Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, With the Annual Message of the President Transmitted to Congress December 3, 1912

File No. 033.1100 K77/175.

The American Minister to the Secretary of State.

[Extract]

No. 209.]

American Legation,
Habana, April 17, 1912.

Sir: I have the honor to report concerning the recent visit to Habana of the Secretary of State and at the same time to interpret as best I may be able the feelings of this Government and people at the time and subsequent to Mr. Knox’s visit to this country.

Secretary Knox arrived at the port of Habana at 9 o’clock on the morning of the 11th instant on board the U. S. S. Washington. As soon as the vessel reached her moorings she was boarded by a party of officials sent to welcome the Secretary. I accompanied this party, attended by the entire staff, of the Legation. * * * Mr. Knox received the party on the quarter-deck. After an exchange of greetings * * * the party returned to shore to await the arrival of Mr. Knox, who arrived shortly afterwards * * * and the party was taken to the Hotel Telégrafo where an entire floor had been reserved by the Government. * * *

At twelve o’clock the Secretary, accompanied by Mr. Doyle, his naval and military aides and the staff of the Legation, called on Secretary Sanguily at the Department of State. * * * As the Secretary’s visit had been greatly delayed it was decided to waive the return call of Secretary Sanguily until afternoon, and the party immediately proceeded to the Palace to call on President Gómez, accompanied by Secretary Sanguily and Sub-Secretary Patterson. * * * After a few minutes conversation with the President the Secretary and his party withdrew and returned to the hotel for luncheon.

At 4 p.m. Secretary Saguily and Sub-Secretary Patterson returned Mr. Knox’s call, at the Hotel Telégrafo.

At five o’clock I had the privilege of giving a reception at the Legation, to afford an opportunity to the higher Cuban officials to meet the Secretary. * * * The president and Mrs. Gómez arrived early and stayed throughout the reception, the first function of any sort they have attended in a legation or private residence during the administration. * * *

At half past eight o’clock President Gómez gave a state dinner in the building of the Department of the Interior. Places were arranged for over two hundred guests. * * * The best elements of Habana society have never before attended any of the functions given by the Government, and their attendance at this banquet must be regarded entirely as an evidence of friendly feeling for the United States and a desire to manifest that feeling to the Secretary of State. The event of the Secretary’s visit which had been anticipated with the greatest interest was his speech delivered at this banquet. At the conclusion of the meal Secretary Sanguily arose and delivered a friendly and well-written address of welcome in which he made enthusiastic protestations of Cuba’s friendliness for and confidence in the United States. * * * Secretary Knox in his reply expressed gratification at his opportunity to become acquainted with the members of the Government of Cuba, in which the United States takes so deep and unselfish an interest. * * * I have the honor to inclose herewith copies of both speeches. * * *

On the 12th there was a motor trip to the Mercedita sugar plantation at La Cabaña in Pinar del Río Province. * * *

At eight o’clock I had the pleasure of entertaining the Secretary and his party at dinner at the Legation. * * *

Shortly after ten o’clock the party proceeded to the Department of State where a magnificent ball was given in honor of the Secretary. About 1,200 invitations were issued. * * *. All the best elements in Cuban society were represented. * * * This was undoubtedly the largest and most elaborate ball ever given in Cuba. * * *

On the morning of the 13th Secretary Sanguily and Sub-Secretary Patterson called on Mr. Knox at his hotel and had an extended conference on pending matters, at which I was present.

At three o’clock the American Club gave a reception in honor of the Secretary. * * *

At five o’clock Mr. Knox went to the Quinta de los Molinos (the old summer home of the Spanish captains-general) where the Mayor of Habana gave a garden-party in his honor. * * *

From the garden-party the Secretary drove directly to the Caballería wharf whence he immediately went on board the Washington. The Legation staff and a few Cuban officials took leave of the Secretary on the dock. Most of the officials, however, arrived at the dock after the departure of the Secretary’s launch. They all took launches and went on board the Washington to wish the Secretary a pleasant journey. * * *

It is gratifying to note that none of the local papers have published any hostile comment. All the papers devoted a great deal of space to describing the movements of the party and all comment was distinctly friendly. * * * The Cuban Government extended a hearty and sincere welcome to the Secretary and spared no efforts or expense to make his visit a success. Cuban society let down the bars which it has maintained towards the official element and joined freely in welcoming and entertaining the nation’s guest. There was not a note of discord to mar the effect of the visit and we may feel highly gratified at the reception accorded Mr. Knox as the representative of the United States. More than this is the knowledge that the Secretary’s visit has cleared the air of all uncertainty as to the friendly intentions and good wishes of our Government for Cuba. * * *

I have [etc.]

A. M. Beaupré.

[Inclosure 1.—Translation.]

Address of the Secretary of State of Cuba welcoming Mr. Knox.

Sir: The President of the Republic has honored me by charging me with the office—a most pleasant one for me—of giving you in his name and in the name of the Cuban Government and people a most cordial and heartfelt welcome to this isle that has rocked the cradle of many a hero, and which is ever a hospitable home in which the stranger easily forgets his native land midst the blandishments of bountiful nature and the warm brotherliness of a people as noble as it is good. Harbinger of peace, in visiting regions as yet unknown to you, peopled by races of an origin and tongue so different from your own, you do not grasp the ponderous sword of conquest, but rather the glorious caduceus of Mercury, symbol of prosperity and beneficence, entwined with olive and laurel, some of whose leaves shine with the tears of our sisters and our own blood, while the heavenly radiance of our martyrdom and our heroism blends with the halo of light by which it is surrounded and illumined; for, united, the flashing American battalions and the careworn Cuban legions, thin and almost naked, accomplished—you in a rapid campaign, we battling unwearied for half a century—the splendid issue which renewed your traditional doctrines of world politics and gave new direction to your historic destiny, while radically changing our secular condition, both assuming from that moment, in return for new duties and rights toward other nations, mutual and reciprocal responsibilities by virtue of which neither do you assume the right of oppressing us nor have we suffered the misfortunes of a fresh bondage.

With your excursion to the free commonwealths of the Caribbean Sea you complete that other interesting and fruitful excursion of your illustrious predecessor to those republics south of the Equator, animated, like him, by the same spirit of harmony and fraternity; bearers, both, of one message of concord and affection which the great Republic then sent and now repeats to these impetuous republics, shaped to her image, although under different conditions—some born, as the most recent, at the magic touch of her diplomacy; others, as our own, by the help of her arms; and all, perhaps, maintained through the efficacy of her original and life-giving principles. Wherefore the visit of so high an envoy from the largest and most famous democracy of the world could never imply purposes opposed to the consecration and normal exercise and development of republican institutions, not only because of the greatness of the august federation whose conspicuous and worthy representative you are, and because of the elevation and moral refinement of the generous people who established it and have maintained and aggrandized it in the face of great perils and fearful struggles, but because of what, in the evolution of ideas and the transformation of history, the American spirit, American doctrines, and American action mean in the life of modern society. Blessed fruit of a seasoned and hard-fought development inspired and sustained by the highest aspirations of benevolence and progress, Americanism is either an empty word or is as a leaven of order, of dignity, and of that serene trust which in every man’s heart builds up the sense of power and righteousness as an impregnable fortress and sows in every land the seed of vigorous virtues whereby, through its own self-respect and in the exalted interests of justice, it may become unconquerable and happy. Solely by that spirit which creates and upholds, by the humane and fruitful power of that doctrine which is the product of a high avatar of conscience, which is a new gospel of redemption and hope for oppressed peoples and bulwark of vacillating and unstable democracies, would what has been called Pan-American in contradistinction to Old World denominations be truly justified and have its full force, in harmony with the dignity and happiness of nations. Whatever may be the changes and applications of the Monroe Doctrine—the last phase of which your excellency has set forth and interpreted authoritatively in a recent well-known speech—it never could imply, as the malevolent would wish, a harassing, illegitimate, and humiliating suzerainty, consisting of a constant, arbitrary, and perturbing interference of an alien government in the private and normal life of sovereign nations.

My words are prompted, Mr. Secretary, by my admiration for your institutions as an old revolutionist as well as by my esteem and my gratitude as a Cuban. By participating in our hard struggle with the Spanish power Americans probably advanced our independence by several years, assuring to us at the same time the favorable outcome of a protracted and devastating war, and saving us from a corresponding period of hate, bloodshed, and ruin. Later, in a demoralized and discouraged community, with their better and, for us, novel methods, they corrected pernicious errors, offsetting the defects of negligence and leveling obstacles that the past had laid across our path to a new life, whereby wider and brighter prospects were opened up to us. And now, if you counsel us in the difficulties of national life, pointing out for their avoidance dangers born of inexperience, excusable in a community undergoing radical changes in organization and government by bitter struggling, it constitutes what is known as “a policy of prevention”: there being nothing reprehensible in your exercise of an office operated for our own preservation and profit, and our failure to take advantage of the benefits it offers would be blameworthy in us, inasmuch as we are not to be held responsible for the fatalities of history, nor of the time and place in which we entered upon national life. Nor have we been the first whom, because of weakness, you have sought to admonish as to error or injustice, foreseeing calamity and disaster, since in difficult or perilous circumstances the constant or direct action of your Government in American affairs, almost from the beginning of the last century till its end, with their assent and often with their compliance, imposed timely rectifications on even strong governments and powerful nations, even as in Cuba itself—in spite of its great, secular and glorious titles—the earnest words of your Presidents have called attention insistently to the dangers toward which its blindness and pride were dragging it long before finally issuing against it a sentence from which there was no appeal.

Knowing, thus, our conditions and your expressed purposes we should be too suspicious and skeptical if we still feared lest, through some evil inspiration of violence or through unspeakable motives, the stability of our national institutions were threatened; the more in that you, too, Mr. Secretary, have just proclaimed in the very heart of the continent that your country is too great and too honest to covet foreign sovereignty and too extensive to need another’s territory; that not in vain has an uninterrupted heredity of virtue and culture separated immeasurably from the violence of passion the luminous serenity of justice, nor from savage times the present epochs of democracy and righteousness, and that the same distance lies in the moral world between the chaotic and dark soul of Tamerlane and the pure and immaculate spirit of George Washington.

Moreover, Mr. Secretary, we need you in the entire regulation of our national life, as, for many and diverse reasons, you need us, and therefore our common purpose should be in mutual usefulness by the giving and exchange of reciprocal and equivalent services; although it is clear that for the fulfillment of such worthy aims it is indispensable that neither here nor elsewhere should it be permitted and much less proclaimed without due correction, by the lawless voice of usury or of mammon, that anyone can, by divine right, at his fancy, suppressing the Republic by the scratch of a pen, reinstall Cuba as a subject colony; for, if we do not live by our own right and if our condition is that of a tenant, subject at will to alien caprices and interests, there is neither dignity in our lives, nor an authority to be respected in the State, nor any possibility whatever of true order and honorable and permanent peace. The interests that gained profit or were enriched in the public upheaval and interventions brought about by circumstances would be well satisfied and glad if the halcyon days of their power and predominance were to return; but for that very reason the Cuban people would be, indeed, unfortunate.

Only a few weeks ago the people of this city rendered their last tribute of pious regard over the remains of the sailors who perished on the Maine, and in great crowds gathered along the shore and followed with bated breath the last voyage of the fantastic ship. Yonder on the horizon, as the evening fell, what was left of the fearful catastrophe—the mutilated hull—was submerged forever; but in every Cuban, as in so many American homes, hearts beat as one remembering past days of anxiety, pain, and glory, and in the former as in the latter the tragic remembrance of the Maine and of that sinister night on which by the glow of that great disaster this new American nation was brought to life was evoked with religious unction. Born midst such exceptional circumstances, fruit of such labors, Cuba feels that the very roots of her national life and of her rights are planted and nourished in the conscience of the American nation; and so, trusting and grateful, she now extends her loyal hand to her powerful and noble friend. When, as a reward for your triumphant effort, the two seas separated by the Isthmus since remote ages shall be joined in one embrace, should their waves, like the folded cloak of the Roman ambassador, hide the blessings of peace or the horrors of war, Cuba, satisfied and content in its happy independence, will enjoy with you the incalculable benefits of that universal prosperity which is approaching as the necessary result of such a marvelous modification of the continent. And you may be sure, likewise, that in the hour of danger and of conflict your soldiers will not fight, should it be necessary to do so, with such enthusiasm as, for its own independence and in your aid, our people would fight, knowing as they do that in the present state of the world and in the critical eventualities of an uncertain and not far-distant future never shall the Cuban flag be more secure of respect abroad than when close to the beneficent shadow of your own, which strewn with stars, symbols of real nations in the full glow of life, prefigures the mystic and glorious galaxy of right. And therefore it is its high function, in conformity to tradition and purpose, to create free commonwealths and new republics throughout the continent and not—as those who outrage her name by invoking her power in furtherance of inconceivable enmities and ignoble interests—to be the threat and scourge of weak nations. But if the relentless purpose which iniquitous prophets of evil have been announcing should ever be fulfilled by reason of the changes and weaknesses to which humanity is subject, surely some unheard-of portent would befall; perhaps that majestic woman standing on Bedloe Island in the great estuary would loose her metal girdle and extinguish in the seething waves the gigantic torch that illumines the vast ocean and the conscience of man, while a fearsome clamor sprung from a terrified disenchantment would be reechoed from wave to wave and from height to height, proclaiming to the darkness of the world that Liberty was no more.

Never, however, shall such a misfortune take place, far more grievous and fatal than if at a moment’s notice the light of all the stars should be extinguished. Wherefore allow me to be the mouthpiece of hope and love, in the sincere trust, Mr. Secretary, that you may enjoy a long and happy life of honor and of glory; that your illustrious President may be in all circumstances, as heretofore, the noble friend of Cuba; and that, crowned with blessings, in the prosperity of a spotless fame, your great nation may be now, and in centuries to come, protector of the law, œgis of the weak, example to the strong, firm foundation of civilization, palladium of republican America, realizing its great destiny as it circles in its huge orbit like a benign star, in harmony with all human interests and amidst the blessings of all the nations of the earth.

[Inclosure 2.]

Reply of Mr. Knox.

Mr. President and Gentlemen: It has been my high privilege to be the President’s chosen instrument for conveying to the independent nations of the Caribbean at this time, when the completion of the Panama Canal is near, a message of fraternal good will and an assurance, if, indeed, assurance were necessary, of the deep sense of responsibility felt by the Government and people of the United States that the great work which we have undertaken shall helpfully contribute to the well-being of the commonwealths of the Western World and be instrumental in bringing closer all the peoples of the Americas, inspiring them with broader confidence, more intimate sympathy, and more practical reciprocal helpfulness in the promotion of their mutual advantage and coordinate development. This was the message I carried, not alone to the peoples of the Carribean littoral but to all the countries of Latin America, emphasizing the sincerity of purpose and the purity of motive which have animated the United States in all its dealings with Latin America. As I said at Panama, intelligent consideration of the relations of the United States to the other American republics makes it clear that our policies have been without a trace of sinister motive or design, craving neither sovereignty nor territory.

The special purpose of my mission having been accomplished, it is alike appropriate and gratifying that on my homeward journey I should have the opportunity to get into closer personal touch with the one sovereign people of the whole Western World who are, above all, in a position to know and appreciate the broad and essentially conscientious policy of Anglo-Saxon America toward Latin America. So far as Cuba is concerned, our record speaks for itself. It is consistent and unblemished. It was formulated and proclaimed before the first shot was fired at Manila initiating the conflict to free from a crushing despotism “this, fairest land the eye had ever seen” and which, happily, ended in gaining a free Cuba for free Cubans. That policy has been lived up to ever since. It needs no reiterative protestations. It is a constant, vital entity, needing not to be galvanized into spasmodic action; neither should its true import be dulled by wearisome repetition. Good faith is a thing that proves itself by deeds, not words. Our deeds in respect to the Cuban people are before you. Look to them for fresh assurance—if there be any doubting Thomas who thinks he needs it—that the United States stands firmly as the true, wholehearted friend of Cuba, glad of the work we have done for the Cuban people and ready to aid them to conserve the civic and material benefits which it was our good fortune to be instrumental in helping them to win.

First among these benefits is self-government. We hold that all peoples are fit to work out the highest ideals of self-government by creating for themselves and by their own efforts a healthy national life, inspired by the safe and sane exercise of the popular will, homogeneous in all its parts, free from radical weakness or corporeal blemish, self-respecting and imbued with respect for the rights of all at home and abroad. Providence has called upon free Cuba to be a model state among the popular commonwealths of the world and has opened the way to the achievement of that noble purpose. That is the goal for which we have, with you, spent our blood and treasure and to which our earnest efforts will ever be directed. The beginning of Cuban political life was the affirmation of the brotherhood of the American and Cuban peoples. Let us ever be brothers.

I speak to you, with all the earnestness I may, the thoughts that rise at this time, when Cuba stands on the threshold of a new era of even greater prosperity and progress by reason of being a natural gateway to the great Isthmian Canal and being destined, in the inevitable logic of events, to share in the almost incalculable possibilities to spring from the new channel to be opened to the world’s commerce under a fresh and controlling impetus. It makes a newer world of the New World of Columbus. As I said at Panama, “In this new world we must be found drawn closer by sympathies and mutual esteem, and working in harmony toward beneficent ends. This must be so, for our greatest interests are those that are common to us all.” We must not forget that in order to work together toward common ends each co-worker must be in a position to do his effective share of the common task. Even as the capacity of the individual workman is dependent on soundness of body and mind, so the potential efficiency or a community is measured by the homogeneous perfection of its civic organization and by the logical soundness of the public mind that directs its operations. While liberty is attained through patriotic valor, yet it is only through fraternity and unselfish coordination that it is perpetuated. The crisis in the life of any nation that has thrown off the yoke of tyranny is the period of rehabilitation. When the cohesive bonds of a common peril are relaxed by the removal of the danger and liberty succeeds oppression, unselfish fraternity must be substituted for the unity which a common danger furnished during the struggle for national rights. A people liberated from oppressive tyranny is no better off if unrestrained selfishness, which almost inevitably leads to anarchy, is the result. A people so situated can not profitably exercise the right of self-government unless they work faithfully together with singleness of aim. Mistrust, jealousy, selfishness, aloofness, and apathy will rob a people of their birthright. There is always more to unite than to separate all classes of citizens, and in Cuba, as in all republics, all classes should be alert in the consciousness of their civic duties and not commit the destinies of their country to the hands of the few who, with nothing to lose and everything to gain, make a business of the politics of their country.

It is the fervent prayer of my Government and my countrymen that free Cuba may abide steadfastly in the high station to which Providence has called her, sturdy with the strength of stable self-control, free from the infirmities that beset weak peoples, and earnest in the path of self-development.

Coming among you as I do, the cordiality of the welcome I have received makes it impossible to realize that I am in a strange land, among strange kinsfolk. I feel, rather, that I am of your brotherhood, as you are, of mine. I come, too, at an auspicious time, when the association of feeling between my country and yours is made closer by the sad memories attending the removal of the wreck of the Maine. The waves of ocean have clasped that ill-fated ship in their eternal embrace, and your beautiful harbor is no longer marred by the presence of a gloomy monument of national resentment and strife. As the sun rises upon the unbroken expanse of your noble bay, it brings a message of oblivion of the dark past and of encouragement for the new Cuba, strong in the possession of rightful strength and at peace with all the world.