The argument before The Hague Tribunal in the North Atlantic Fisheries Case is a rare if not the only instance of a statesman appearing as chief counsel in an international arbitration, which, as Secretary of State, he had prepared and submitted.
The political, educational, historical, and commemorative speeches and addresses should make known to future generations the literary, artistic, and emotional side of a statesman of our time, and the publication of these collected addresses and state papers will, it is believed, enable the American people better to understand the generation in which Mr. Root has been a commanding figure and better to appreciate during his lifetime the services which he has rendered to his country.
Robert Bacon
James Brown Scott
April 15, 1916.
FOREWORD
The visit of the Secretary of State to South America in 1906 was not a summer outing. It was not an ordinary event; it was and it was intended to be a matter of international importance. It was the first time that a Secretary of State had visited South America during the tenure of his office, and the visit was designed to show the importance which the United States attaches to the Pan American conferences, and by personal contact to learn the aims and views of our southern friends, and to show also, by personal intercourse, the kindly consideration and the sense of honorable obligation which the Government of the United States cherishes for its neighbors to the south without discriminating among them, and to make clear the destiny common to the peoples of the western world. These were the reasons which prompted Mr. Root to undertake this message of good will and of frank explanation, and these were also the reasons which caused the President of the United States in his message to Congress to dwell upon the visit, its incidents and its consequences. Thus President Roosevelt said in his message of December 3, 1906:
The Second International Conference of American Republics, held in Mexico in the years 1901-02, provided for the holding of the third conference within five years, and committed the fixing of the time and place and the arrangements for the conference to the governing board of the Bureau of American Republics, composed of the representatives of all the American nations in Washington. That board discharged the duty imposed upon it with marked fidelity and painstaking care, and upon the courteous invitation of the United States of Brazil, the conference was held at Rio de Janeiro, continuing from the twenty-third of July to the twenty-ninth of August last. Many subjects of common interest to all the American nations were discussed by the conference, and the conclusions reached, embodied in a series of resolutions and proposed conventions, will be laid before you upon the coming-in of the final report of the American delegates. They contain many matters of importance relating to the extension of trade, the increase of communication, the smoothing away of barriers to free intercourse, and the promotion of a better knowledge and good understanding between the different countries represented. The meetings of the conference were harmonious and the conclusions were reached with substantial unanimity. It is interesting to observe that in the successive conferences which have been held the representatives of the different American nations have been learning to work together effectively, for, while the First Conference in Washington in 1889, and the Second Conference in Mexico in 1901-02, occupied many months, with much time wasted in an unregulated and fruitless discussion, the Third Conference at Rio exhibited much of the facility in the practical dispatch of business which characterizes permanent deliberative bodies, and completed its labors within the period of six weeks originally allotted for its sessions.