k 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,