We did not ask whether it was agreeable to you that we should be your big brother. We said we are going to be. Now, that was all very well as far as protecting you from aggression from the other side of the water, but there was nothing in it that protected you from aggression from us, and I have repeatedly seen an uneasy feeling on the part of representatives of States of Central and South America that our self-appointed protection might be for our own benefit and our own interest and not for the interest of our neighbors. So I have said: "Very well, let us make an arrangement by which we will give bonds. Let us have a common guarantee that all of us will sign a declaration of political independence and territorial integrity. Let us agree that if any one of us, the United States included, violates the political independence or territorial integrity of any of the others, all others will jump on her." I pointed out to some gentlemen who were less inclined to enter into this arrangement than others that that was, in effect, giving bonds on the part of the United States that we would enter into an arrangement by which you would be protected from us. PEACE BY MUTUAL TRUST Now, that is the kind of agreement that will have to be the foundation of the future life of the nations of the world, gentlemen. The whole family of nations will have to guarantee to each nation that no nation shall violate its political independence or its territorial integrity. That is the basis--the only conceivable basis--for the future peace of the world, and I must admit that I was anxious to have the States of the two Continents of America show the way to the rest of the world as to how to make a basis of peace. Peace can only come by trust. If you can once get a situation of trust then you have got a situation of permanent peace. Therefore, every one of us, it seems to me, owes it as a patriotic duty to his own country to plant the seeds of trust and confidence instead of seeds of suspicion. That is the reason I began by saying to you that I had not had the pleasure of meeting a group of men who are more welcome than you are, because you are our near neighbors. Suspicion on your part, or misunderstanding on your part, distresses us more than we would be distressed by similar feelings on the part of those less near to us.