So long as on the other side of the Atlantic an almost invincible barrier of customs duties impedes the entry of our products into markets naturally hostile to South American productions, our country has only two alternatives: either to continue the very irksome commercial relations with those markets, or to look for others with evident loss of a part of the harmony that ought to exist between nations affiliated by origin and for so many years united by the most intimate links of sympathy and intellectual solidarity. Consequently, we adopted the legitimate defense of protectionism, while remaining faithful to those friendly feelings, and very naturally we turned to the continental nation that better understood the advantages of a free exchange of products; we looked unsuspiciously to the friendly people who conceived the idea of making in America, united and strong, a large neutral area devoted to peace amidst the possible divergencies that may perchance in time separate in aggressive antagonism a rejuvenated and martial Orient and the nations of the West. We understood at once the difficult task to be accomplished, in order, by your side and with your aid, to secure the neutralization of America, so desirable and so necessary for the final reconciliation of nations still militarized, and for the establishment of a secure standpoint for the general fraternization of mankind. All the enthusiastic appreciation of the twenty-one democracies that follow and love your deed, and all the facilities and coöperation that they can offer for its accomplishment, you will find, sir, should you visit them as you now do one of their number, in the corresponding twenty-one Brazilian capitals. The Commercial School of São Paulo, from which very likely will come later commercial agents of Brazil, sincerely espouses your policy of peace and solidarity on the American continent; and in the person of its eminent chancellor salutes the noble North American nation. REPLY OF MR. ROOT I thank you, students of São Paulo, for your greeting and for your generous sympathy. I am here upon a mission of friendship and of appreciation. I am here in order that my country may know more of the people of Brazil, and in order that the people of Brazil may learn more of my country, believing that the cause of almost all controversy between nations, the most fertile source of weakness and of war, is national misunderstanding and the prejudice that comes from misunderstanding. I shall go back to my country and tell my people that I have found in this famous city of learning, São Paulo, a great body of young men who are gathering inspiration in the cause of learning and of human rights from the atmosphere of liberty and independence. I shall tell them that here, where the independence of Brazil was born, the spirit of that independence still lives in the youth of Brazil.