We Panamanians always remember with gratitude the interest we inspired in you from the very first days of our national existence, and we bear in mind very specially your timely speech delivered before the Union League Club of Chicago,[4] when our destiny was pending on the scales of a decision of your Senate; and therefore we avail ourselves of this joyful opportunity to receive you with the cordiality due to an old and good friend. It has been, and it is yet, the vehement desire of your country to bring into closer ties, as far as possible, its political and commercial relations with the Latin American countries. The similarity of traditions and institutions, the vicinity and continuity of their territories, and the vast field of commercial expansion which they offer, fully justify that natural, legitimate desire, which is also mutually beneficial; but there being between yours and the latter countries essential differences of language, race, disposition, and education, there is bound to exist in them the suspicion which is naturally engendered by the unknown, and thus it is that the first steps taken toward the accomplishment of your desire should have been the removal of that suspicion by means of friendly intercourse and mutual acquaintance. With the tact brought forth by your vast intelligence and learning, you fully understood that those do not love each other well who are not intimately acquainted; and it is owing to this fact that you decided to come in person to visit and to know the Latin Americans by your own observation and study. No doubt you carry with you a joyful impression of the progress and nobleness of disposition of our southern brothers, together with the assurance that your mission will achieve a new and splendid triumph for that American diplomacy whereof you are the skilled director, and the principal object of which is the accomplishment of the desire of which I have already spoken. Being desirous to coöperate in the aims you have in view and with the hope of dispelling certain existing misunderstandings concerning the motives and intentions which originated our present pleasant relations, in a statement which I recently addressed to your government through its minister plenipotentiary here, I recounted the historical events which engendered our national existence and those special relations which link us to your country, in order that when the seal of diplomatic silence is removed, and that statement becomes public property, the world may know, through the unimpeachable testimony of history, that only ideals of the highest altruism served as a guide to the foundation of our republic and to the celebration of the treaty concerning the construction of the interoceanic canal for our benefit and _pro mundi beneficio_.