The world owes much of its progress to opposing views, and the healthiest nations have the strongest political parties taking differing views upon questions of national policy, and these parties reach the public by means of the newspapers. The Argentine Republic is not an exception, but I doubt if there has ever been a theme upon which the press of this country has been so united as that honor should be shown to you. I speak for Americans when I say that in the Argentine Republic we have found a home where absolute freedom is ours,--freedom in every walk of life; freedom for conscience; freedom to live, move, and have our being as God and our own wills may lead us. There are Argentines here tonight who are not one whit behind us in their enthusiasm for you and for all that you represent, and there is a group here of Argentines who have graduated from American colleges, who wish to say to you that next to their own country they revere the United States of America. You now know, Mr. Root, what friends you have before you, and we all bid you welcome, thrice welcome, to Buenos Ayres. REPLY OF MR. ROOT Mr. Chairman, my countrymen, my countrywomen, my friends from the land whence my fathers came, I need not say that I am glad to meet you. No one far away from his own land needs to be told that the looks, faces, the sound of voice, of one's own countrymen are a joy to the wanderer in strange lands. Yet I do not find this such a strange land. I find here so many things to remind me of home, so many things that are like our own country, that it seems a little like coming home. Such is the similarity in conditions, in spirit, in purpose; such is the impress of the same institutions and the same principles, that I cannot feel altogether a stranger; and when I meet you here at home almost I feel the warmth of my own fireside.