Dr Usher, the American historian, dismisses the whole notion, on the ground that the United States and Latin America are utterly unlike, unsympathetic and even antipathetic to one another. Against this conclusion may be quoted two opinions from Chile and from Colombia, the two South American countries which have in the past shown most resentment at North American pretensions. "We want no papa" exclaimed a Chilian public man some years ago: yet in 1910 Señor Echeverria, Chilian consul in London, in a public lecture declared himself a decided believer in the benefits of Pan-Americanism, and as disposed to accept the sincerity of North American pacific and non-aggressive professions: and in the same year Señor Pérez Triana, the Colombian diplomatist, expressed a restrained but decided optimism concerning the benefits to be derived from the Pan-American Congresses, and pointed out that they had already brought about the general acceptance of the principle of arbitration among American Governments. These favourable views have regard to the practical benefits to be found in a certain course of action. The destiny of Pan-Americanism depends on the question whether these practical benefits are strong enough to overcome the barriers of race, language, religion, law, customs and tradition. The objections based upon these obstacles to union is not quite convincing. Incompatibility of temper is a bar to marriage: it is no bar to a practical and thoroughly friendly business understanding supported by mutual respect and methods of give and take. The tendencies of the age favour large combinations, overstepping the bounds of nationality and sometimes cutting across the lines of kindred and tradition. The challenge of Central Europe has raised up such a combination in Western Europe, and may help to give birth to a fresh and large grouping of the Powers of the western hemisphere. The question occurs whether, apart from reasons of practical convenience, any fundamental basis can be found for the union of communities so dissimilar in character and in action. These republics have this at least in common: they have all started life in "new lands"; they are all trans-Atlantic offshoots from European monarchies; they have all thrown off political dependence upon Europe; they have all adopted republican forms of government; and, to whatever extent some of them may avoid democratic or even republican methods, they have all rejected the hereditary principle in government. Moreover, before the present crisis they all cultivated, so far as possible, a certain political aloofness from Europe: and they all aim at pursuing a destiny distinct from and, in their belief, transcending that of Europe through the inexhaustible possibilities offered by a New World.