File No. 710.11/364
The Ambassador in Argentina ( Stimson ) to the Secretary of State
The speech of President Wilson to the Mexican journalists has been printed in full in the leading papers here, including the Government organ La Epoca, and has made a profound impression both in official circles and among the people generally. No public utterance could have better impressed public opinion, the truth as to the aspirations and ideals of the United States. Until the present time, there has been no extended editorial comment except in that portion of the press controlled by members of the Allied nations. The Nación of June 16 contains a very long article presumably written by José Luis Murature, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, entitled “Wilson and Pan American Ideals,” which very ably interprets, from the Argentine point of view, the leading ideas in the President’s speech. The following are paragraphs of particular interest:
[Page 584]The world is a debtor to President Wilson for the immense benefit which he has conferred upon it by looking upon the war in which his country is engaged from a moral viewpoint as the pursuit of an ideal, and because he has at the same time known how to direct and manage the strength of a continent by proposing to it a unity of action in unity of ideals, linking Pan Americanism with the European war, and explaining the significance of Pan Americanism in relation to the ideals which the human race to-day is following.
The oldest American nation enters the World War opposing precisely those nations, who are the heads to the [Holy] Alliance, in order to bring about American ideals of liberty and respect for the independence of peoples, sole arbiters of their own destinies. And Wilson in the course of his speech to the Mexican journalists turns to the whole continent and says: “This is our ideal, this is Pan Americanism.”
The term of Pan Americanism during many years was the cause of anxiety and caviling on the part of Latin America. What does Pan Americanism mean? Political hegemony, territorial expansion, North America commercial domination? To-day, however, all suspicion must vanish; the President of the United States has been able to speak with the authority which is given him by fact that his deeds in the course of the negotiations are in conformity with his words now. His nation has entered the war, impelled by an ideal which is the only means of moving human beings, and his people sacrificing willingly and gladly lives and property, tremble with enthusiasm merely at the idea that they seek no material interest.
And since the ideal, the supreme sociological factor tends to unify, it will be difficult in the future for men of spirit in America not to feel themselves bound together. If that ideal is Pan Americanism we are all Pan Americans.