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Toasts of the President and President Dutra at a Dinner at the Brazilian Embassy.
May 20, 1949

Mr. President:

In Rio de Janeiro you set a precedent for courtesy and hospitality. As best we can we have been attempting to return to you and to the people of Brazil those wonderful tributes and pleasant times which we had when Mrs. Truman and my daughter Margaret and I visited your great capital.

I sincerely hope that you have had an enjoyable visit in Washington, and I sincerely hope that you will have a pleasant visit in New York City. I hope that you will enjoy the tour over the Tennessee Valley Authority, and your visit to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

You have fulfilled my idea of what a President ought to be. You rise an hour earlier than I do, you walk better than I do, and you call your cabinet into session before breakfast, which I think I shall institute in Washington.

Mr. President, to your health, and to the continued friendship of Brazil and the United States!

NOTE: The President was responding to a toast by President Dutra at a dinner which he gave in honor of President Truman at the Brazilian Embassy. president Dutra’s toast, through an interpreter, follows:

Your visit to Brazil was a happy event in the history of the continent, you had proof while you were in Rio de Janeiro of how well your country is understood in Brazil, and of how much it is admired.

On this return visit, we are deeply gratified at the exceptional demonstrations of esteem which we witnessed, directed toward our country. Outstanding among those was the festive spectacle of your lovely Capital City bedecked with our flags. We shall carry back with us to Brazil the recollection of voices and of anthems translating the vibrations of civic friendliness and the expressive cordiality of the American people.

We shall never forget the significance of the words and actions by which eminent representatives of the three branches of Government of this great nation betokened your gracious hospitality to a brother from the south, and renewed the assurance of the traditional and time-tested alliance which has seen us through the hardships of two wars, and rendered ever more fruitful the constructive tasks of peace.

We are happy to have you with us now, in this house of Brazil, in the atmosphere of cordial friendship which is a feature of the Brazilian home.

Mr. President, it gives me a great deal of satisfaction at this time to raise my glass to your personal happiness, and to the ever-present greatness of the United States of America.