Peru has read your words, Mr. Root, with profound attention. She is proud to say that in the modest sphere she occupies in the concert of nations, she accepts your ideas as her own, and declares that they also constitute her profession of faith as regards her international policy. With your superior judgment you have exactly comprehended the difficulties, critical moments, and convulsions which the countries of this continent have undergone in order to establish a republican government, together with a régime of liberty and democracy. They are still in the first period of their development and have yet many problems to solve. To develop the immense resources and wealth with which nature has so wonderfully endowed these countries; to render their territory accessible to labor and civilization by opening up means of communication, granting all facilities and giving security for the life, health, and welfare of their inhabitants; to obtain the population which their immense territories require: to educate and instruct the people, making them understand their liberty, their duties, and their rights; to develop their faculties and energies, their labor forces, their industrial and commercial capacity and power; to elevate their moral dignity; to consolidate and strengthen the national unity; to insure definitely the government of the people, in justice, in order, and in peace; to attract capital and foreign immigration; to develop and give impulse to commercial relations with other countries; to maintain a frank and true international harmony and solidarity; to respect all mutual and reciprocal rights and settle all disagreements by friendly, just, and honorable means--to perform, in short, the work of human civilization; these are undoubtedly the points which ought to occupy, first of all, the thoughts of the administration of these countries, in order to secure their tranquillity, their welfare, and their aggrandizement, just as the United States have secured theirs by the genius of their people and the power of their ideals. If the nations of America, instead of living apart from each other and separated by distrust, threats, and quarrels--which unsettle them, rendering their energy and development fruitless, just as they have kept up a state of anarchy, for a long time, in their internal existence--would unite themselves together by the natural ties which the community of their origin, of their civilization, of their necessities, and their destinies clearly indicate, we should then witness the realization of the ideal you have conceived of a great, prosperous, and happy America; the union of sister republics, free, orderly, laborious, lovers of justice, knowledge, sciences, and arts, coöperating, each one and all of them worthily and effectively, for the realization of the great work of human civilization and culture.