Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/154

118 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS 13, 1906, by representatives of the United States, Ecuador, Paraguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Hon duras, Panama, Cuba, San Domingo, Peru, Salva dor, Costa Rica, Mexico, Guatemala, Uruguay, Argentine, Nicaragua, Brazil and Chile. The work of the Bureau of American Republics was also greatly enlarged. In January, 1907, John Barrett was appointed its director. A year earlier Andrew Carnegie had given seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a building for this bureau, and an appropriation of two hundred thousand toward the purchase of a site had been made. To this some of the other republics also contributed. Later in 1907 Mr. Root acted as temporary chair man of a convention of five Central American States, assembled in Washington at the invitation of Mr. Roosevelt and President Diaz to prepare treaties of peace and arbitration in consequence of hostilities between Honduras and Nicaragua. The slippery conduct of Colombia in regard to the project of the Panama Canal had driven Mr. Roosevelt during his first administration to "take Panama," as he phrased it some ten years later in a speech delivered in Philadelphia. The civilized world rejoices at this summary sweeping away of the intrigues which barred this great avenue of commerce; Mr. Roosevelt s enemies (both tropical and indigenous) have equally rejoiced to obscure and ignore the fact that he acted entirely within the