Speech of the President of the National Constitutional Assembly of Nicaragua, Dr. Ignacio Suárez, at a session of that body held at Managua in honor of Mr. Knox, March 6, 1912.

[Translation.]

Mr. Secretary:

The National Constitutional Assembly wishes to accord you this reception to give you a cordial welcome in testimony of the lively sympathy and high esteem which the people and Government of the United States inspire in them, and you, Mr. Secretary, who, in the high character of Secretary of State of the great American nation, have contributed indirectly with your moral influence to the pacification of our country. Hence, I have the honor to express these sentiments in the name of the National Congress, prophesying the most perfect success of the mission which has brought you here.

You are not, therefore, to us merely the diplomatic representative of a powerful nation whom we admire and respect and to whom we are bound by ties of old and friendly relations, but also a welcome guest, owing to your having given proof that you are animated by a lofty spirit of American brotherhood.

It can not be denied, however, that your visit, which the peoples of America, and ourselves especially, have been awaiting with suspense, [Page 1118] has awakened fears and misgivings in timid minds, who see in it a peril to our autonomy. Undoubtedly it is because they are unaware of the many proofs which on divers and solemn occasions North American statesmen have given officially which eliminate all tendency to expansion or to interference in foreign dominions which might compromise the latter’s sovereignty and independence.

It must be recognized also that a propaganda nearly continental in proportions denouncing expansionism has been initiated. This propaganda first took form in the famous Monroe Doctrine, so opportunely formulated, now amplifying and restricting its terms, or diluting it in a strong solution of unbiased criticism in order to arrive at the exact conception of its true meaning.

Those unfounded fears of which I have just made mention arise from this. To dissipate them it is enough for me to recall some of those proofs, unimpeachable through having been confirmed in the international practice of the United States.

The glorious conqueror of Vicksburg, in 1881, calmed the restlessness of the Mexicans who attributed intentions of annexation to his journey, assuring them, at a banquet given to him by the deputies of Oaxaca, that the people of the United States would under no circumstances accept annexation, not even if nine-tenths of the people of Mexico should ask for it, and he added:

We do not need new territory; we have yet to develop what we have. We wish to see our neighbors prosper and become so strong that the projects which are formed by other countries in relation to them may in no way endanger their safety.

And later, in 1885, in order to dispel new fears in the same Republic, the United States Minister, Mr. Henry R. Jackson, at a reception given on July 4, pronounced these energetic and quieting words:

May the hand be paralyzed that dares to strike out a single star of the pleiad of American republics! May the statesman perish who pulls out petals or pistils from a single flower! Allow to each nation the full enjoyment of its institution, customs, and local laws. Let it govern itself according to its pleasure. If American freedom for all nations does not consist in this, then our Constitutions, Federal and State, can be naught but lies and our flag a farce.

The Attorney General, Mr. Gushing, upon giving an opinion requested by the Secretary of State, Mr. William L. Marcy, on a claim of Peru against the United States, thus expressed himself:

It seems to me that considerations of expediency concur with all sound ideas of public law to indicate the propriety of a return to more reserve in all this matter, as between the Spanish American Republics and the United States; that is, to abstain from applying to them any rule of public law which we do not admit to have applied to us; to do only as we would be done by; and to consult their well-being, and cultivate their friendship, by adhering to the impartial assertion, whether in claim or in rejection of claim, of the established rules of the international jurisprudence of Christendom.

Such wise and worthy words even the venerable founder of American democracy would not have disdained to pronounce.

I omit other more recent declarations, for they are better known, such as those of Secretary of State Root on his trip through South America, calculated also to communicate to weak nations the security of their independence.

There can be no doubt that justice will triumph and that the way will be opened through which invigorating and fruitful currents will urge on to fields of progress.

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The evolution taking place in private law, influenced by the principles of true justice which does not lose sight of the common destiny of mankind, is already more important than international law, and from day to day the violence of nation against nation becomes rarer where such violence is grounded only on the supremacy of strength.

I have the pleasure here to state that the United States has in nearly all cases abided by the principles above laid down. In evidence of this are the many cases of arbitration with small nations: The Venezuelan flour claim of 1836, which it dropped when convinced that it was in the wrong; the abuses of a mixed commission on claims against Paraguay, removed in 1862 by this declaration of the President: The people and Government of the United States are too honorable to connive at oriental trickery in favor of their citizens to the detriment of justice”; to Peru was given entire satisfaction in 1852 by the Secretary of State, Mr. Everett, “in consequence of unintentional injustice done,” according to his expression, when the sovereignty of this Republic in certain guano islands which American citizens wished to take possession of was put in jeopardy.

And I could continue with similar quotations. I shall not omit the Venezuelan case, owing to the special circumstances which attached to it. This Republic was condemned to pay by a mixed commission an indemnity to American citizens in the sum of $1,253,310.30. It paid one-half, more or less, and it then refused to pay the rest because great frauds had been disclosed which placed the real amount of the debt at $80,000. The American Congress, at the request of the Executive, authorized the use of force for obtaining payment; but Venezuela held out in its refusal until President Arthur and Secretary Frelinghuysen recognized that it was right, and to this effect Congress was informed, and this high body thereupon unanimously resolved that another commission should be appointed to revise the first decision.

I have gone into these details at length to make clear the procedure of your powerful country with the other weak ones of the continent; and the last cited in particular attracts the attention, for it treats of decision clothed with all the force of a thing adjudicated opened anew through respect for right and equity.

Hence, all fears and all prejudice ought to be rejected in our relations with the United States, it being evident that the strongest bulwark of our guaranty as a nation lacking physical strength lies in the force which emanates from right, and therefore it resides in your own institutions, in your characteristic respect for law, which, as was said by a notable writer, is born of the Anglo-Saxon temperament—calm, practical, lover of justice, and averse to all extreme measures.

Hard is the lot of a weak people, even when its friendship with great and strong nations is taken into consideration.

The same august founder of your prosperous Union, who saw everything through the crystal of his excellent virtues, said, on taking leave of public life, in his immortal message addressed to Congress:

Such an attachment of a small or weak toward a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.

Nicaragua, however, which in 1884 was closely bound to your country by the Zavala-Frelinghuysen treaty, does not fear prejudice or see peril to its autonomy, and strong in its good faith and confident in its institutions, founded in and strengthened by the same principles [Page 1120] of justice which govern your wonderful Republic, we open our arms and receive you as friends, with signal show of respect and true esteem.

Accept, Mr. Secretary, this manifestation of the Assembly, which, through you, it extends to the people and the Government of the United States.