Remarks on Receiving the Medal of the Pan-American Society.

It is with the greatest appreciation that I receive from your hands the medal of the Pan-American Society, particularly because it comes to me from an institution which was formed over twenty-two years ago and which has devoted its efforts ever since to the development of mutual knowledge and understanding and true friendship among the American Republics and their peoples. Through your hospitality to visitors from the other Republics to the United States and through your constant attention to the development of closer cultural and educational relations with our neighbors to the South you have been one of the links in the chain of attachment to our sister Republics which has fortunately helped so greatly in the promotion of good feeling between us.

I see among you certain members who, in addition to the helpful attention they have given to the aims of your Society, are also devoting themselves now to provide practical means of insuring the continuance of amicable relations between the American Republics through the means of the Inter-American Commercial Arbitration Commission. I have been very interested to learn of the substantial establishment of this Commission and I look to it with great hope and with full confidence that through its measures of friendly and reliant facilities it will afford an opportunity to harmonize the relations between the citizens of our American Republics in a phase of their relations which does not lie within the sphere of activities of our several Governments. The relations between Nations are after all dependent upon the relations between the individuals of those various Nations. In this Commission you are attacking a problem which is fundamental, and the solution of which will be most helpful, in promoting the welfare and advance of all the twenty-one Republics of America.

Permit me to thank you and, through you, the members of the Pan-American Society for this expression of support in a policy which has long been close to my heart and the fulfillment of which I consider one of the greatest privileges of this office.