ABSTRACT
That is why we live here with such pride in Our America, to serve and honor her. We certainly do not live here as future slaves or dazzled peasants, but as people able and determined to help a man win esteem for his good qualities and respect for his sacrifices. The very wars that are thrown in her teeth by those who misunderstand her out of pure ignorance, are the seal of honor for our nations that have never hesitated to hasten the course of progress with the enriching sustenance of their blood, and that can display their wars like a crown. Devoid of the friction and daily stimulus of our struggles and passions that come to us from the soil where our children have not been reared-and from a great distance!—in vain does this country invite us with her magnificence, her life and its temptations, her heart and its cowardice, to indifference and forgetfulness. We are taking Our America, as host and inspiration, to where there is no forgetting and no death! And neither corruptive interests nor certain new fashions in fanaticism will let us be uprooted from her! We must show our soul as it is to these illustrious messengers who have come here from our nations, so they may see that we consider it faithful and honorable. We must convince these delegates that a just admiration and a usefully sincere study of other nations-a study neither too distant nor myopicdoes not weaken the ardent, redemptive, and sacred love for what is our own. Let us allow them to see that for our personal good-if there is any good in the conscience without peace-we will not be traitors to that which Nature and humanity demand of us.
