rs yet to serve our
fellow-men in quiet counsel, where the blare of trumpets is neither
heard nor heeded and where the things are done which make blessed the
nations of the world in peace and righteousness and love.

[C] The speech was made from a rostrum in the National Cemetery, on the
battlefield.

ADDRESS ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS

[Delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, August 27,
1913.]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

It is clearly my duty to lay before you, very fully and without
reservation, the facts concerning our present relations with the
Republic of Mexico. The deplorable posture of affairs in Mexico I need
not describe,[D] but I deem it my duty to speak very frankly of what
this Government has done and should seek to do in fulfillment of its
obligation to Mexico herself, as a friend and neighbor, and to American
citizens whose lives and vital interests are daily affected by the
distressing conditions which now obtain beyond our southern border.

Those conditions touch us very nearly. Not merely because they lie at
our very doors. That of course makes us more vividly and more constantly
conscious of them, and every instinct of neighborly interest and
sympathy is aroused and quickened by them; but that is only one element
in the determination of our duty. We are glad to call ourselves the
friends of Mexico, and we shall, I hope, have many an occasion, in
happier times as well as in these days of trouble and confusion, to show
that our friendship is genuine and disinterested, capable of sacrifice
and every generous manifestation. The peace, prosperity, and
contentment of Mexico mean more, much more, to us than merely an
enlarged field for our commerce and enterprise. They mean an enlargement
of the field of self-government and the realization of the hopes and
rights of a nation with whose best aspirations, so long suppressed and
disappointed, we deeply sympathize. We shall yet prove to the Mexican
people that we know how to serve them without first thinking how we
shall serve ourselves.

But we are not the only friends of Mexico. The whole world desires her
peace and progress; and the whole world is interested as never before.
Mexico lies at last where all the world looks on. Central America is
about to be touched by the great routes of the world's trade and
intercourse running free from ocean to ocean at the Isthmus. The future
has much in store for Mexico, as for all the States o