821.012/21: Telegram
The Chargé in Colombia (Greene) to the Secretary of State
[Received 2:35 p.m.]
73. The following communication dated November 16, 1938, from the President of the Senate has just been received through the Foreign Office:
“I have the honor to transmit to Your Excellency the report of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Senate regarding the request made to the latter by Isaac Gutierrez Navarro, a Colombian citizen:
“On request of the Senate’s action, Honorable Senators, the memorial presented to this body by Señor Isaac Gutierrez Navarro, a Colombian citizen resident at Bogotá requesting that as an exceptional instance and in view of his great merits, Colombian citizenship be conferred upon the President of the United States, Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt, has been referred for study to the Foreign Affairs Committee.
To the Foreign Affairs Committee, as to the majority of our compatriots, the figure of the North American statesman is one of the greatest and most noble of our epoch. His work as the defender of democracy, as the paladin of justice and right, and as a bold and equitative reformer of the laws and political customs within his country, is and for a long time will be of exceptional significance. In a few years, without disorders or agitations, Roosevelt with outstanding civic valor and the austere purity of an apostle has caused a transcendental revolution unequalled on any continent or by those who, believing themselves to be the sole revolutionaries, begin by despoiling men of their attributes of dignity and the people of the liberties indispensable to their harmonious spiritual and material development. And this prodigious domestic task has not deprived him of the desire or time to labor constantly and decisively in maintaining universal peace which each day is threatened with greater violence by the collision of ideologies and apparently incompatible interests and is least well defended by the egoism of the old potencies.
With respect to the American republics, the policy called that of the good neighbor, which President Roosevelt preaches and practices with firm loyalty as the application of democratic principles internationally, has completely eliminated the justifiable resentments produced by the opposite policy and has stimulated the question and effective binding of the peoples of America on the basis of cordial sincerity, mutual understanding and present and future solidarity. We are living in a period of confident tranquillity and optimistic hope, thanks to President Roosevelt’s policy, and such sentiments cannot but greatly influence general prosperity and the consolidation of an atmosphere of fraternity and peace. Now is when the continent with strong strokes reveals its moral physiognomy and confirms its historic destiny by showing itself as a land of humanity, tolerance and foresight in the midst of the successive crises which have set a proud culture to the domination of force.
The Foreign Relations Committee believes that imminent events such as the reunion of the Lima Conference will bring to a practical [Page 465] and resounding culmination the valiant attitude of President Roosevelt, restorer of inter-American friendship and the directing spirit of the vast movement tending to revivify in America traditional faith in democracy, justice and liberty for all, when these substantive ideas, without which progress is a fleeting lie, suffer the rudest attacks in history.
Based upon these considerations, and it not being within the radius of the Senate’s constitutional rights to render a decision upon the basic request of the one who presented the memorial, your committee takes the liberty to propose the following declarations:
The Senate of Colombia: expresses its gratitude and admiration to Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, for his effective defense of democratic ideas and systems, for his intervention to safeguard peace within and without the continent, and for the loyal and constant carrying out of the ‘good neighbor’ policy which is based upon respect of the sovereignty of all peoples.
In the name of the Republic of Colombia the Senate confirms its desire to continue to serve the principle of American solidarity which has inspired the international policy of President Roosevelt.
Communicate this to the President of the United States through the conduct of the American Embassy at Bogotá and publish it.”
Foreign Office has been informed this note has been telegraphed to Department for the President.