g from the feeble
fringe of colonists along the Atlantic shore to a great nation of eighty
millions, stretching from ocean to ocean. Argentina will take some of
our markets from us, but what are they? They will be markets she is
entitled to; and with her prosperity, and with the right understanding
and relations between the two countries, our commercial relations with
her will more than take the place of the markets she takes away from us.
We have nothing to fear in the growing prosperity of Argentina. We have
no cause but for rejoicing in her prosperity; no cause but to aid her in
every way in our power in her onward progress; and that I believe to be
the sincere desire of the whole of the people of the United States.

Mr. President, a heavy responsibility rests upon the citizen of our
country who lives in a foreign land. We can misbehave at home and it
makes little difference; but every American citizen in a foreign land,
every American citizen in the Argentine Republic, is the representative
of his country there. He needs no commission; no power can prevent his
holding a commission to represent before all the people of Argentina the
character of his own countrymen. You represent our beloved land to the
people of Argentina. What you are they will believe us to be. As they
study your character and conduct their estimate of us rises, and it is
with the greatest pleasure that I find here among this people whom I
respect so highly, whose good opinion for my country I so greatly
desire, a body of Americans, a body of my countrymen, so worthy, so
estimable, so high in reputation, so well fitted to maintain the
standard of the United States of America, high, pure, unsullied, worthy
of all honor.

BANQUET AT THE OPERA HOUSE

SPEECH OF DR. LUIS M. DRAGO

PRESIDENT OF THE RECEPTION COMMITTEE

August 17, 1906

The large gathering here assembled, representative of all that Buenos
Ayres has of the most notable in science, letters, industry, and
commerce, has conferred on me the signal honor of designating me to
offer this banquet to the eminent minister of one of the greatest
nations of the earth, a nation linked to us from the very beginning by
many and very real sentiments of moral and political solidarity. This
country has not forgotten that in the trying times of the colonial
emancipation, our fathers could rely on the sympathy and the warm and
disinterested adhesion of the American people, our predecessors and our