South America and the War

is people and country. But the word applies in another sense to the Spanish-American republics. They are the countries of tomorrow, the lands of the future, the lands of promise, this score

which sprang from the Iberian Peninsula, is a group of twenty republics differing from one another in situation and character and, to some degree also, in ethnology and manner of language. These countries extend through every habitable latitude, and most of the republics contain within the

usting and confusing character of that long struggle, by want of political experience, by the ignorance of the masses and, in some parts, by ethnological difficulties, they were obliged to spend a generation or two in clearing up the aftermath of that revolution; and in most cases their political constitutions (although in form they are models of constitutional law) are in their actual working only now emerging from the stage of experiment, sometimes confused and shifting experiments, sometimes rough-and-ready expedients. For example, in the Argentine Confederation and also in the United States of Brazil, the relations between the Federal Government and the Governments of the States have not attained that regular equilibrium which prevails in the United States, an equilibrium which was there only procured at the cost of a tremendous civil war. In most of the republics the relations between the Executive and the Legislature have

nd sometimes ostentatious spending of money. If the Spanish-American has money, he spends it like a schoolboy, and he likes a splash for his money. Another sign of youth is the rather exaggerated national or civic amour-propre, a lively touchiness concerning outside criticism-a s

stricted. Germany, which had ranked third among outside nations trading with the continent, dropped out altogether, with the exception of the devious and struggling efforts already noted. To the nations of South America what had seemed the natural and regular order of things was suddenly suspended. They were thrown upon their own resources; they were compelled to take stock of their position and to face an unprecedented situation. They must manage their finances without European help; they must provide their own labour. As to things hitherto imported from Europe, they must either provide these things themselves or go without. The shock was severe, but it must be allowed to have been a wholesome shock. It has stopped public over-borrowing and has put some check on extravagance of public spending. It has favoured private thrift and has compelled those who were perhaps over light-hearted and materialistic to take life more seriously. The Argentine family, which formerly provided sepa

in the value, if not in the volume of exports. Hence a favourable trade balance and an increase in wealth. These conditions encouraged that movement of industrial enterprise which everywhere sought to supply, by the exploitation of home products and by the d

is richer and more industrious than ever before. It is true that this wholesome recovery is not yet reflected in the national finances, which are still disordered by extravagance, over-borrowing, improvident budgets, and now by the diminished receipts from customs. However, one very interesting event deserves special mention-the credit or loan granted by the Argentine Government to the Allies for the purchase of the present harvest. Since Argentine Government loans are mostly held in Western Europe, the debt can be discharged with equal benefit to both sides, by simply taking over the obligations of the Argentine Government on this side of the Atlantic. Even more remarkable is the spontaneous offer made to Great Britain by the Uruguayan Government of a large credit for the purchase of the Uruguayan harvest. Thus, these two debt

ome, with almost incredible rapidity, an exporter of meat and of vegetable foods. Coal ceased to come from Europe. The result has been that Brazil is striving to supply her own needs by working her southern coal seams, although at the present time want of transport is a serious obstacle to these efforts. Manufactures of all kinds are increasing. Brazilian cotton particularly is now largely woven at home, and this textile industry alone now employs about 100,000 persons. Brazil is also taking more and more into her own hands her coastal and river navigation, and is extending her shipping lines to foreign ports. The result of this industrial and commercial revival has been that, n

ature to think of Brazil, with her vast and undeveloped pastoral, agricultural and forestal possibilities, as an industrial country. But the possession of large deposits of iron indicates grea

s distributed upon a more scientific and normal basis, and very soon the war situation began to pour wealth into the lap of the republic. Nitrate, needed by the Allies for munitions, reached its highest price and its maximum production. Copper-now perhaps the most precious of metals-followed the same course. After-war conditions, particularly in regar

ational character and national ambition, which owe little to recent European immigration. In 1914-just before the war-Chile possessed nearly 8000 factories employing about 90,000 persons. It has often been questioned whether Chile, with a population of less than four millions and a fertile territory largely undeveloped, did wisely to encourage thi

es of copper, sugar, and cotton have brought to Peru a stream of wealth, and have enabled the government to make a very interesting experiment in the scientific taxation of

a financial matter through the foundation of a joint Brazilian-Uruguayan agricultural college. Uruguay has declared that an injury to any South American country is an injury to them all. Envoys from the neighbour-republics visit Bolivia to salute the newly-elected Bolivian President, among them an envoy from the United States. Junior embassies, hardly less interesting in character, are the visits of boy scouts from capital to capital. The five tropical republics which hail Bolívar as Liberator lately clasped hands in a joint celebration of his memory, and at the same time concluded a commercial agreement concerning trade marks and similar matters. The study of history, now actively pursued by competent scholars in all the republics, is a unifying as well as a humanising power: for the student who explores or writes the early history of his own republic necessarily treats the history of all Latin America. The history of the struggle for South American emancipation is a single epic. And a pleasing symbol of this historical unity is to be seen in the portrait of the Argentine commander San Martín and of the Venezuelan Bolívar imprinted on the postage

lies, "We have our agent for South America in Buenos Aires," ignoring the fact that, if a Colombian merchant by any rare chance should have occasion to visit Buenos Aires, he would probably pass through London on the way. The trade of all these states with one another is naturally immensely less than with Europe or with the United States, for the simple reason that they are all producers of raw materials and importers of manufactured goods, whereas the European lands, and now the United States also, are importers of raw materials and exporters of manufactured goods. But that very circumstance illustrates the fact that these countries are a cluster of similar organisms. They sit back to back and face outwards: yet as each one grows and expands, they all become conscious that they are sitting close, shoulder to shoulder. They are beginning to touch hands and to pass their good things, both abstract and material, from one to another. Things are changed since the names of Brazilian and Argentine were almost mutual bugbears and since Chile and Argentina seemed to be chronically "spoiling for a fight." The figure of Christ, which stands on the boundary between these two nations, symbolises a truth-a reality all the more valuable inasmuch as it is in part intangible,

any. Her announcement, communicated to her neighbour-republics, was received with a kind of demonstration of Latin-American solidarity. Almost every Latin-American state responded in terms of warm appreciation and sympath

stem of republics living at peace with one another. A century ago Canning boasted, "I have called a New World into existence to redress the balance o

ntly happened, at the Allied Conference in Paris, or that a Brazilian squadron would be acting with the British fleet in European waters? It can no longer be said of these states, as was said some years ago, that they stand upon the margin of international life. This closer participation in world affairs does not contradict, but rather confirms and explains, what has been said concerning the growth of Americanismo, the consolidation of a y

hin the North American continent. The path which she has followed in recent years-a path not entirely of her own choosing-seems rather to lead outside the ring-fence of Latin America. It is an interesting spe

may not be led on by the logic of events so to extend the struggle on behalf of democracy against autocracy that the frontier, dividing Latin America from the region under Anglo-Saxon control, shall be the geographical boundary between the two continents. President Wilson indeed has assured the Mexicans, with obvious conviction and sincerity, that no aggression is intended against their territory, and that he desires a com

r system which aims at uniting the Latin-American republics. What about Pan-Amer