t to compel the
disappearance of the sad note of war.

In the shadow of the solemn inauguration of Pan Americanism, three
nations of Central America found themselves in the battlefield in a
deplorable spectacle of hatred and bloodshed.

Happily, as is announced by telegraph, thanks to the good offices of the
United States and of Mexico, peace has been established among the
nations, to the honor of the Christian civilization of our continent.

This policy of concord, therefore, accomplishes good. I repeat, America
must prosper. It is necessary that the Monroe Doctrine triumph, not to
the exclusion of the civilization of the Old World, but to the benefit
of all humanity.

Nature has cut the continent from north to south without regard to its
continuity; from north to south is the same political regime; and
protecting it with two great nations, nature has not wished to isolate
us from the rest of the world, but on the contrary to endow us with
sources of wealth and to multiply the means of easy communication with
centers of civilization.

Gentlemen, in the name of Bahia, I greet the great ideal of humanity
that is treading a victorious path! I greet the republic of North
America, the efficient collaborator in this profoundly humane policy,
the principal promoter of the Pan American Conference, in the person of
its illustrious Secretary of State, Elihu Root!

REPLY OF MR. ROOT

I beg to acknowledge with sincere appreciation your kindly and most
flattering expressions regarding myself. I receive with joy the
expression of sentiments regarding my country, which I hope may be
shared by every citizen of the great republic of Brazil. It is with much
sentiment that I find myself at the gateway of the south, through which
the civilization of Europe entered from the Iberian Peninsula the vast
regions of South America. I, whose fathers came through the northern
gateway, on Massachusetts Bay, thousands of miles away,--where the
winters bring ice and snow and where a rugged soil greeted the first
adventurers,--find here another people working out for themselves the
same problems of self-government, seeking the same goal of individual
liberty, of peace, of prosperity, that we have been seeking in the far
north for so many years. We are alike in that we have no concern in the
primary objects of European diplomacy; we are free from the traditions,
from the controversies, which the close neighborhood of centuries on the
contine