Reply of Mr. Root

I feel most keenly the great honor conferred upon me by this distinguished legislative body. I thank you for your courtesy personally; still more I thank you for the exhibition of friendship and sympathy for my country,—an exhibition which corresponds most perfectly to the spirit and purpose actuating my visit to Peru.

I do not think, sir, that any one long concerned in government can fail to come at last to a feeling of deep solicitude for the welfare of the people whom he serves. He must come to feel toward them somewhat as the lawyer does toward his clients, as the physician feels toward his patients, as the clergyman feels toward his parishioners—the advocate, the friend of the people whose interests are committed to his official action; and, as a member of the government of a friendly republic, I feel toward you that sympathy which comes from a common purpose, from engagement in the same task, from being actuated by the same motive. The work of the legislator is difficult and delicate. Governments cannot make wealth; governments cannot produce enterprise, industry, or prosperity; but wise government can give that security for property, for the fruits of enterprise, for personal liberty, for justice, which opens the door to enterprise, which stimulates industry and commercial activity, which brings capital and immigration to the shores of the country that is but scantily populated; and which makes it worth while for the greatest exertions of the human mind to be applied to the development of the resources of the country. How difficult is the task! As the engineer controlling a great and complicated machine does not himself furnish the motive power or do the work, yet by a wrong turn of the lever may send the machine to ruin; so the legislative body cannot itself do the work that the people must do, yet by ill-advised, inconsiderate, and unwise legislation, it may produce incalculable misery and ruin. The wisdom that is necessary, the unselfishness that is necessary, the subordination of personal and selfish interests that is necessary, has always seemed to me to consecrate a legislative body seeking to do its duty by its country and make it worthy not only of respect but of reverence.

Mr. President and Senators, in your deliberations and your actions, so fraught with results of happiness or disaster for the people of your beloved country, we of the North, the people of a republic long bound to Peru by ties of real and sincere friendship, follow you with sympathy; with earnest, sincere desire that you may be guided by wisdom; that you may work in simplicity and sincerity of heart for the good of your people; and that your labors may be crowned by those blessings which God gives to those who serve His children faithfully and well.

INSTALLATION OF MR. ROOT AS A MEMBER OF THE FACULTY
OF POLITICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SAN MARCOS, LIMA
SEPTEMBER 14, 1906

Speech of Doctor Luis F. Villarán

Rector of the University

The University of San Marcos of Lima heartily shares in the national rejoicing consequent on your visit to us, and greets you as the representative of the great republic which holds so many claims to the high esteem and consideration of the Spanish-American states of this continent.

Your country, indeed, furnished valuable coöperation to the Spanish colonies in the establishment of their independence. With the example of your own emancipation, forming one of the greatest events of history, the longing for liberty deepened in their breasts. It gave them courage in the struggle by frank declarations of friendship and sympathy; bestowed prestige on their cause by recognizing them as free states at a time when their emancipation was not entirely accomplished; and finally added strength to their victory by declaring before the whole world that the independence and integrity of these republics would be maintained at all costs.

You, the Americans of the North, were the founders and defenders of the international and political liberty of these states. Washington, whose greatness has alone been given worthy expression in the inspired words of Byron—Washington, "the first, the last, the best of men", and the glorious group of illustrious citizens who aided him in his work, were the apostles of democracy and of the republic. The American Constitution is an admirable structure, built on the immovable foundations of justice and the national will, which will never be overthrown by social or political upheavals.

Half a century ago, Laboulaye, the illustrious professor of the College of France, said:

This prophecy has been fulfilled; that half-century has passed by, and the great republic goes on its career of greatness, and no eye can discern the ultimate reach of its magnificence.

Today, with the kind name of sister, it sends to us, through you, its worthy messenger, fresh words of encouragement, and invites us in a gracious manner to exert ourselves to greater efforts in the work of peace, of labor, and of the aggrandizement of the American continent.

You tell us that—

You add:

The University of Lima, an important factor in our national life, accepts on its part, and in harmony with public thought, your noble invitation.

This University, the distinguished creation of the great Spanish monarchs, proud of its noble lineage of five centuries, jealous of its glories, believes it to be its duty and considers it a special honor to offer you, the illustrious messenger, the deep thinker, and the highest co-worker in the government of Theodore Roosevelt, the peacemaker of the world, a post of honor.

The Faculty of Political and Administrative Sciences, founded thirty years ago by the distinguished President Manuel Pardo, and organized by the eminent public writer Pradier Fodéré—this Faculty, which professes, without limitations, the doctrines of international and political law as proclaimed in your country, is the one which with just right offers you this University emblem, which I am pleased to place in the hands of Your Excellency [addressing the President of Peru, and handing him the medal of the University] that you may kindly deliver it to our illustrious guest.

Speech of Doctor Ramón Ribeyro

Dean of the Faculty of Political and Administrative Sciences

September 14, 1906

The presence among us of the eminent statesman, the Secretary of State of the United States, is indeed of great significance and surpassing importance in the course of our political life, as a singular and unmistakable token of friendship offered by that powerful republic, and as a generous effort to create between the nations of America a stable régime of true understanding and concord.

This work of peace, which is linked with an unvarying respect for the rights of all without regard to the extent of their power, with the close union of their interests, and with a political unity of purpose which springs from the historical origin of the republics of America and the analogy of their institutions, is outlined in a masterly manner in the address which our illustrious guest recently delivered before the congress of American delegates convened at Rio de Janeiro.

The general idea he has expressed therein of the principles of democratic régime, of its severe trials and accidental mistakes, of the virtues which sustain popular government, and of the public education that must prepare and secure it, reveals to us the secret of the prosperity and welfare of the freest and most flourishing republic that has ever existed, and how it has reached the preponderant rank it now occupies among nations.

The noble purpose of our powerful sister of the North, who with a persevering and ever steadfast persistency presses on, is the endeavor to combine continental interests lacking sufficient cohesion, and to promote their common development, thus seeking to reach "the complete rule of justice and peace among nations in lieu of force and war."

These words of Mr. Root contain, in their severe simplicity, a complete statement of his mission of friendship and advice. He seeks to stimulate the common aim of harmonizing the several interests on a permanent basis upon which is to be established the uniform rule of our common existence, the rule of justice never subservient to private and selfish convenience; a barrier against the arbitrary and brutal decisions of force, nearly always dissembled under plausible forms and motives of international tradition.

There exists a fundamental sentiment which opposes the cumulus of violence and usurpation, which in a great degree constitutes historic international law and corrects the deductions made from purely speculative theories,—a sentiment we accept without demur, and which is asserted like the axioms that serve as the basis and foundation of all reasoning and as a rule inspiring human actions.

This concept is that of a law of coexistence, an intuition of the universal conscience, which all human society upholds by reason of the sole fact of its existence.

But the completely empiric and egotistical manner in which nations have understood and applied the right of sovereign independence in their outward dealings, has, up to the present time, been the almost insuperable obstacle to the universal establishment of a rule of justice which governs, in a permanent and uniform manner, the concourse of interests; each state following one of its own modeling, in accordance with the power it holds and the ambitions it is thereby enabled to pursue.

This tendency, whether open or covert, hardly restrained by the formalities of modern civilization, which seldom succeeds in masking the painful reality, has created the singular spectacle witnessed at the present time,—that is, the undefined aggravation of a military situation which absorbs the greater part of the resources of nations, wrung from the labor of humanity.

The constant fear of armed aggression has brought about political alliances of a purely transitory character, which assure nothing and, in truth, mean nothing but the mutual imputation of violence and outrage, unhappily but too well demonstrated as justifiable motives for apprehension, by reason of the ominous antecedents of an international régime founded on the supremacy of power.

This precarious guaranty, the fruit of an unsteady and purely political combination which may undergo the most unexpected alterations, cannot assure a stable situation, because it is not in itself the constitution of a common, strong, and commanding law; but, on the contrary, is the distrust of the efficacy of the latter and a certain traditional disdain for a humane and peaceful solution of international affairs.

When the anxiety of danger or an unforeseen obstacle does not prevent recourse to arms, war breaks out if the motive is simply the securing of an advantage sustained by a military power which the country chosen as the object of aggression cannot forcibly check.

True it is that at the present time wars are less frequent and more humane in the manner they are conducted than heretofore; but their causes are ever the same, and the intervals between them are only due to the increasing number of military powers, and to the fear of consequent complications of political interests which it is hazardous to provoke.

Treaties of peace since the seventeenth century, which recorded the birth of the modern law of nations, have on some occasions passed through real transformation in obedience to the law of evolution of human societies, which favor equilibrium, not as established by frail or artificial alliances, nor by combinations of the powerful, but by its ethnical factors and the amplitude of the national life based primarily on the progress of its institutions, in the ever-increasing intervention of the people in their own affairs and the reality and soundness of its political and civil liberty.

The definite establishment of an international juridical organ, sufficiently authorized and efficacious in its action, is yet a future event. Law in this respect has not as yet gone beyond the limits of a sphere that is at most one of pure speculation,—a worthy ideal, it is true, but one which in actuality has only succeeded in modifying the forms of violence by recording in the customary code of nations a few rules to lessen the brutality of the action, without eliminating the arbitrariness inherent in the sovereignty of arms.

In the work of common security and prosperity that involves the future of this continent, and once carried into effect, will signalize the most effective advance in the law of nations, a prominent part belongs to the great republic that has staked her power and fortune on peace. In this work we have endeavored to coöperate in good faith and without reserve, and in it, also, the ardent sympathy and the boundless confidence of the Peruvian people will follow.

And since the unmerited honor has fallen to my lot to address myself on this memorable occasion to the distinguished personage, to the high dignitary of the nation which represents the greatest intensity of national life on account of the unrestricted development of the human faculties and the most certain and practical evolution of law among nations, I believe that I interpret the unanimous sentiment of my colleagues and of my country, in furnishing him the complete evidence of our cordial adherence and of our faith in the work intrusted to his talents and to his high character.

Reply of Mr. Root

I am deeply sensible of the great honor which you confer upon me, an honor coming from this primate of the universities of the New World; an honor which receives me into the company of men learned, devoted to science, the disciples of truth, men eminent in the republic of letters. I am the more appreciative of this emblem because I am myself the son of a college professor, born within the precincts of a learned institution, and all my life closely associated with higher education in the United States of America. But I realize, sir, that my personality plays no considerable part in the ceremony of today. Happy is he who comes, by whatever chance, to stand as the representative of a great cause; as the representative of ideas which conciliate the feelings and arouse the enthusiasm of men; for the cause sheds light upon his person, however small, and the honor of his purpose reflects honor on him.

With the greatest satisfaction I have heard from the lips of the learned rector and professor of this university so just and high an estimate of the contributions made by my country to the cause of ordered liberty and justice in the world. I feel that what has been said here today is of far greater weight than any ordinary compliment, because it comes from men who speak under the grave responsibility of their high station as instructors of their countrymen, and after deliberate study, resulting in definite and certain conclusions.

It is a matter of most interesting reflection that after the nations of the Old World, from which we took our being, had sought for many years to gain wealth and strength and profit by the enforcement of a narrow and mistaken colonial policy, the revolt of the colonies of the New World brought to the mother nations infinitely greater blessings even than they were seeking. The reflex action of the working of the spirit of freedom on these shores of the new hemisphere upon the welfare of the countless millions of the Old World, has been of a value incalculable and inconceivable to the minds against whose mistaken policy we revolted.

I have always thought, sir, that the chief contribution of the United States of America to political science, was the device of incorporating in written constitutions an expression of the great principles which underlie human freedom and human justice, and putting it in the power of the judicial branch of the government to pass judgment upon the conformity of political action to those principles.

When in the fullness of time the hour had come for the new experiment in government among men, and it was the fate of the young and feeble colonies upon the coast of the North Atlantic to make the experiment, the Old World was full of the most dismal forebodings as to the result. The world was told that the experiment of democratic government meant the rule of the mob; that it might work well today, but that tomorrow the mob which had had but half a breakfast and could expect no dinner, would take control; and that the tyranny of the mob was worse than the tyranny of any individual.

The provisions of our constitutions guard against the tyranny of the mob, for at the time when men can deal in harmony with the principles of justice, when no selfish motive exists, when no excited passions exist, the constitution declares the great principles of justice—that no man shall be deprived of his property without due process of the law; that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation; that a person accused of crime shall be entitled to be informed of the charge against him, and given opportunity to defend himself. These provisions are essential to the preservation of liberty; and in the hands of judicial power rests the prerogative of declaring that whenever a congress, or a president, or a general, or whatever officer of whatever rank or dignity infringes, by a hair's breadth, upon any one of these great impersonal declarations of human rights, his acts cease to have official effect. The substitution of the divine quality of judgment, of the judicial quality in man, that quality which is bound by all that honor, by all that respect for human rights, by all that self-respect can accomplish, to lay aside all fear or favor and decide justly—the substitution of that quality for the fevered passions of the hour, for political favor and political hope, for political ambition, for personal selfishness and personal greed,—that is the contribution, the great contribution, of the American Constitution to the political science of the world.

If we pass to the field most ably and interestingly discussed in the paper to which we have just listened, to the field of international justice, we find the same principle less fully developed. I had almost said we find the need for the application of the same principle. All international law and international justice depend upon national law and national justice. No assemblage of nations can be expected to establish and maintain any higher standard in their dealings with one another than that which each maintains within its own borders. Just as the standard of justice and civilization in a community depends upon the individual character of the elements of the community, so the standard of justice among nations depends upon the standard established in each individual nation. Now, in the field of international arbitration we find a less fully developed sense of impersonal justice than we find in our municipal jurisprudence. Many years ago the Marquis of Salisbury, in a very able note, pointed out the extreme difficulty which lies in the way of international arbitration, arising from the difficulty of securing arbitrators who will act impartially, the trouble being that the world has not yet passed, in general, out of that stage of development in which men, even if they be arbitrators, act diplomatically instead of acting judicially. Arbitrations are too apt, therefore, to lead to diplomatic compromises rather than to judicial decisions. The remedy is not in abandoning the principle of arbitration, but it is by pressing on in every country and among all countries the quickened conscience, the higher standard, the judicial idea, the sense of the responsibility for impartial judgment in international affairs, as distinguished from the opportunity for negotiation in international affairs. We are too apt, both those who are despondent about the progress of civilization and those who are cynical about the unselfishness of mankind, to be impatient in our judgment, and to forget how long the life of a nation is, and how slow the processes of civilization are; how long it takes to change character and to educate whole peoples up to different standards of moral law. The principle of arbitration requires not merely declarations by governments, by congresses; it requires that education of the people of all civilized countries up to the same standard which now exists regarding the sacredness of judicial functions exercised in our courts.

It does not follow from this that the declaration of the principle of arbitration is not of value; it does not follow that governments and congresses are not advancing the cause of international justice; a principle recognized and declared always gains fresh strength and force; but for the accomplishment of the results which all of us desire in the substitution of arbitration for war, we must not be content with the declaration of principles; we must carry on an active campaign of universal national and international education, elevating the idea of the sacredness of the exercise of the judicial function in arbitration as well as in litigation between individuals. Still deeper than that goes the duty that rests upon us. Arbitration is but the method of preventing war after nations have been drawn up in opposition to each other with serious differences and excited feelings. The true, the permanent, and the final method of preventing war, is to educate the people who make war or peace, the people who control parliaments and congresses, to a love for justice and regard for the rights of others. So we come to the duty that rests here—not in the whims or the preference or the policy of a monarch, but here, in this university, in every institution of learning throughout the civilized world, with every teacher—the responsibility of determining the great issues of peace and war through the responsibility of teaching the people of our countries the love of justice, teaching them to seek the victories of peace rather than the glories of war; to regard more highly an act of justice and of generosity than even an act of courage or an act of heroism. In this great work of educating the people of the American republics to peace, there are no political divisions. As there is, and has been since the dawn of civilization, but one republic of science, but one republic of letters, let there be but one republic of the politics of peace, one great university of the professors and instructors of justice, of respect for human rights, of consideration for others, and of the peace of the world.

FOOTNOTE:

PANAMA

We Panamanians always remember with gratitude the interest we inspired in you from the very first days of our national existence, and we bear in mind very specially your timely speech delivered before the Union League Club of Chicago,[4] when our destiny was pending on the scales of a decision of your Senate; and therefore we avail ourselves of this joyful opportunity to receive you with the cordiality due to an old and good friend.

It has been, and it is yet, the vehement desire of your country to bring into closer ties, as far as possible, its political and commercial relations with the Latin American countries. The similarity of traditions and institutions, the vicinity and continuity of their territories, and the vast field of commercial expansion which they offer, fully justify that natural, legitimate desire, which is also mutually beneficial; but there being between yours and the latter countries essential differences of language, race, disposition, and education, there is bound to exist in them the suspicion which is naturally engendered by the unknown, and thus it is that the first steps taken toward the accomplishment of your desire should have been the removal of that suspicion by means of friendly intercourse and mutual acquaintance.

With the tact brought forth by your vast intelligence and learning, you fully understood that those do not love each other well who are not intimately acquainted; and it is owing to this fact that you decided to come in person to visit and to know the Latin Americans by your own observation and study. No doubt you carry with you a joyful impression of the progress and nobleness of disposition of our southern brothers, together with the assurance that your mission will achieve a new and splendid triumph for that American diplomacy whereof you are the skilled director, and the principal object of which is the accomplishment of the desire of which I have already spoken.

Being desirous to coöperate in the aims you have in view and with the hope of dispelling certain existing misunderstandings concerning the motives and intentions which originated our present pleasant relations, in a statement which I recently addressed to your government through its minister plenipotentiary here, I recounted the historical events which engendered our national existence and those special relations which link us to your country, in order that when the seal of diplomatic silence is removed, and that statement becomes public property, the world may know, through the unimpeachable testimony of history, that only ideals of the highest altruism served as a guide to the foundation of our republic and to the celebration of the treaty concerning the construction of the interoceanic canal for our benefit and pro mundi beneficio.

Panama offers you a splendid field to promote the wise international policy which animates your mind. We being of similar conditions to our Latin American brothers, being linked to your country by the closest ties that can exist between two independent nations, you having the means of exerting decisive influence upon our future life and we being situated in the constant path of universal transit, shall be an evident, shining example of the benefit which your country can confer upon the countries of our race.

The fruits of your influence are already felt and seen. Peace, which we consider a blessing, is a permanent fact. Under its shelter, and under the assurances given us by your illustrious President in his famous letter of October 18, 1904, addressed to the Secretary of War, Panama has entered with firm step upon the path of material, intellectual, and moral development. Those who knew us a little over two years ago, disheartened and ruined by bad government and civil war, and see today the change that has taken place in such a short time, carry to the north and south the gratifying news of our regeneration and thereby contribute to dispel unfounded suspicions regarding yourselves.

These good results are the forerunners of greater benefits in the future, and of the effect of the coöperation of the agents of your government in the progress of the country in general, of their friendly and timely advice, and of their decided moral support whenever there has been need thereof.

I will profit by this opportunity to convey to you the gratitude of the government and people of Panama for the special consideration which has been extended to them by the government of your country. This has been evidenced principally by the diplomatic staff sent to us, from the very able Honorable William I. Buchanan, your first minister plenipotentiary, to the popular Honorable Charles E. Magoon, who can hardly be replaced, and whose separation from the post he occupies with general satisfaction has caused great regret in the country; and later you sent us, doing us an unmerited honor, in the first place, by special order of your very noble President, your Secretary of War, Honorable William H. Taft, who established the relations between our two countries on the happy basis of mutual cordiality and justice, on which they are now established; and now, Mr. Secretary, you do us the great honor of coming yourself on a visit, placing us on a level with the powerful Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay; and, furthermore, which appears to be the extreme limit of what is possible, you allow us to look forward to the coming visit of your great President, the most distinguished of existing rulers—a special honor which has not been vouchsafed even to the most powerful nations of the world. Panama, overwhelmed with so many marks of appreciation, will preserve them as an everlasting remembrance of gratitude toward your noble country; and in return, though it be but partial, we will follow your advice, we will coöperate without reserve and with enthusiasm in the great work of the interoceanic canal, which is bound to be the most magnificent monument of the grandeur of your people; and we will likewise support you in the mission of American brotherhood which you have undertaken, founding a nation which shall distinguish itself by its love of work, of honor, of order, and of justice.

Reply of Mr. Root

I thank you for your kind welcome to me and for the friendship to my country expressed in that welcome, and I thank you for the honor conferred upon me by this reception in the legislative body which is charged with the government of this republic. You have truly said, sir, that I am deeply interested in the affairs of the people of Panama. At the time of the events which led to your independence, I studied your history carefully and thoroughly from original documents, in order to determine in my own mind what the course of my country ought to be. From that study have resulted a keen sense of the manifold injuries and injustices under which the people of Panama have suffered in years past, a strong sympathy with you in your efforts and aspirations toward a better condition, a fervent hope for your prosperity and welfare.

It is with the greatest pleasure that I have heard the expressions of friendship for my country, because of my feeling toward you and because of the special relations which exist between the two countries. We are engaged together in the prosecution of a great, a momentous enterprise—an enterprise which has been the dream not only of the early navigators who first colonized your coasts, but of the most progressive of mankind for four centuries. Its successful accomplishment will make Panama the very center of the world's trade; you will stand upon the greatest highway of commerce; more than the ancient glories of the isthmus will be restored; and there lies before you in the future of this successful enterprise wealth, prosperity, the opportunity for education, for cultivation, and for intercourse with all the world such as has never before been brought to any people. The success of the enterprise will unite the far-separated Atlantic and Pacific coasts in my country; it will give to us the credit of great deeds done, and make the Atlantic and Pacific for us as but one ocean; and the success of this enterprise will give to the world a new highway of commerce and the possibility of a distinct and enormous advance in that communication between nations which is the surest guaranty of peace and civilization.

The achievement of this work is to be accomplished by us jointly. You furnish the country, the place, the soil, the atmosphere, the surrounding population among which the people who do the work are to live and where the work is to be maintained. We furnish the capital and the trained constructive ability which has grown up in the course of centuries of development of the northern continent. The work is difficult and delicate; the two peoples, the Anglo-American and the Spanish-American, are widely different in their traditions, their laws, their customs, their methods of thinking and speaking and doing business. It often happens that we misunderstand each other; it often happens that we fail to appreciate your good qualities and that you fail to appreciate ours; and that with perfectly good intentions, with the best of purposes and kindliest of feelings, we clash, we fail to understand each other, we get at cross purposes, and misconception and discord are liable to arise. Let us remember this in all our intercourse; let us be patient with each other; let us believe in the sincerity of our mutual good purposes and kindly feelings, and be patient and forbearing each with the other, so that we may go on together in the accomplishment of this great enterprise; together bring it to a successful conclusion; together share in the glory of the great work done and in the prosperity that will come from the result.

Mr. President and gentlemen, let me assure you that in the share which the United States is taking and is to take in this work, there is and can be but one feeling and one desire toward the people of Panama. It is a feeling of friendship sincere and lasting; it is a feeling of strong desire that wisdom may control the deliberations of this assembly; that judgment and prudence and love of country may rule in all your councils and may control all your actions; it is a desire and a firm purpose that so far as in us lies, there shall be preserved for you the precious boon of free self-government. We do not wish to govern you or interfere in your government, because we are larger and stronger; we believe that the principle of liberty and the rights of men are more important than the size of armies or the number of battleships. Your independence which we recognized first among the nations of the earth, it is our desire to have maintained inviolate. Believe this, be patient with us, as we will be patient with you; and I hope, I believe, that at some future day we shall all be sailing through the canal together, congratulating each other upon our share in that great and beneficent work.

FOOTNOTE:

COLOMBIA

CARTAGENA

Address of the Minister for Foreign Affairs,
His Excellency Vásquez-Cobo

At a Breakfast given to Mr. Root, September 24, 1906

Upon receiving your excellency within the confines of our heroic and glorious Cartagena, I present to you a cordial greeting of welcome, in the name of Colombia, of his excellency the President of the Republic, and in my own.

You return to your own country to enjoy merited honors and laurels after a long tour, giving a hearty embrace of friendship to our sisters, the republics of the South; and in breaking your journey upon our burning shores we receive you as the herald of peace, of justice, and of concord with which the great republic of the North greets the American continent. I trust to God that these walls, the austere witnesses of our glory, will serve as a monument whereby this visit may be noted in history.

The honorable Minister Barrett, the worthy and estimable representative of your excellency's Government, has just completed a journey through a large part of our vast territory; he, better than any one, will be able to tell your excellency what he has seen in our beautiful and fertile valleys and mountains, in our flourishing cities and fields, and among our five millions of lusty, high-minded, peace-loving, and hard-working inhabitants, who today think only of peace and useful and honest toil.

This is the nation that greets you today and with loyalty and frankness clasps the hand of her sister of the North.

Mr. Secretary, upon thanking you for the honor of this visit, I fervently pray that a happy outcome may crown your efforts in the great work of American fraternity, and I drink to the prosperity and greatness of the United States, to its President, and especially to your excellency.

Reply of Mr. Root

Believe, I beg you, in the sincerity of my appreciation and my thanks for the courtesy with which you have received me, and for the honor which you have shown me. When the suggestion was made that upon my return from a voyage encircling the continent of South America, I should stop at Cartagena for an interview with you, sir, before returning to my own country, I accepted with alacrity and with pleasure, because it was most grateful to me to testify by my presence upon your shores to my high respect for your great country, the country of Bolívar; to my sincere desire that all questions which exist between the United States of Colombia and the United States of America may be settled peacefully, in the spirit of friendship, of mutual esteem, and with honor to both countries. Especially, also, I was glad to come to Colombia as an evidence of my esteem and regard for that noble and great man whom it is the privilege of Colombia to call her President today—General Reyes. I have had the privilege of personal acquaintance with him, and I look upon his conduct of affairs in the chief magistracy of your republic with the twofold interest of one who loves his fellowmen and desires the prosperity and happiness of the people of Colombia, and of a personal regard and friendship for the President himself.

I have been much gratified during my visit to so many of the republics of South America to find universally the spirit of a new industrial and commercial awakening, to find a new era of enterprise and prosperity dawning in the southern continent.

Mr. Minister and gentlemen, it will be the cause of sincere happiness to me if through the present friendly relations, based upon personal knowledge acquired here, I may do something toward helping the republic of Colombia forward along the pathway of the new development of South America. With your vast agricultural and mineral wealth, with the incalculable richness of your domain, the wealth and prosperity of Colombia are sure to come some time. Let us hope that they will come while we are yet living, in order that you may transfer to your children not the possibility but the realization of the increased greatness of your country. Let us hope that some advance of this new era of progress may come from the pleasant friendships formed today. While I return my thanks to you for your courtesy, let me assure you that there is nothing that could give greater pleasure to the President and to the people of the United States of America than to feel that they may have some part in promoting the prosperity and the happiness of this sister republic.

I ask you to join me in drinking to the peace, the prosperity, the order, the justice, the liberty of the republic of Colombia, and long life and a prosperous career in office to its President—General Reyes.

THE VISIT TO MEXICO