no doubt, besides his fine spirit of adventure, that Columbus will always be remembered and honored not only here in the land of his birth, but throughout the world as the man who led the way to those fields of freedom which, planted with a great seed, have now sprung up to the fructification of the world.