I drink, ladies and gentlemen, to Pan American fraternity, to the greatness of the United States of North America, to the health of His Excellency President Roosevelt, to the happiness of Mr. Elihu Root and of his distinguished family. REPLY OF MR. ROOT I have already thanked you for that welcome message which greeted my first advent in the harbor of Rio de Janeiro. I have now to add my thanks, both for the gracious invitation which brings me here and for the surpassing kindness and hospitality with which I and my family have been welcomed to Montevideo. It is most gratifying to hear from the lips of one of the masters of South American diplomacy, one who knows the reality of international politics, so just an estimate of the attitude of my own country toward her South American sisters. The great declaration of Monroe, made in the infancy of Latin American liberty, was an assertion to all the world of the competency of Latin Americans to govern themselves. That assertion my country has always maintained; and my presence here is, in part, for the purpose of giving evidence of her belief that the truth of the assertion has been demonstrated; that, in the progressive development which attends the course of nations, the peoples of South America have proved that their national tendencies and capacities are, and will be, on and ever on in the path of ordered liberty. I am here to learn more, and also to demonstrate our belief in the substantial similarity of interests and sympathies of the American self-governing republics. You have justly indicated that there is nothing in the growing friendship between our countries which imperils the interests of those countries in the Old World from which we have drawn our languages, our traditions, and the bases of our customs and our laws.