Beyond that the United States sought only friendship, and, if it were agreeable, such unity as should be mutually advantageous.

In 1906 Elihu Root, the Secretary of State, made a tour of South America with a view of expressing these sentiments; and in 1913-1914 ex-President Roosevelt took occasion, on the way to his Brazilian hunting trip, to assure the people of the great South American powers that the "Big Stick" was not intended to intimidate them.
Pan-American unity was still, when President Taft went out of office in 1913, an aspiration rather than a realized fact, though the tangible evidences of unity had vastly multiplied since 1898, and the recurring congresses provided a basis of organization upon which some substantial structure might be built.
The United States had sincerely hoped that Mexico, like the "A.B.C." powers, was another Latin American power which had found itself.

Of all it was certainly the most friendly and the most intimate.

The closeness of its relations with the United States is indicated by the fact that in the forty years between 1868 and 1908, forty agreements, treaties, and conventions had been concluded between the two countries.

Nor was intimacy confined to the Governments.