How to regulate social, political and commercial intercourse between the people and Government of the United States and the peoples and governments of the other republics on the American continent so as to establish and maintain perfect cordiality and mutual confidence and respect, is a problem which has never been satisfactorily solved.

In considering this question, which is often to the front and some times discussed with acerbity, certain disagreeable facts must be faced. In the process of understanding it American vanity will be hurt, but that is no reason for avoiding the effort to do so. There is abundant reason for believing that Americans are not popular in Mexico and other Latin-American countries. It is not the purpose of the writer in this brief essay to undertake to show why this is so. Suffice it to say that the people of the United States are viewed with suspicion, and this doubt of them and their purposes has militated against the development of American trade in the southern republics, and is a cause of irritation which ought to be cured. Diplomatic friendship has existed and does exist, but that is a relationship which can always be counted on until an open breach is imminent. Less than thirty days before the outbreak of the greatest war in all history there was an assumed—a diplomatic— cordiality between the monarchs of Russia, England, Germany and Austria. There is no danger of a cataclysm in America such as is deluging Europe with blood; but that unparalleled disaster shows that something more than formal friendships, something far more than diplomatic amenities, is desirable in the intercourse of nations.