ntial
progress toward federation. As a South American writer has expressed
it, their previous efforts in that direction "amid sumptuous festivals,
banquets and other solemn public acts" at which they "intoned in
lyric accents daily hymns for the imperishable reunion of the isthmian
republics," had been as illusory as they were frequent. Despite the
mediation of the United States and Mexico in 1906, while the latter
was still ruled by Diaz, the struggle in which Nicaragua, Honduras,
Guatemala, and Salvador had been engaged was soon renewed between
the first two belligerents. Since diplomatic interposition no longer
availed, American marines were landed in Nicaragua, and the bumptious
Zelaya was induced to have his country meet its neighbors in a
conference at Washington. Under the auspices of the United States and
Mexico, in December, 1907, representatives of the five republics signed
a series of conventions providing for peace and cooperation. An arbitral
court of justice, to be erected in Costa Rica and composed of one judge
from each nation, was to decide all matters of dispute which could not
be adjusted through ordinary diplomatic means. Here, also, an institute
for the training of Central American teachers was to be established.
Annual conferences were to discuss, and an office in Guatemala was to
record, measures designed to secure uniformity in financial, commercial,
industrial, sanitary, and educational regulations. Honduras, the storm
center of weakness, was to be neutralized. None of the States was
thereafter to recognize in any of them a government which had been set
up in an illegal fashion. A "Constitutional Act of Central American
Fraternity," moreover, was adopted on behalf of peace, harmony, and
progress. Toward a realization of the several objects of the conference,
the Presidents of the five republics were to invite their colleagues
of the United States and Mexico, whenever needful, to appoint
representatives, to "lend their good offices in a purely friendly way."

Though most of these agencies were promptly put into operation, the
results were not altogether satisfactory. Some discords, to be sure,
were removed by treaties settling boundary questions and providing for
reciprocal trade advantages; but it is doubtful whether the arrangements
devised at Washington would have worked at all if the United States had
not kept the little countries under a certain amount of observation.
What the Central Americ