nts that rule in Peru in telling you of its sincere good will
toward the United States, their illustrious President, and toward your
own distinguished person. These feelings which unite the two countries
began in the dawn of independence, because the founders of the great
republic showed our forefathers the way to become free; and they
strengthened us from the first days of our independent life by the
safeguard which the admirable foresight of another great statesman of
your country placed around American soil.

Since then the closest friendship has united the two nations. Peru has
received from the United States proofs of a very special deference, and
has appreciated the efforts made by your government to establish
political relations between the American peoples upon the basis of right
and justice. In this most noble aspiration, worthy of the greatness of
your country, Peru, on her part, unreservedly acquiesces.

The lofty ideas which you have expressed since your arrival in South
America, the frank expressions of cordiality, the concepts of stimulus
and aid to induce us, the Americans of the South, to work in the same
way as those of the North, with earnestness and unflinching hope in the
future, have found in every breast the most pleasing echo, and they
direct toward your person the most lively sympathy.

Closely associated fellow-worker with the illustrious statesman who
rules the destinies of your country, to you belongs, in a great measure,
the acclamation with which America and the entire world would greet the
great nation that has constituted the most perfect democratic society,
that has made the most surprising progress in industrial and economic
order, and that has placed the prestige of its greatness at the service
of peace all over the world.

Gentlemen, I invite you to drink to the United States; to its President,
Mr. Roosevelt; and to its Secretary of State, Mr. Root.

REPLY OF MR. ROOT

I thank you sincerely, both in my own behalf and in behalf of my
country, for your kind welcome and for the words, full of friendship and
of kindly judgment, you have uttered regarding my country and regarding
her servants, the President and myself. The distinguished gentleman who
represents Peru in the capital of the United States of America, and who
shares with you, sir, the inheritance of a name great and honored, not
only in Peru but wherever the friends of constitutional freedom are
found--in his note of inv