Following Secretary Root's visit to South America, with its auspicious results, the President of Mexico, Porfirio DÍaz, extended an official invitation to visit the republic immediately to the south of us, in the belief that such a visit would have equally happy results in strengthening and increasing the "steadfast friendship" existing between the two neighboring nations.

Mr. Root, together with his wife and daughter, started for Mexico by special train, arriving in San Antonio on September 28, 1907. On the evening of the day of his arrival in San Antonio, a banquet was tendered to Mr. Root and the Mexican Committee which had come to San Antonio to welcome him and escort him into their country.

On Sunday the 29th, the Root party, together with the Mexican Committee, proceeded across the boundary into Mexico, and were met at the station of Nuevo Laredo by a Mexican delegation. Thence they continued to Mexico City, where the honors extended to Mr. Root were in keeping with the traditional hospitality of the ancient capital of the Montezumas. During his stay the degree of honorary member of the Mexican Academy of Legislation and Jurisprudence was conferred upon him.

A Mexican publication of 314 pages, entitled El SeÑor Root en Mexico, contains in parallel Spanish and English columns a detailed account of the visit, which extended from September 28 to October 16. It is to be regretted that this volume is defective in that many of the speeches made during the visit are not fully reported. It is possible, however, to gather from those which have been preserved, a keen sense of the cordial reception accorded him by the officials and representative citizens of the republic, and the earnest and eloquent terms in which he reciprocated the expressions of regard for his country and of appreciation of his own services to his country and the world.

The most progressive epoch in Mexico's history was the thirty years of DÍaz's supremacy; and it was in the heyday of that period that Mr. Root made his visit to Mexico and paid to President DÍaz the tributes which appear in the following pages. During these thirty years, he was always a firm friend of the United States, and no diplomatic misunderstandings arose which were not peaceably adjusted in a spirit of neighborly friendship. DÍaz shares with President Roosevelt the honor of submitting the first international controversy to the Hague Tribunal of Arbitration for determination, in what is known as "The Pious Fund of the Californias."