Twenty-five years ago, Mr. Blaine, sanguine, resourceful, and gifted with that imagination which enlarges the historian's understanding of the past into the statesman's comprehension of the future, undertook to inaugurate a new era of American relations which should supplement political sympathy by personal acquaintance, by the intercourse of expanding trade, and by mutual helpfulness. As secretary of state under President Arthur, he invited the American nations to a conference to be held on November 24, 1882, for the purpose of considering and discussing the subject of preventing war between the nations of America. That invitation, abandoned by Mr. Frelinghuysen, was renewed under Mr. Cleveland, and on October 2, 1889, Mr. Blaine, again secretary of state under President Harrison, had the singular good fortune to execute his former design and to open the sessions of the first American conference at Washington. In an address of wisdom and lofty spirit, which should ever give honor to his memory, he described the assembly as-- ... an honorable, peaceful conference of seventeen independent American powers, in which all shall meet together on terms of absolute equality; a conference in which there can be no attempt to coerce a single delegate against his own conception of the interests of his nation; a conference which will permit no secret understanding on any subject, but will frankly publish to the world all its conclusions; a conference which will tolerate no spirit of conquest, but will aim to cultivate an American sympathy as broad as both continents; a conference which will form no selfish alliance against the older nations from which we are proud to claim inheritance--a conference, in fine, which will seek nothing, propose nothing, endure nothing that is not, in the general sense of all the delegates, timely, wise, and peaceful. The policy which Mr. Blaine inaugurated has been continued; the Congress of the United States has approved it; subsequent presidents have followed it. The first conference at Washington has been succeeded by a second conference in Mexico, and now by a third conference in Rio de Janeiro; and it is to be followed in years to come by further successive assemblies in which the representatives of all American states shall acquire better knowledge and more perfect understanding, and be drawn together by the recognition of common interests and the kindly consideration and discussion of measures for mutual benefit.