Speech of His Excellency Don Manuel A. Matos, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Venezuela, at a banquet given to Mr. Knox at Miraflores, March 24, 1912.
Mr. Minister: I comply with the instructions of the President of the Republic to tell you that your presence amongst us is regarded with the greatest satisfaction by the Government and people of Venezuela. Upon selecting you to visit these countries in its name your Government has furnished fresh evidence of the friendly interest which they inspire, tending thus to strengthen the bonds which bind us to the country of Washington and Lincoln.
Your visit, Mr. Minister, must further serve to make better known in your country the conditions of vitality of our own, thus accentuating sentiments of mutual respect and consideration and developing at the same time on a larger scale our commercial relations. It is a further step in the fruitful work of Pan-Americanism which our Liberator sought to accomplish in his beautiful conception of the Congress of Panama and which the United States is supplementing with a perseverance worthy of the genius of your noble race.
A principal factor of this union of the peoples of America so necessary to the high aims of human progress will be the opening of the Panama Canal, which will not only bring nearer the East and the West, uniting the two oceans, but which will also draw closer together the republics of South and Central America and the great Republic of the north, giving a new and vigorous impulse to civilization resulting from the interchange of the products and ideas of all the regions of the world.
Venezuela, being situated on the route to Europe, will be one of the nations most benefited by that colossal work of American endeavor from which we perceive a new element of progress which will permit us to develop further the sources of our natural wealth and to better show our characteristics of nationality on the American union.
Mr. Minister, the blood of your compatriots watered the foundations of Venezuelan independence and the recognition of our country has been perpetuated in monuments which you will have occasion to see at Maracay and Puerto Cabello. This is a further cause for the regard of the Venezuelan people for the American people, a regard which we have no doubt must be strengthened as a result of your visit because of the high authority and representation with which you are invested and because of your remarkable merits as a statesman.
Gentlemen, in the name of the President of the Republic, I invite you to drink to the prosperity of the American people, to the happiness of their President, His Excellency Mr. Taft, and to the hope that His Excellency Mr. Knox and his honored family, during their brief stay amongst us, may have reason only to be truly pleased and that they may take from our country as pleasing and lasting impressions as we shall have to retain of them.