of a family of mankind devoted to the
development of true constitutional liberty. We know that that is the
soil out of which the best enterprise springs. We know that this is a
cause which we are making in common with our neighbors, because we have
had to make it for ourselves.

Reference has been made here to-day to some of the national problems
which confront us as a nation. What is at the heart of all our national
problems? It is that we have seen the hand of material interest
sometimes about to close upon our dearest rights and possessions. We
have seen material interests threaten constitutional freedom in the
United States. Therefore we will now know how to sympathize with those
in the rest of America who have to contend with such powers, not only
within their borders but from outside their borders also.

I know what the response of the thought and heart of America will be to
the program I have outlined, because America was created to realize a
program like that. This is not America because it is rich. This is not
America because it has set up for a great population great
opportunities of material prosperity. America is a name which sounds in
the ears of men everywhere as a synonym with individual opportunity
because a synonym of individual liberty. I would rather belong to a poor
nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love
with liberty. But we shall not be poor if we love liberty, because the
nation that loves liberty truly sets every man free to do his best and
be his best, and that means the release of all the splendid energies of
a great people who think for themselves. A nation of employees cannot be
free any more than a nation of employers can be.

In emphasizing the points which must unite us in sympathy and in
spiritual interest with the Latin-American peoples we are only
emphasizing the points of our own life, and we should prove ourselves
untrue to our own traditions if we proved ourselves untrue friends to
them. Do not think, therefore, gentlemen, that the questions of the day
are mere questions of policy and diplomacy. They are shot through with
the principles of life. We dare not turn from the principle that
morality and not expediency is the thing that must guide us and that we
will never condone iniquity because it is most convenient to do so. It
seems to me that this is a day of infinite hope, of confidence in a
future greater than the past has been, for I am fain to b