Only two Latin-American states, Brazil and Cuba, took an active part in the war. At the request of the British government in December, 1917, Brazil sent two cruisers and four destroyers to European waters to cooperate with the British navy, and a few months later a group of Brazilian aviators took their place on the Western front. A number of physicians and several Red Cross units from Brazil also cooperated with the Allies. Cuba turned over to the United States several German steamships interned in her waters. A compulsory military service law was passed and a number of training camps established. In October, 1918, the Cuban government announced that it had 25,000 troops ready to send to France, but the armistice was signed before arrangements could be made for their transportation. The only active service rendered by Cubans was in the field of aviation, where several individuals won high distinction. Of the A B C powers Argentina and Chile remained neutral. So also did Mexico. Brazil was thus the only one of the larger states that actually entered the war. The relations between Brazil and the United States have almost always been peculiarly close and friendly. From the outbreak of the European war strong sympathy for the allied cause was manifested in Brazil, and a league for aiding the Allies through the agency of the Red Cross was organized under the presidency of Ruy Barbosa, the most distinguished statesman of Brazil and one of the most brilliant orators of Latin America. Brazil's experience during the period of neutrality was very similar to that of the United States. Her commerce was interfered with and her ships were sunk by German submarines. A few weeks after the United States entered the war, Brazil severed relations with Germany and seized the forty-six German ships interned in Brazilian harbors. In a circular note of June 2 the Brazilian government declared to the world that it had taken this step because the Republic of Brazil was bound to the United States "by a traditional friendship and by a similarity of political opinion in the defense of the vital interests of America and the principles accepted by international law," and because it wished to give to its foreign policy, in this critical moment of the world's history, "a practical form of continental solidarity--a policy indeed which was that of the old regime on every occasion on which any of the other friendly sister nations of the American continent were in jeopardy." President Wilson's reply to this note expressed the deep appreciation of the United States and the hope that the act of the Brazilian Congress was "the forerunner of the attitude to be assumed by the rest of the American states." On October 26, 1917, on the receipt of the news of the torpedoing of another Brazilian ship by a German submarine, a resolution recognizing "the state of war initiated by the German Empire against Brazil" was adopted by the unanimous vote of the