ROLAND G. USHER
PAN-AMERICANISM
BOOK III
PAN-AMERICANISM
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CHAPTER I
PREREQUISITES OF PAN-AMERICANISM
TO some, Pan-Americanism is the Utopia of peace, a demonstration of the superior morality of the Western over the Eastern Hemisphere, of the New World and its Christianity over the Old. To some it is a dream of the monopolization of South American trade by the United States; to others, the Monroe Doctrine and our chivalrous protection of the weak against aggression; to others, a vision of empire in the Western Hemisphere. To many in South America, Pan-Americanism stands for the peculiarly hypocritical fashion in which the elder brother makes known his demands for the deference due to him and for the privilege justly his. Pan-Americanism is not yet a reality. The word still connotes a varied and inconsistent complex of ideas: pacifists, capitalists, imperialists, have built in its name structures framed in the image of their own desires and ambitions.
We are less concerned with what Pan-Americanism has been or has meant than with what it may mean in the future. What should it be; whom should it include; what should be its object; what problems may it solve? Will it protect the Western Hemisphere from Europe's victor or from the aggression of Japan? A knowledge of the position of the United States in its relation to Latin America, of the interests of the United States and those of Latin America, and of the fundamental economic and administrative factors in both, will be important not only for the elucidation of Pan-Americanism, but for a grasp of our future problems. If a closer union between the United States and the Latin American republics is feasible and desirable, it will furnish a premise with which the foreign policy of the United States must reckon. If it is not feasible, we shall perforce ground our conception of the fundamentals of American policy upon different notions.
Let us therefore deal with the possibility of a really close relationship transcending by far the meetings of diplomatic representatives and such general expressions of good-will and sympathy as are usual in the correspondence of sovereign nations in Europe. Let us view as an hypothesis an administrative union between the United States and the twenty Latin republics, for Canada is always tacitly excluded from the question of Pan-Americanism, and extend it beyond some vague customs union, vague defensive alliance, or voluntary business court, to a substantive confederation of sovereign states. The word raises at once visions similar to Pan-Germanism, Pan-Slavism, Pan-Islam, which draw their vital meaning and purpose from the assumed necessity of the closest conceivable connection between Germans, Slavs, or Mohammedans. Unless there is a reality existent which will furnish the basis for something more than a temporary and quasi-artificial bond of dubious strength and utility, we shall be forced to admit that Pan-Americanism is a misnomer and the ideas it connotes fictitious and vain imaginings.
While the premise of Pan-Americanism obviously cannot be that of racial unity, as in the case of the European movements similarly designated, it does assume that the geographical proximity of North and South American results in something approaching the isolation of the two from Europe, so that the geographical connection between them is closer than that of either with Europe or Africa. It also predicates quite clearly the political and economic independence of the Western Hemisphere against the rest of the world. The necessity of a broad basis of mutual economic interest in any organic union has been proved in the past a most important and fundamental factor. Clearly, mutual interests are essential to Pan-Americanism, and must be assumed to exist between the various states in the Western Hemisphere, which must therefore be supposed to have divergent interests from European states, or at the very least to find their fundamental interest in relations with one another rather than with Europe. Not less vital is the obvious assumption of mutual trust and confidence between the various states in the Western Hemisphere, not transcending perhaps their trust and confidence in European nations, but certainly yielding to one another all credence and faith which they themselves could desire in return. A need for mutual aid and protection against Europe, if not against the rest of the world, Pan-Americanism peculiarly assumes and predicates necessarily the ability of these states to make effective use of their combined strength against aggression from without. Indeed, one might almost say that mutual protection should be assumed to furnish the real nexus of the new state, and that the existence of the present war in Europe, and the probable aggression of its victor in the Western Hemisphere, ought to furnish the impelling motive for the creation of this organic union, and remain for a time at least its most important feature.
What, now, are the prerequisites for the erection or creation of a Pan-American confederation or union based upon such fundamental premises? If the foundations of the structure are significant, the structure itself is the visible and tangible evidence of the existence of the new entity, and will be, if anything, more essential to its eventual success than the premises. An organic union would have little strength and possess only a very small quantity of organic nexus, unless it was at least a confederation of sovereign states, with a common executive and legislature in whom were vested definite if, perhaps limited, powers to act, and with discretion to decide upon their own initiative, in a way binding upon all members certain matters of mutual interest explicitly delegated to them. The inequality of the various states in size might be solved by giving them unequal numbers of votes, so graduated as to make it impossible for the large states to be outvoted by the small states on matters vital to them, and to foreclose the possibility of the control of the confederation by the large states. By leaving the large states in the minority, the small would be protected, while by requiring a two-thirds vote upon important issues, the three or four largest states would obtain an effective veto, for they could always prevent the confederation from acting at all. A schedule of issues might be prepared with different percentages graduated according to the importance of the subject. In this way the difficulty might be solved of a confederation in which one state, the United States, would be as large as all the others, and three other states would be larger and wealthier than most of the remainder.
Some common administrative body would be essential. The conduct of foreign affairs by the confederation, the abandoning by all members of their previous policies and independent dealings with other countries, with either the abandonment of the Monroe Doctrine, or its assumption by the confederation, would be highly important. Free trade within the confederation and a uniform tariff against foreign countries, a uniform currency, uniform weights and measures, with uniform banking, bankruptcy, and commercial laws, would be eminently desirable. The courts of the confederation should decide suits between states or between the citizens of various states, as the United States courts now deal with the affairs of individuals and states. There would of course be the taxes for purposes of administration and defense, apportioned among the sovereign states in the same ratio as the votes in the Federal legislature, and collected by the local authorities. All actions of the confederation would necessarily be binding on its members, except for certain limitations indicated by a bill of rights, which of course would be intended for the states rather than for private citizens. Officials and judges could probably be selected impartially and apportioned roughly between the various states, while in the lower ranks of the administration civil-service rules should be applied. The confederation in its relation to its members would recognize freely their complete sovereignty in all domestic affairs, with certain reservations as to the extent to which the confederation could pledge these sovereign states by its action in foreign affairs, war, or peace. With limitations, the confederation might be required to maintain republican government in all the states, to subdue revolutions or riots, and to insist upon changes of government by peaceful methods rather than by revolutions. It might even go so far as to compel the existing government to redress certain classes of wrongs when complained of in certain formal ways by a large number of its own citizens or by other states or their citizens.
Regular intercourse between the states would be a necessary feature in the maintenance of their mutual acquaintance and friendly understanding, and would normally result from their mutual economic interests. The creation of a merchant marine to carry their commerce in ships belonging to members of the confederation and to carry the exports of its members to foreign nations would be indispensable to the establishment and continuance of that economic independence of Europe which it might be readily assumed was in accordance with the normal interests of the confederation. This would be further assured by the development of a system of federal banks, which would provide for direct exchange among the members of the confederation and with Europe, and could control the currency and facilitate the distribution of capital throughout its extensive territory. Each member would supply others with capital and itself obtain capital from others.
Absolutely essential to the development of any strong bond, and to the strengthening of the mutual trust and confidence between the various members, would be an unqualified recognition of the legal and social equality of all its citizens in all states of the confederation. As the acceptance of social equality by the various South American peoples is virtually complete, this phase of the problem would largely depend upon the granting of social equality to South Americans by the citizens of the United States. Without such acquiescence, the assurances of the Government of the United States, its promises and laws, would be futile; but upon the desirability---one might almost say the necessity---of establishing such social equality would depend the strength, if not the very existence, of the confederation.
These do not seem to be excessive demands or prerequisites of a closer Pan-American union. They mean simply that the new confederation should be a state with organs possessed of independent authority; that the political, administrative, and economic aspects of the new state should be realities and not fictions. They demand that the new state should actually possess the political and economic independence, that its assumed isolation and divergent interests from Europe would make desirable, and to preserve which the union itself had presumably been formed.
The results of the formation of such a confederation ought to be vital to the welfare of all its members. It should end revolutions and maintain stable government, forever remove the apprehension in South America of aggression from the United States, and furnish a rapid and simple method for the decision of disputes between sovereign states or their citizens. It should protect the Western Hemisphere from European aggression, isolate it from the wars convulsing that continent, and dedicate it to the peaceful arts. From it should flow mutual economic benefits in the growth of trade and commerce, the development of industry, the fostering of agriculture, the growth of a merchant marine, and perhaps in good time the growth or development of a distinctively American literature, art, and music.
No such extended relationship now exists or is at present seriously discussed. In the past Pan-Americanism has referred to such relations as the American republics have actually had with one another, and has denoted nothing definite in regard to their actual character, although it has connoted invariably something of comity and a desire to extend the friendly relations between them to something approaching an agreement on matters of common policy. As early as 1826 a Pan-American congress was held; Henry Clay and James G. Blaine both used their wide influence to father the movement; since 1889 a variety of congresses, some of ambassadors and diplomats, some of scientists, have met. Very recently a Pan-American Union was formed, with a governing body consisting of the American Secretary of State and the ambassadors or diplomatic representatives in Washington of the twenty Latin-American republics. As administrative head was appointed an American who had seen diplomatic service in Latin America, and an assistant director who is a Latin American. A building has been erected in Washington, and a staff is at work collecting statistics, general information, and a library regarding Latin America. The publications of the union are intended to furnish accurate information about commercial opportunities in the Southern Continent. Its practical work is economic rather than political and, for the present is apparently aimed more at developing markets in South America for United States merchants than at the general development of South America itself. Some years ago Secretary of State Root made an extended trip in an attempt to draw closer the bonds of the American republics; the three largest republics recently mediated between the United States and Mexico, both of whom accepted their offices. Within the last weeks the governing board of the Pan-American Union voted to make representations to the European belligerents on the question of neutral trade and shipping in American waters.
Yet none of these efforts has extended beyond the meeting of representatives of the various republics in their character as sovereign states. They have conferred with one another more or less amicably in diplomatic fashion, but have reached few conclusions of particular import. Indeed, they were incapable of acting on any subject with binding effect because they were delegates conveying messages from sovereign states rather than representatives empowered to consider and decide the matters in question through interchange of argument. The meetings were, strictly speaking, the recognition of a relationship forced upon them by the geographical accident of the others' existence rather than evidence of an intention or a desire to make closer the bond. Nor was there at any time a definite pledge of the continuance of the meetings. It is highly important that we should not exaggerate the actual facts; these diplomatic conferences contained no greater pledge of mutual interests, unity, policy, or identity in ideals than conferences between the United States and the representatives of European powers. While they premised the existence of questions upon which some sort of agreement was advisable, we should realize that questions equally practical and of an absolutely similar nature are constantly presenting themselves for decision between the Latin-American republics and European nations.
Not only is Pan-Americanism not a reality, but we have no actual evidence of a desire on the part of the American states to make it real. The Latin-American republics would probably protest that they had given no pledges or promises whatever indicating an intention or a desire to form an organic union to which the United States should be a party, and it is by no means clear that South American statesmen regard a close union of the Latin-American republics alone as feasible or desirable. The more serious thinkers are inclined to feel that the amalgamation of some of the republics into federal states is perhaps possible and that the confederation of others might be arranged; but the most conservative regard seven entities as the smallest number entirely feasible. It is at least worth while remembering in this connection that it is whispered in Latin America that these Pan-American congresses are useful methods of stimulating a realizing sense among the Latin-American republics of their need for cooperation against the aggression of the United States in South and Central America. In fact, from the recent activities of the Pan-American Union and from the acceptance of the mediation of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile between Mexico and the United States, the conclusion has been drawn that a vital change in the policy of the United States was impending. Instead of treating the Latin-American republics as inferiors, the United States was about to recognize formally their sovereign equality. Far from this being understood as a prelude to the formation of a Pan-American confederation or state, the profound and favorable impression made upon South America by these recent events has been due rather to the hope that they portended the formal and public renunciation by the United States of the Monroe Doctrine and the aggressive schemes for the conquest of Central and South America which they have felt to be the only possible explanation of the past acts of the United States. The recognition of equality would be the necessary diplomatic approach to a formal enunciation of the new policy.
Pan-Americanism is not now a reality, but it is none the less important for us to consider whether it might become an actuality. If the word is to denote in future no more than it does at present, it stands for nothing of consequence, and least of all for anything peculiarly American. We are dealing with the possible creation of something which never existed and which does not now exist---an organic bond between American republics, founded upon mutual interests and involving mutual benefits and obligations, as contrasted with a merely permissive and essentially temporary relationship of a quasi-diplomatic character. Unless we can demonstrate that Pan-Americanism has behind it deep fundamental concepts and is likely to subserve important American ends, a close connection with the Latin-American republics will scarcely be a policy for the maintenance of which the United States ought to sacrifice anything of substantive value. If such is now the true meaning of the Monroe Doctrine, the expediency of its continuance will then become a matter of grave doubt.
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FALLACIES. OF PAN-AMERICANISM
THE theoretical basis of Pan-Americanism lies in the belief that the geographical proximity of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere has naturally created between their inhabitants mutual interests, and literally predicates different interests in the Western Hemisphere from those of Europe, and a more normal relationship between states located in the Western Hemisphere with one another than with Europe. We shall scarcely need to do more than glance at the map to see that the more developed regions of North America are in actual distance as far from South America as they are from Europe, and that South America is geographically more closely related to Africa and to southern Europe than it is to New York and to New England. The distance between the principal South American ports and London is not much greater than the distance from New York; Spain and Portugal are both relatively near Brazil; both Florida and the Sahara Desert are nearer to South America than the parts of Europe or the United States with which South Americans are most anxious to deal. The Pacific coast of South America has indeed been nearer to the western coast of the United States than to Europe because of the long voyage around Cape Horn, trebling the distance as the crow flies. The Panama Canal will make an important difference in the geographical isolation of the western coast of South America, but there can be no real doubt that there is no necessary geographical proximity or relationship between the North and South American republics that all do not have with Europe. The foundation of a political and social union upon a geographical bond no closer than the bonds which join the United States to Europe and Africa is obviously building upon the sands. It is a fallacy to suppose that the juxtaposition of North and South America necessarily creates political or economic interests in common between the inhabitants of the two continents. We might as well interfere for similar reasons in the domestic politics of the Azores, Morocco, or the Gold Coast. Indeed, the bonds of geographical relationship between the United States and the British Isles are a great deal closer than they are with Brazil. This, however, predicates extremely little.
As a matter of fact, it is also a fallacy to suppose that any part of the Western Hemisphere is isolated from Europe by its location without at the same time being equally isolated from the United States. Real isolation results from a lack of communication and a lack of acquaintance, and is due nowadays almost entirely to the difficulty of communication or to a lack of common interests, neither of which seem to have any necessary relation to geographical distance or location. The railroad and the steamship, the telegraph and the. newspaper, have tied together beyond the power of separation in the future places sundered by the length of continents and the width of oceans. Where communication exists, there is neither separation nor isolation; until it exists, even actual contiguity of boundaries will not break that silence and indifference between two countries in which lies complete isolation. Peru and Brazil communicate with each other infrequently and irregularly; both are in constant touch with affairs in London, Paris, and New York. Similarly, the information in New York about Buenos Aires is much more extended, accurate, and contemporaneous than the notions in Maine about Alabama. The great commercial and political centers are inevitably in closer contact with one another than with the parts of their own country; and nearly any part of the United States has more regular contact with New York or Chicago than with any other part of North America. Isolation is more a matter of time than of space, and common interests are due to the ease of transportation and communication more often than to geographical location.
The greatest of fallacies is the assumption that the Western Hemisphere is isolated from Europe. Since the coming of the telegraph and the steamship, the railroad and the newspaper, isolation from Europe is impossible. Indeed, one might almost say that so far as there is any isolation in the world to-day it exists more nearly than anywhere else between the various parts of the Western Hemisphere. In point of time and expense it is quite as easy to travel from London or Hamburg as from New York or Boston, to South American ports on the east coast. the fastest and largest steamers in the South American trade are in the European service; when South Americans travel they do not hesitate to choose Paris instead of New York; and the Americans who have ever traveled in South America are few compared with the multitudes who have made the rounds in Europe. There are thousands of Americans who know London and Paris well who have no conception of the location of the smaller South American countries; there are thousands of South Americans who are in a very similar condition regarding the United States. Ignorance is the greatest of separators; indifference creates the most difficult isolation to overcome. American notions of the Southern Continent resemble those of the Englishman who thought he should sing "Away down South in Michigan" and spend the day mowing cotton and sugar and plucking maize from the savannas.
A glance at the newspapers of the various countries shows more news in a South American newspaper about Europe than there is about the United States, and very often more about the two together than about all the other states in South America combined. There is often more news about South America in the London dailies than there is about the United States, but invariably more news in the New York papers about London than about the twenty Latin American republics. What little there is about them is usually crowded into small type in some inconspicuous corner, unless it so happens that the news concerns the possibility of trouble between them and the United States. Domestic news, as such, regarding both South America and the United States receives on the whole a good deal more attention in Europe than it gets from the newspapers of the other continent. Far from its being true that the location of the United States and South America in the Western Hemisphere has created and fostered a relationship between them, a most elementary study of either will show that the relationship of both to Europe is a thousandfold closer and more vital than their relationship to each other. Indeed, the contact of most South American states with Europe is closer than with the next Latin American state. The only geographical factor really common to the United States and the Latin-American republics is the fact that none of them are located in Europe or Africa.
Pan-Americanism assumes a certain separation of interests between Europe and the Western Hemisphere and a certain identity of interests between the United States and Latin America. Let us not mince matters in questions of such grave importance as these. This is a fiction the falsity of which has been exposed by the European war. It was not apparent sooner because of the lack of keen interest on the part of both Europe and the United States in South America. The significant interests of the United States, the indispensable interests, the prerequisites of economic well-being, are those with Europe. The significant interests of Latin America, the predominant interests, indispensable to their economic well-being, are those with Europe.
The assumption that this common relationship and interest between the various countries of the Western Hemisphere is the result of their geographical location seems to have been originally based upon the accident of their discovery at about the same moment. Two continents not previously occupied by Europeans were both situated in the same relation to Europe and it might therefore be assumed that things equally related to the same thing would be closely related to each other. Their undeveloped condition and the subsequent growth of communities by exploration, conquest, and settlement not unnaturally raised a presumption that their problems were similar. Would not the attitude of the two continents toward Europe, which held them in subjection, be identical? Was not political independence worth more than a sort of government not much better than the crudest form of exploitation? Independence would naturally carry with it freedom from the obligation to receive such criminals as their own government saw fit to locate in their borders, or to obey such laws and regulations as the mother country saw fit to make in her own interest. The common interest of both in political independence from Europe was so obvious and natural that it promptly became the basis for a series of assumptions regarding a more extended interest between them, and in particular for the notion which lies at the root of the Monroe Doctrine and Pan-Americanism that America was for the Americans.
We shall display as students no great amount of candor in admitting freely and frankly the dependence of the whole Western Hemisphere upon Europe for artistic and intellectual leadership and inspiration. Paris is the Mecca of South Americans. Thither drift, nay, one might almost say hasten, in a fashion contrary to the South American temperament, all those who desire to study, to travel, or to celebrate the acquisition of wealth. Dresses designed by Worth and Paquin are as common in the great South American cities as they are in our own large cities; the decoration of homes, the general aspect of municipal architecture and city planning is distinctly that of the recent French school, and most important buildings have been designed by prominent French architects or their pupils. French literature has been the model of the more recent schools of poets and. novelists in most South American states; French art and music are those most desired, although Spanish literature, Italian music, and English political philosophy exert a deep influence and are well known. There is in it all very little that is American. Such resemblances as the casual traveler sees between the United States and South America are due entirely to the fact that both have followed the same models. We are both dependent upon Europe, we both reflect Europe---to that extent we are similar. It is truly a fundamental and important fact that all parts of the Western Hemisphere look rather to Europe than to one another for the highest things as well as the baser.
Probably this common dependence upon Europe explains the sensitivity of most South Americans to what they suppose to be the attitude of superiority assumed by the United States over them in purely intellectual achievements and the arts of civilization. Our attempts to police the less orderly republics, to assist in their financial arrangements, seem to them to proceed from a conviction on our part that we are not only bigger, but better; not only older, but wiser; and that we are discharging a moral obligation by giving them the benefit of our superior culture and of our greater wisdom and experience. All South Americans will admit that we are bigger, but there are not many who will sincerely admit that we are better than they are, or more skilled in the essential arts of civilization. They lay great stress upon the fact that we are different, and decline to yield us superiority in literary, artistic, or musical appreciation, in the architectural arrangement of our cities, or the possession of superior conveniences for the cultivation of the arts and sciences. The older South Americans do not admit that there were writers in the United States at the end of the eighteenth century who could rival Bello and Almedo, and not many in the decades before the Civil War who were better than Andradi; while the young men regard Rodo and Ugarte as critics and orators quite as intelligent as our own contemporary writers, and feel that Carillo is a greater master of the technic of the short story than any recent American writer. Indeed, several South American authors have been favorably received by European critics, a fact of which the South Americans are entirely aware; and they are also well aware that the number of American authors who have received similar recognition is not large. In common with most Europeans, they deny that there is any such thing as an American literature or an American art. As they do not claim for their own efforts an equality with Europe, they see no reason why we should claim equality for ours of similar grade. They are very sensitive upon these matters---sensitive to a degree of which most Americans have little conception. We are not likely as Americans to believe our progress no greater than that of South America, but as investigators we need not be surprised to find that the South Americans themselves decline to recognize our superiority, and are nettled by any tacit assertion of it, however delicately and subtlely advanced.
The most serious consequence of the comparative isolation between North and South America and of their common dependence upon Europe is their lack of acquaintance with each other. This is a fundamental and serious obstacle in the way of Pan-Americanism, for knowledge is the indispensable prerequisite of confidence, understanding, and mutuality. Until we know each other, we cannot conceivably form strong bonds of association; intercourse and frequent communication will alone beget acquaintanceship. Unfortunately, all the normal aids to acquaintanceship are lacking, and great fundamental barriers exist in the difference of race, language, and religion. In South America the intermixture of races is common; the white, the red, and the black have intermarried. Although in the United States such intermarriage results in social ostracism, the difficulty of blood might not stand in the way if it were not for the difficulty of language and religion. Men must speak the same tongue in order to become acquainted; real acquaintanceship is not made through interpreters. The prevalence of Spanish or Portuguese in South America coupled with a total ignorance of both in large portions of the United States, forms a barrier between the peoples which only time and a very real desire to become acquainted can remove. The Catholic religion in its Latin-American form tinctures the whole life of the people, but is not ordinarily sympathetic to citizens of the United States; the fundamental religious philosophy of most Americans is widely different. Race, language, and religion,---there could scarcely be three greater barriers in the way of the creation of that degree of acquaintanceship upon which alone firm political association can be built.
From our ignorance of each other proceed constantly misunderstandings on essential points. The peaceful disposition of the vast majority of American people, one might almost say the strength of their determination not to attempt conquests in Latin America, is not so generally credited as it should be. Our real anxiety to treat them as equals does not convince them. Fundamental words like law, democracy, faith, honor, interest, business efficiency, do not connote to them the same things that they do to us, and our utterances and theirs usually require interpretation even when we speak ostensibly in each other's own language. To speak in words is easy; to express ideas is difficult; and nowhere does the lack of acquaintanceship show itself more prominently than in such matters as these. The difference in racial temperament aggravates all other difficulties, and raises new barriers in the way of explanation and comprehension.
They do not speak our language or think in our terms; their eyes look upon a different universe; and their ideals contemplate a different future. We have no common interests with them, nor are we closely connected with them; we are, in fact, sundered by totally dissimilar interests and by a generally different outlook upon life. If there is any such thing in this world as isolation, separation, divergence, we are isolated from Latin America by the fundamental, impenetrable barriers of race, language, and religion, law, customs, and tradition. Powerful agencies operating with great force and persistence will be needed to create and preserve any relationship between the American republics in the face of these obstacles. Not only are the premises of Pan-Americanism fallacies; their very antitheses are realities.
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LACK OF ECONOMIC MUTUALITY
"THE people of the United States have always desired a Zollverein, a fiscal union of all the republics; they wish to gather into their imperial hands the commerce of the South, the produce of the tropics. " They aim at making a trust of the South American republics," Alberdi has said. "They aim, after the Spanish fashion, at isolating the southern continent, becoming its exclusive purveyor of ideas, and industries." Thus does Calderon give expression to the very common belief in South America as to the real aim and purpose of Pan-Americanism. It is merely the Monroe Doctrine in a new guise, the wolf in sheep's clothing. It is the supremacy of the United States in the Western Hemisphere masquerading as amity and friendship. So long as the economic situation is fairly thrust before them and so long as that situation makes so essential to them close and friendly relations with Europe, they cannot fail to appreciate the consequences of "America for Americans." To exclude the European powers, to attempt to raise commercial barriers against them, and to insist upon fostering by diplomatic or political methods the trade of the United States to the detriment of trade with European nations---all these connote infallibly the establishment of a relationship between the United States and South America vastly more favorable to the United States than it can conceivably be to South America. The very principle itself upon which Pan-Americanism is based, the common interest of the people living in the Western Hemisphere and the normal divergence of their interests from those of Europe, is false, fallacious, and dangerous. The South Americans do not have and cannot have, as they view it, the same interest in the development of trade with the United States, to the exclusion of European trade, that the United States obviously has in obtaining a portion at least of that trade which European nations have at present. The profit is all on our side. The South American sees in Pan-Americanism no economic mutuality, but a very definite, if somewhat subtle, selfishness on the part of the larger country.
The proof lies in the fact that the United States cannot perform for South America those services indispensable to the welfare of South America that European nations render. The case of Central America is somewhat different: the geographical connection is closer and transportation therefore more rapid and less expensive, while the extent to which enterprise in Central America is already in American hands is so considerable that the question of economic mutuality is at least arguable, although the natives are not by any means willing as yet to concede that it is convincing. In the case of South America, however, the facts seem clearly to indicate that the South Americans are right in denying the claim of mutuality. The peculiar character of our economic position in the world makes it impossible for us to play the part of middleman between the South American producer and his customers throughout the world. South American trade at present (except for a quasi-coastwise trade with the United States) is distributed to all parts of the world by English and German ships, a contact insured from interruption during the last century and more by the English fleet and English policy. Most commercial transactions are completed by exchange on London, where the bills of South America are paid and their credits understood, though a similar service is now performed by certain of the great German banks for a part of that trade. It should be obvious that Pan-Americanism cannot become a reality, nor can an organic union independent of Europe be formed in the Western Hemisphere until the union is capable by its united efforts of performing those services indispensable to its continued economic well-being that certain European powers at present render. Neither the United States nor any of the South American republics possess a merchant marine capable of carrying the trade between the United States and South America alone, to say nothing of the trade between South America and the world at large. The combined naval force of the twenty-one republics would be incapable of protecting the roads across the Atlantic against the English fleet. Far from being able to provide South Americans with adequate international exchange facilities, American merchants are not at present able to do business directly with them, because there is no chain of American banks in Latin America through which direct exchange can be had on New York. The United States, like the rest of the world, does business with Latin America to a large extent through London. When we do not carry on our own business by direct exchange, the absurdity of supposing that we could promptly supply Latin America with the necessary exchange facilities for her trade with the rest of the world ought to be so apparent as to prove conclusively that Pan-Americanism could not finance itself. No doubt adequate arrangements could in time be made, but business is extremely conservative, and the obstacles in the way of a movement to substitute New York for London as the exchange center of South American business are fundamental. Few American business houses at present maintain branches of any importance in South America; not a great many houses maintain resident agents, compared with the number generally maintained by English and German firms; the American consuls are only too seldom well enough acquainted with the language and sufficiently adaptable to establish firm friendships with South American merchants and win their confidence; American drummers rarely speak Spanish or Portuguese and are too inexperienced in South American methods of business to approach prospective customers in ways which they approve. The strong foundation of established business acquaintanceship consists in long years of satisfactory dealing with well-known firms, and in long years of relationship with well-known banks; these, the very bricks of commercial exchange, are lacking, and are not to be made in a day. We must not forget that the active interests of American merchants in South America are not much more than two decades old, while the traditions of business with London can show as many centuries.
These are merely the externals of financial relationship, the arrangements necessary to complete the close business connection. Finally, international finance is not a question of currency or yet a question of banks. If it is difficult to make trade flow along channels contrary to the established habits of merchants and the normal route of exchange; it is impossible to create it unless the elementary facts of supply and demand coexist. International exchange, as a matter of fact, is carried on in goods. Though the individual merchant ostensibly sells his goods for money, he really receives the articles which he buys with the money. So far as the nation as a whole is concerned, money, exchange, banks, finance are merely the methods by which the goods received in exchange for its own output are distributed in proper quantities to its own merchants. The nation makes goods and buys goods with them, and in the long run sells goods only where it can buy goods in return, or at least where it can buy commodities which can be sold to some other nation for the goods which it needs at home. All truly profitable commercial association must be based upon the exchange of actual commodities. When, therefore, a proposition is made which involves the sale of the bulk of the goods produced by one nation, it will be economically sound only when the other nation is ready to sell in return the goods which the first needs. To be of mutual advantage, the goods sold must be offset by the goods bought.
Before the United States can take the place of the European nations in the South American trade, it must be prepared to supply South America with the goods which the South Americans desire; it must either produce those goods itself or procure them elsewhere. It will be exceedingly obvious, however, that if the United States takes South American exports, sells them in Europe, purchases European goods with them, and then sells the latter to the South Americans, it has simply compelled the South Americans to pay American merchants an additional profit for handling European goods which the South Americans could have bought more cheaply by trading directly with the European nations that produced them. The producer in Europe has his price, and if he deals with a South American merchant, he will sell at that rate. But if he sells at that rate to an American merchant, who then sells to the South American merchant, it will be clear that the American must charge the South American a profit for himself, in addition to the cost of the article and the charges of transportation; otherwise the American will himself make no profit on the transaction. To be profitable to the South American, the United States must buy goods which South America produces in exchange for goods which the United States itself makes. Any other arrangement will cost one party or the other an additional sum paid simply for the privilege of allowing the other to play the part of the middleman.
These facts are familiar to any one well informed about international trade. The United States does not produce the goods which South American nations demand to any such extent as would be necessary to make the monopolization of the trade by the United States of mutual advantage. The tastes of South American buyers are luxurious and fastidious in the extreme, and they have been accustomed in the past to buy fine clothing, furniture, and the like from France, Belgium, Germany, or that part of the world which produced the finest articles. In most cases they have dealt directly with the producing nations, in other cases they have bought through London; but what they have bought have been for the most part commodities which the United States is not prepared to make. The bulk of American trade seems, in fact, to be in staple articles of a character or quality which they could buy elsewhere, but which they take from us because they must in the long run accept the goods which we make in exchange for the commodities which we buy from them. Because they buy of us, we must not assume a preference on their part for our goods. It may well be that they merely accept them because we are anxious on our own part to obtain what they have to sell.
If we are incapable of supplying the total South American demand, we are even more incapable of absorbing the total supply. It is highly conceivable that we might produce what they wish; it is not at all likely that we could consume an equal value of the sort of goods we should have to accept in exchange. South America exports a great variety of natural and crude products. It is, for instance, the world's chief supply of rubber, one of the great sources of supply for coffee, hides, and dressed meat. The amount of this type of produce which we can actually consume in the United States is very obviously much less than the world can consume. In order to develop a really mutual interest in the trade between the two continents, we must not only increase our ability to produce, but our ability to consume; and while we can certainly expand the one at a rapid rate, the pace at which we can develop the other will be proportionately much less. We should therefore be forced to sell the surplus of South American produce elsewhere. If the South American was receiving and consuming American goods for this surplus produce, we should have to buy with it European goods and consume them ourselves; but we should be unable to quote as good a price as the South American could get for his goods if he sold them direct to Europe, because American merchants could not afford to exchange the commodities without some profit.
This is all as simple as A plus B or 2 and 2. If men deal with each other directly, each will get the other's actual price: he will pay what it cost to make the article plus a reasonable profit. If they deal through a third party, each will have to pay for the other's article what it cost to make it, plus the producer's profit, and in addition something for the middleman's time. It is often necessary for individuals to pay this additional profit, and so enhance the cost to themselves of what they buy; it is not often necessary for nations to pay an additional profit of this kind. It is above all difficult to secure an additional profit, of advantage only to the middleman, by creating a political situation which forces some nation to trade through a middleman where it previously traded direct. The long and short of it is that unless we can sell direct to the South American goods of our own production which he himself wants, we shall compel him to pay us a profit that he would not otherwise have to pay, and shall therefore tax him for the privilege of doing business with the United States. A Pan-American confederation that involved such commercial relations with the United States would not answer the South American's notions of mutuality.
When a nation in the position of South America sells a great volume of crude produce to some nation like England, which occupies the position of distributor rather than middleman, it may well be that the producing nation will wish to deal through the distributing nation with those nations that it is difficult and inconvenient to reach directly, and which are already dealing in a similar way with the distributor. A nation performing the function of an international clearing-house for merchandise saves time and expense for all parties involved, and therefore pays its own commissions. Such a position the English have successfully held for decades, but its usefulness and profitableness to other nations lie in its universality. If we could move to New York the world's clearing-house in exchange and trade, it would then become profitable for the South Americans to buy through us, just as it is at present profitable for us both to buy through London. But for them to deal with us, and for us then to deal with London, would not be advantageous to them. The United States, in fact, is not in an economic position to take the place which Europe holds in the South American economic fabric. We could not supply them with a merchant marine, with the protection of a fleet, with exchange facilities, export from the United States what they wish to buy, or utilize in the United States the bulk of what they have to sell. Until we ourselves are able actually to utilize the bulk of their produce, we cannot monopolize the South American trade without creating an artificial situation the basis of which will be uneconomic and lacking in mutuality, resulting in greater profit to us than it affords them.
There is one more step to take. The rate of future development in South America will depend upon the amount of foreign capital that can be procured at any one time; the continuity of progress will be measured by their ability to borrow in successive years. Inasmuch as South America is an extremely favorable field for the investor, it will be very much to the advantage of the United States to loan them capital; but their interests are furthered only when they obtain as much capital as possible at the most advantageous possible rates. Pan-Americanism, "America for the Americans," the exclusion of Europe and of European interests, means, if interpreted literally, that it ought to be more to the advantage of the South Americans to borrow capital in the United States than to borrow it in Europe. Unfortunately, there is no particular advantage for them in securing capital from the United States, and there would be very distinct disadvantages in limiting their opportunity to borrow European funds. Capital in a rough sense obeys the economic law of supply and demand, and can usually be bought cheaper where there is more of it for sale. Money is usually cheaper in Europe than it is in America, and it is usually easier to obtain it even when the current rates are the same in London and New York. The reason is obvious. The European nations are older and wealthier; their surplus is greater; they have a smaller proportion of the national wealth invested in permanent fixtures; and the surplus available for foreign investment is accordingly greater.
If South America were to be limited to the amount of capital it could obtain in the United States, or were compelled for political and military reasons to borrow in the United States rather than in Europe, its rate of development would certainly be slower than if it were free to borrow in the financial markets of the world. The amount of American capital compared with the total European capital is small; the proportion of it available for South America would normally be smaller than that available in Europe. If new political relationships of the nature of Pan-Americanism were established on a basis which contemplated the exclusion of the European on principle, or placing him in a less favorable position than Americans, European investors would hesitate about loaning to South Americans; South America would speedily see the stream of capital from Europe diminishing, and would be dependent upon the United States for a new supply. This could not in the circumstances be nearly as great in volume as the supply they might have drawn from Europe. Here again is a lack of mutuality. The United States is able to lend, and South America is not; it could not loan the South Americans as much as they will want, nor in all probability on as favorable conditions as they would like to obtain. The United States is the gainer under any circumstances. It will be advantageous for the South Americans to establish a closer connection with Europe than with the United States.
In any case, a very large proportion of the South American trade must continue to flow to Europe, whatever the demand in the United States for South American produce or the demand for American goods in South America. For years to come the South Americans must pay with exports the interest on the heavy European loans they borrowed in the past. Unless they repudiate their debts, they must pay in time with exports the capital as well as the interest. In the case of undeveloped countries trade is the expression of the basic financial situation. The bulk of the imports is new capital coming in; the bulk of the exports discharge obligations for interest and capital. Trade of necessity flows to the country which has invested money and flows with difficulty to countries which do not invest money. Normally, therefore, the trade of undeveloped countries with the rest of the world bears some rough proportion to the investments of the rest of the world within their borders. Hence, the trade of England with the Argentine Republic is enormous because of the vast total of past English investments and the large amount of new capital sent annually. The trade of the United States with South America has recently developed with great rapidity, because we have begun to invest largely in the Southern Continent. If, therefore, we are to supplant England and Germany in the South American trade, we must be prepared to take the place of England and Germany as investors of capital, and be ready not only to quote the South Americans favorable terms, but to provide them now and in the future with the bulk of what they wish to borrow. If we can actually furnish them any such amount, we shall capture their trade as a simple matter of course; they will have to import goods from us equal in value to the capital they borrow, and they will be compelled, if they are honest, to export to us in return commodities equivalent each year to the interest plus the capital payments which fall due. This is the real basis of English and German trade with South America, and something like it must be established before we can achieve a similar economic monopoly.
Nor must we forget that we cannot monopolize it in reality until our investments exceed the total investments, past and present, of other nations. Even if we should be able to assume such a position, it would still be more advantageous to us than to South America, unless it should also be true that the amount of capital available in the United States for investment should be greater than the amount available in Europe, and obtainable on better terms. Even the most optimistic prophets will scarcely venture to predict such a commercial future for the United States. Yet until some such situation becomes a reality, Pan-Americanism cannot be mutually advantageous to all the American republics. We have yet to learn of the formation of a strong organic bond which has not possessed some strong mutual economic benefit for all its members, nor can we imagine a connection, however weak and shadowy, between the United States and the Latin-American republics, which did not somehow involve this economic question. A customs union would perhaps be the slightest association which would deserve the name Pan-Americanism, but the mere suggestion is regarded in South America as. tantamount to a declaration of the determination of the United States to monopolize South American trade for its own selfish purposes. They cannot conceive of a commercial relation to the United States which would be as favorable to them as their relationship to Europe; and they therefore regard as inexpedient any unions, associations, policies, or connections which predicate a closer connection with the United States than with Europe.
.
THE SHADOW OF THE PAST
WITH such fundamental obstacles in the road of Pan-Americanism, with such barriers to break down before it can become a reality, its future will be indeed dark unless they can be removed by the common efforts of the states concerned. Here we meet with perhaps the greatest stumbling-block of all, of a character that makes peculiarly difficult the removal of any of the fundamental barriers already enumerated---the lack of mutual trust and confidence between the Latin republics and the United States. Before "America for the Americans " can become a reality, the Americans must possess a thorough belief in one another's disinterestedness and freely accept one another's actions as performed in that perfect good faith which alone can avoid serious disputes, or permit effective compromise between jarring interests. All this the United States is unquestionably ready to accord the Latin-American republics; nay, there can be no reasonable doubt that the United States actually does accord them all this. The difficulty lies in the inability of the Latin-American republics thoroughly to convince themselves of the disinterested motives of the United States. They fear that Pan-Americanism is conquest in some subtle guise; they discount our protestations; they look askance at our actions, and remain unbelievers. The barrier which stands between us and them is the one most difficult to remove---the shadow of the past, their interpretation of our own past acts, the logic of American policy as revealed to them by acts which are beyond our power to change. Quis custodiet custodem ? asks Calderon.
Mutual confidence must find its roots in mutual understanding and agreement not alone upon the policies of the present, but upon the interpretation attached to the history of the past. It will be surprising to most Americans to learn in these days when we stand aghast at the magnitude of the conception of Pan-Germanism, and censure it as unprovoked aggression, when many of us regard the kaiser as a barbarian and talk about him as a hypocrite, who prepares for war while delivering himself daily of mouthings about peace, that many honest, sincere, and patriotic South Americans regard the United States and Pan-Americanism as cast in this same image, and describe us in terms not less uncomplimentary and even more vigorous. There are few things said recently in the United States about German aggression the counterpart of which cannot easily be found in the influential South American newspapers and the works of serious thinkers. They censure us less for our schemes of aggression than for what they consider our hypocritical, sanctimonious assumption of virtue. To be assured that the rod which they actually feel bruising their flesh is an olive branch extended by the dove of peace is to them the height of absurdity.
It will not be at all necessary for us to accept their version of American history or agree with their strictures upon our diplomatists, to realize that in this misunderstanding between honest and sincere men on both sides as to the meaning of acts now past recall, is one of the most serious barriers which could possibly exist in the way of extending the connection between the American republics. Unfortunately, American foreign policy has not always been consistent, nor have the utterances of our diplomatic Secretaries of State been uniformly discreet. The advocate of the American view has a difficult task before him in meeting the South American charges. It is not to our present purpose to investigate the dispute, and it suffices to point out how easy it is for us to quote Mr. Root and Mr. Wilson, and to have them retort with equally explicit utterances of Mr. Fish, Mr. Olney, and Mr. Roosevelt. Our chief witnesses have not left us an entirely consistent stream of testimony, and it is difficult to convince the South Americans that the pacific utterances which we ourselves believe represent the true current of American policy are more valid than the belligerent statements on which they rely. It would not be nearly so serious if both parties agreed heartily upon something which students knew was actually wrong; it is not necessary that what they believe should be true, but that they should actually agree upon something,---the premise of close union and the basis of energetic action. We need not attempt to discover which view of American history is true; the vital fact is that the South Americans have repeatedly declined to accept our version.
They are inclined to interpret the utterances of our statesmen by the logic of their actions. Like the European, the South American is skeptical as to the importance of pledges, of promises, or intentions, and relies almost entirely upon the logic of facts. We remember many times in the past when we have foreborne to act in the spirit of aggression; they cannot forget the times when we have not foreborne to act. Leaving aside all disputed facts or events susceptible of more than one interpretation, as thoroughly moderate and representative a South American as Calderon states the case against us thus:
The northern Republic has been the beneficiary of an incessant territorial expansion; in 1803 it acquired Louisiana; in 1819, Florida; in 1845 and 1850, Texas; the Mexican provinces in 1848 and 1852, and Alaska in 1858. The annexation of Hawaii took place in 1898. In the same year Porto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, and one of the Marianne Islands, passed by the Treaty of Paris, into the hands of the United States. They obtained the Samoan Islands in 1890, wished to buy the Danish West Indies in 1902, and planted their imperialistic standard at Panama in 1903 . Interventions have become more frequent with the expansion of frontiers. The United States have recently intervened in the territory of Acre, there to found a republic of rubber gatherers; at Panama, there to develop a province and construct a canal; in Cuba, under cover of the Platt amendment, to maintain order in the interior; in San Domingo, to support the civilizing revolution and overthrow the tyrants; in Venezuela, and in Central America, to enforce upon these nations, torn by intestine disorders, the political and financial tutelage of the imperial democracy. In Guatemala and Honduras the loans concluded with the monarchs of North American finance have reduced the people to a new slavery. Supervision of the customs and the dispatch of pacificatory squadrons to defend the interests of the Anglo-Saxon have enforced peace and tranquility; such are the means employed. . . . The Yankee ideal, then, is fatally contrary to Latin-American independence. (1)
Recent events have roused South American apprehensions much more rapidly than the pacific utterances of our statesmen have been able to allay them. Until the present, South America has been protected from European aggression and, as they believe, from American aggression by the English fleet. For more than half a century after the declaration of independence by the South American republics, England interposed a determined resistance to the attempts of the United States to extend its influence in Latin America. This is the view accepted in Europe and in Latin America. When the rise of the German fleet and other circumstances elsewhere described caused the concentration of the English fleet in the North Sea, and the decision to hand over the supremacy of the Western Hemisphere for the time being to the United States, the South Americans became extremely uneasy and apprehensive of the worst. The Spanish-American War had seemed to them the baldest sort of aggression, but the founding of the Panama Republic, our recent dealings with the small Central American states, and in particular our recent refusal to recognize Huerta as President of Mexico, were in their eyes flagrant, unprovoked aggression, aggravated a thousandfold by statements of pacific intent and the denial of any desire at conquest. As if we had not conquered vast areas of Latin America in the last few years as fully as if we had declared war and waged it! As if we have not robbed many thousands of Latin Americans of everything except the barest shadow of political independence! If this does not spell aggression, they ask us to furnish them with some version of our acts which will be more consistent with the actual events than are our protestations of amity and peace. They know that we are not at present equipped for the conquest of South America, but they know that we can easily prepare. They believe that while we can achieve our purposes by peaceful penetration, spheres of influence, benevolent assimilation, and manifest destiny, we shall not bother to create armies and build fleets; but they ask us to have at least the decency to acknowledge that, by whatever name we call it, this is conquest.
One other issue has risen to prominence, and is more important than is usually admitted. South American peoples are the result of a mixture of Spanish, Indian, and negro blood, in which usually the Indian or the negro predominates over the Spanish. They are what we are pleased to term in the United States a half-breed nation, and therefore view the attitude of Americans toward the Indian, the negro, and the half-breed with peculiar interest. Our treatment of those three classes is a very ominous shadow, indeed, cast in the path of Pan-Americanism. In our relations with them during the last three centuries, in the present opinion of the American people about all three classes, they see foreshadowed the probable attitude towards them of a nation of this power in the north, whose existence they feel is perilous to them, and whose aggression is dangerous and near. Indeed, it is our attitude on this question which provides them with the uncontrovertible proof of aggression. The mere fact that it is not difficult to demonstrate that few persons in the United States have any such ideas or, perhaps one should say, are even aware of any such notions, makes no vital difference. They are written so plainly upon the past history of the white man in the New World that all the protestations of statesmen and the rhetoric of orators cannot veil them from the eyes of the descendants of the red man and the black man.
When the whites came to the Western Hemisphere they brought with them two premises of action, both of which, to all intents and purposes, were one and the same: only white men and only Christians had rights or could own land. The whites talked about discovery, about the first finding of what the red man and his ancestors for countless generations had known! The assumption was plain: until some white man found it, it had not existed at all. Only the white man could claim title to the land. Strange kings who had never seen the New World granted to favorites and dependents millions of acres of land occupied by Indians who had inherited them from remote ancestors. Occupation, possession, use---all were futile to protect the Indian against dispossession. He owned nothing; he had no title; he possessed no rights which demanded recognition. Two damning facts were proved against him: he was not a white man; he was not a Christian. He could never become a white man, though he might become a Christian; and the whites recognized no rights or privileges of any human being in the New World unless he was white. On the whole, these general premises were strictly followed.
Only white men were citizens for more than three centuries; only white men could govern; and no Indian's consent was asked nor his opposition regarded. Again and again he was pushed from his property without scruple and without apology by white men who did not regard him as existing at all. That he might have rights was not to the majority even a tenable supposition or a speculative possibility. Ever since the white man landed in the Western Hemisphere to the present-day the red man and his descendants have been exploited and hounded from place to place.
The negro had still fewer rights; worse yet was his lot. That the Indian could go where he pleased so long as he did not interfere with the white man was generally admitted: but the black man was not free. Year after year white men and Christians went to Africa, seized the black man, carried him from his home, and sold him like live stock or lumber in the Western Hemisphere, in North America, in South America and in the islands of the sea. He was a heathen; he was not white; he never could be white, neither he nor his descendants. Virtuous and sincere men debated in the eighteenth and even in the nineteenth century whether the negro could have a soul. We ought to blush to record that until a short time ago that question was usually answered in North America in the negative. The Indian's land they took from him, the Indian's property was theirs, and they exploited it. They robbed the black man of his home and often of his family; they denied him his soul; took even the little that he had, his liberty, and only too often his life. It must be remembered that we are dealing here, not alone with negro slavery in the United States, but with negro slavery in the West Indies, in Central and South America. The negro slavery against which the North protested was mild, just, and expedient in comparison with the negro slavery which is still remembered in South and Central America and in the West Indian islands. Their traditions show it at its worst.
The modern South American is proud of his race, proud of his country, aware of personal attainments and a right to life, liberty, and property; but he knows that in all probability there flows in his veins some of the blood of the red man and some of the blood of the black man. He knows that the white man has treated the halfbreed precisely as a full-blooded Indian or negro, and that in the United States the slightest tincture of either is likely to create unfortunate distinctions. To-day this is passing. The Indian and the negro are both taking their place in the American community, but it is too recent to remove from the mind of South Americans the haunting suspicion that the United States looks upon Latin America as a half-breed country whose people cannot own their land, who are not entitled to its resources as against white men. They see in Pan-Americanism and in the Monroe Doctrine something still of the old attitude of the Spanish conqueror and the English adventurer, and explicitly compare the United States with both. While so black a shadow remains as the past dealings of white men with the Indian and the negro, mutual confidence between the United States as a white nation and the Latin American republics as half-breed states is difficult to predicate. They cannot forget, nor can they believe that we have forgotten or changed. Our assumption of a tutelage over them, our insistence that we must keep the peace in Latin America, help the erring and unfortunate, contains for them a denial of their own rights, and a degree of interference with them which would be incredible if we really believed them white men. They can credit our acceptance of their economic progress, they can conceive that their increase in strength would make us hesitate in the pursuit of schemes of aggression; but time and time alone can convince them that we no longer regard their ancestry as an indelible stain.
If the nearness of countries to each other is to be the principle of association, why does not the United States seek to dominate Canada? If lack of development and ignorance of the arts of civilization is a criterion, why does not the United States interfere in Africa, and assert a right of tutelage in Morocco and the Congo Free State? They are in point of distance no farther than the majority of South American states from New York. Why do we not spread our protecting ægis over Turkey or Japan, which are neither in the hands of white men nor of Christians? The palpable fact that we do not assert even a shadow of right in any of these countries the Latin Americans explain very simply: it is because some European nation of white Christians is already performing this duty in that territory. We recognize the claims of Christians and white men, and do not interfere even with the most shadowy of their titles. With Latin America we interfere because we do not, they persistently insist, recognize them as possessing rights equal to our own, because we do not actually recognize them as white men in our deeds. If we did think of them as white men, as Christians and as equals, tutelage, protection, interference, exploitation, would be as unthinkable and impossible between the United States and Latin America as between the United States and Bulgaria, Morocco, or Liberia. Was anything heard, they ask, with considerable force, about the policing of Latin America by the United States between 1783 and 1823? The United States obviously recognized Spain as paramount and supreme, because Spain was a white nation, and had equal rights with other white nations. Does not the Monroe Doctrine date from the moment of the Spanish defeat? The instant other white men's hands were removed, did not the United States advance its claims to impose its own white hands, on the assumption, apparently, that some white men must exercise at least a supervision over their weaker brethren?
To over-emphasize this aspect of the situation is easy; to ignore it is fatal. No really close student of Latin America can deny that something of this sort lies behind a good many otherwise inexplicable things. The difficulty lies not in the truth of such charges, but in the fact that they are believed to be true.
The general policy of the white man in his relations toward those whom he chooses to regard as his inferiors has been to insist that they shall become like him. They must learn his language, go to his schools, wear his kind of clothes, think the same ideas, believe in the greatness of the white man. The Spanish brought this policy to South America, as the English brought it to North America, as the United States carried it to the Philippines and Cuba. Is not the complaint of the United States against Mexico fundamentally the objection that its people are not like Americans, and do not govern themselves according to the notions of democracy and law which Americans believe to be right? Does not even the mild policy of President Wilson insist that the Mexicans shall become as Americans, and understand the words, law, order, and democracy as Americans understand them? The Latin Americans passionately resent all insinuations that any of them or all of them need to be changed, developed, educated, or civilized on the American model. They regard themselves as entirely worthy and respectable citizens; they approve of their own ideas; and consider their government no further short of ideal rule than many Americans think the government of the United States is. The burning of negroes, the lynching of thieves, the work of vigilance committees in the far West, the failure to apprehend and punish murderers---all these the South Americans evidence as a lack of civilization in the United States quite as serious as their own particular difficulties. If graft is common in Latin America, does it not flourish north of the Rio Grande? Is it worse for some Latin American official to receive money from an American trust for privileges than it is for American State legislatures to take it from the same hand for a similar object? Is the stealing from the people by officials in Central America different in kind or in purpose from the fleecing of lambs in Wall Street or the operations of certain trusts? Finally, the South Americans do not consider the United States a model according to which they wish to be reformed. If they were to pick out teachers and tutors, they would much prefer the English, the French, or the Germans, all three of whom they regard as their superiors not only in strength, but in the arts of civilization, and from whom they are willing and eager to learn.
These are the obstacles which seem to stand in the way of a mutuality of confidence and faith in the Western Hemisphere. Scarcely anything more fundamental can be conceived than the present lack of these essentials to unity and cooperation. To demonstrate the falsity of these notions, we must prove something more than our own consciousness of innocence and rectitude; we must convince them of the falsity of their fears and assumptions. How this can be accomplished, and when, it would be rash to predict, but it certainly can be done only by acts and deeds both striking and disinterested. The occasional speeches and protestations of individual statesmen will not avail. Of the good-will of individuals the South Americans are already convinced. It is the nation, the United States as a nation, which must speak, and speak decisively and plainly, before the Latin Americans will believe what we know to be true.
Chapter footnote:
1. Calderon, Latin America, pp. 303-304; 306. Return to text
.
ADMINISTRATIVE AND LEGAL PROBLEMS
THE tangible expression of Pan-Americanism would necessarily be the administrative and legal fabric created by the various American republics to cope with those problems common to them all, in the existence of which the new bond of union could alone find justification. The complexity of the administrative fabric would indicate the closeness of the bond and the immediacy of the problems, as well as their variety, number, and fundamental or temporary character. To it all foreign nations would look for an earnest of the reality of the new state, and by its strength and efficiency would they judge the importance and extent of the connection. Pan-Americanism finding its expression solely in infrequent diplomatic congresses, the delegates of which were without power to act, would have no administrative fabric that would deserve the name. A customs' union, with certain agreements in regard to uniform tariffs, currency, weights, measures, and the like would be a reality, but not a state, and would represent a very limited type of common interest. Until Pan-Americanism can find tangible existence in a strong, independent, efficient state, until it provides at least for a common administration, common courts and law, even though the legislative powers should be quasi-diplomatic in character and of the nature of international treaties, it will be a dream, a vision, a hope, of little influence in international affairs.
Before the dream can be realized and the vision exist, this strong administration must be the very real expression of mutual interests, existing conditions and popular ideals. A democratic state not closely linked to conditions will be a fiction. In this administrative and legal fabric the mutuality of the economic interests of the various members of the Confederation and their mutual faith and confidence in each other's good intentions should find expression. The uniformity of regulations and laws would necessarily be closely associated with something like a similarity of conditions in the various states. From the general notions already existent in the community, of right, justice, ethics, and expediency, would the new rules and laws draw their breath of life. Unless in fact the administrative and legal fabrics are the actual expression of an approximate agreement among the various peoples of the confederation upon these fundamental notions of right, justice, and expediency, unless they express the mutual confidence of the people in one another and the realization of mutual economic interests, unless they are based upon homogeneity of conditions, the confederation would scarcely be operative. It could not provide effectively for the needs, common to all the states and their citizens, which it was created to solve. An equality between the citizens of the various states would also normally find expression in the laws of the new confederation, while the provisions regarding procedure would necessarily place all duly accredited citizens in one state, whenever absent from home, on a par with the citizens of all other states. The confederation would be an artificial bond, a mere potentiality, until such an administrative and legal fabric had actually come into existence. Until such a fabric gave expression to some such fundamental conceptions as these, it could not itself be a reality. It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the vital significance to Pan-Americanism of these prerequisites.
The foundation, for such an administrative and legal structure seems to be lacking, however; the facts themselves, as we have already suggested, do not answer to the assumptions. The mutuality of economic interests, the mutual faith and confidence in one another's good intentions are at present only too clearly non-existent. The general lack of acquaintance between the United States and Latin America makes difficult any agreement upon the general postulates of political science. But we are here more particularly concerned with specifically technical difficulties in the way of a strong, stable, and efficient administration.
The difference in size between the United States and Latin America is a formidable bar. The United States contains alone about one-quarter more people than the whole of Latin America, even though these people are located upon an area only one third as large. The economic development of the United States is so much more advanced and complex that the disparity in wealth and resources is still more striking. Stable government, again, is so old in the United States and so comparatively recent in South America as to create a difference in administrative and legal tradition of the most formidable type. Yet it has not been found possible in the United States to administer the Western communities according to the traditions and precepts eminently successful in New England. The difference of economic conditions, of social advancement, the difference in the age alone of the State, has made it necessary to treat the two in radically different ways, even though the problem in general presented striking fundamental similarities. If a community of New Englanders located in Ohio has found expedient different practical methods from those adopted by New Englanders in Oregon or from the New Englanders in New England, the imagination is scarcely capable of depicting the necessary practical adjustments for communities as different in economic development, as unequal in age, and as sundered by race, language, and religion, as are the United States and the Latin-American republics. Common administrative and legal requirements which would meet the approval of all the States and work to the practical satisfaction of all citizens would probably represent the experience of years and be the final product of a long series of experiments, and in all probability of numerous dismal failures. Nothing short of strong mutual ties of interest and confidence could maintain a Pan-American Confederation during this period of administrative and legal experimentation. If the difficulties and differences between the United States and the Latin-American republics as a whole were not sufficient, the past has provided a very similar situation in Latin America. We speak in loose fashion of two entities; we write for the sake of convenience about the two Americas; and tend to assume an essential homogeneity of conditions in both, or, at least, extremes no greater than between the various States of our own Federal Union. But as a matter of fact "America" is a fiction, because we tacitly exclude Canada, Alaska, and Central America, while "Latin America" has no reasonable basis for existence. It is a historical and geographic caption used for convenience by historians and scientists to denote the fact that at one time a large territory was nominally subject to Spain and achieved political independence at the same epoch. A few relics of the Spanish occupation ---some proportion of Spanish blood in the people, a general adhesion to the Roman Catholic Church, some general notions of law due to Spanish ideas about political science---have lent a certain respectability and a semblance of accuracy to the name. But the phrase denotes no greater uniformity of conditions or of ideas than the word Europe or Asia.
The number of states in Latin America is large, the variety of natural conditions is astounding and creates radically different economic and administrative problems in different parts of the continent. The disparity in development between certain states is almost as great as between the United States and Latin America as a whole, while the antiquity of stable government varies from states whose administrative traditions extend for generations, to those who have to our thinking not yet achieved it. The Argentine Republic and Brazil occupy between them four-sevenths of the total area of the Southern Continent, have half of the total population, and more than half of the commerce. They contain two highly developed regions, one in southern Brazil, and the other in the northern part of Argentina. Here the interior has been knit to the coast by an excellent system of railroads; agriculture has been developed; education and the arts have made progress, and find their expression in large and beautiful cities. But northern Brazil and southern Argentine Republic are by no means as advanced, and the great bulk of the enormous area of the former is inhabited only by savages; there are parts of it which the white man's foot has not yet trodden. Indeed, the general uncertainty as to its topography and conditions is so marked that controversy has risen over facts which would in most countries have been established beyond doubt half a century ago. Chile is a large and wealthy state on the western coast, with an ambitious and energetic population and a very large foreign trade. Indeed, the A B C countries, as these three states are called, have about four fifths of the total foreign trade of South America.
Their existence creates an administrative situation, so far as the other states are concerned, not different in kind or degree from that between the United States and Latin America as a whole. The smaller states fear absorption by these large entities almost as much as the Central American states fear absorption by the United States. Between these large states and the smaller South and Central American states there are no mutuality of economic interest, and no faith or confidence in one another's intentions. A uniform administration and law for the whole of Latin America would in all probability antagonize the small states if it satisfied the large, and fail of the support of the large states if it were satisfactory to the smaller. The racial unity, while striking when Latin America is compared with the United States, is not much greater, when the republics are compared with one another, than the racial resemblances of many states in Europe which have maintained their racial differences for centuries. As against the United States, as against Europe, the Latin-American republics are ready to unite, because they find in resistance to foreign aggression a mutual interest of undoubted strength. But if the specter of conquest could be removed, the one common bond between them would disappear, and the probability of agreement upon other points would be not much greater than that of agreement between them and the United States, Germany, or England upon administrative and legal questions. Indeed, Pan-Americanism finds in its way not only physical and economic inequality between the Northern and Southern continents, not only administrative and intellectual inequality between the United States and Latin America, but an inequality in all those directions between the Latin-American republics which is not less striking and significant, and perhaps not less difficult to obviate.
The administrative task of forming a federated state to extend over two such enormous continents, to govern 175,000,000 people and about 12,000,000 square miles of territory, must not be forgotten. Administration depends for efficiency upon rapidity of communication. The distance in space between the extremes of the new confederation would be as great as that between England and South Africa, which is regarded by many as so great as to preclude governmental connection. The area covered would approach the vastness of European and Asiatic Russia, a state supposedly too large for effective administration, and it would not present the same facilities for transportation that Russia possesses. Contact between the various parts would be slow and therefore difficult.
Such physical conditions would place before a common administration the maximum of administrative difficulties. The number of transactions involving the various countries, to say nothing of their respective citizens, the multitude of possible difficulties for the courts to solve, of administrative disputes to be settled, of officials to be appointed and supervised, of bills to be paid, of accounts to be rendered, would, without any complications at all, even in the most favorable circumstances, provide problems which no single government in the world has hitherto successfully struggled with, and which have disrupted empires smaller in area and less ambitious in scope. The English Empire is not an administrative reality, for the Imperial Government attempts only a very general supervision of the great bulk of the territory involved. The Roman Empire was much smaller in size. Indeed, Pan-Americanism, even if all its premises were realities, might easily fail for lack of ability to solve the elemental problems of efficient and rapid action and of prompt obedience, responsibility, and honesty of officials. It is surely worth remembering in this connection that we are none too well satisfied in the United States with the success of the Federal Government in all these matters, and that the Latin-American republics are in most instances obviously less successful than we are. Neither would be likely to deal efficiently with an administrative problem in its very nature more difficult than any yet solved by a civilized community.
It will perhaps be enough to advert to the difficulties of choosing officials for the confederation satisfactory to all its members. By common consent democracy has been less successful in the choosing and appointing of officers than in any other regard. Yet upon securing capable and efficient men would depend the whole success, and perhaps the very existence, of Pan-Americanism, however weak and nominal the bond might be. Here in particular would appear the influence of the United States and of the three largest South American states. They would normally expect to divide between them the most important posts and the bulk of the smaller posts. This would hardly be agreeable to the seventeen other states. If the general experience in all twenty-one republics is any criterion, there would soon appear undue influence of various kinds, underground wires, and back-stairs influence of the sort which makes government difficult at Washington and in our own States, and which has almost made stable government impossible in several of the small Latin-American republics. Estimate all these influences at a minimum, and they would still aggravate the other administrative difficulties to a point which would perhaps overthrow the whole fabric.
One of the most vital aspects of the possible bond which might be called Pan-Americanism, would be the uniformity of commercial law and a criminal code and procedure for all the American republics. This might be perfected without necessarily involving the creation of an administrative fabric and would be of obvious utility, but the difficulties of agreement about the general provisions and the practical details of any kind of legal system are fundamental. Naturally the United States would object to adopting Latin-American ideas as a whole, and the Latin Americans would object to accepting our Federal law as a whole. We should, indeed, have much difficulty in providing a set of principles and practical provisions in the United States which lawyers would uniformly accept as representative or workable. So much of the law of the United States is state law, and so varied are its provisions upon fundamental questions of personal liberty and commercial expediency, that the enactment of a uniform Federal law, obviously desirable and generally agreed to be expedient, has usually presented such practical difficulties in reaching a compromise mutually satisfactory that action has sometimes involved years, and has more often proved impossible. To provide, therefore, a uniform series of principles for the twenty-one American republics would require not only some general agreement upon the broad principles of justice and expediency, but some sort of compromise between the different practical expedients already used in forty-eight States of our Federal Union and twenty South American republics. Yet upon the satisfactory character of the general principles evolved and the practical expedients selected would depend the real usefulness of a system of common courts.
Even greater difficulties would present themselves to the judges of the confederation in an attempt to apply broad principles to individual cases. The law as enforced invariably reflects something of the community's ideals of morals, of ethics, of what is fair, best, and reasonable, while it usually falls to the judge to apply these standards as well as the technicalities of the law to individual cases. It is here that the lack of racial unity, of a common language, of a general agreement upon the postulates of religion would present the most serious practical difficulties that the officers of the confederation would have to solve. A confederated state might satisfactorily adjust itself to the governments of the twenty-one republics, and by the exercise of great tact and discretion might possibly be able to secure harmony. If its budget was not large and its taxes were collected by the governments of the various republics, the people would seldom realize the expense of the confederation or feel called upon to consider its position and pretentions. In the courts, however, individuals would meet individuals, and personal prejudices and passions would find an outlet only too persistently, and would usually present personal, racial, and religious stimuli of such a nature that a settlement of the case satisfactory to both parties would be abnormally difficult to reach. What could be done in murder trials, where the culprit and the murdered were of different race and religion? Would it be possible for public opinion in the United States to view with entire equanimity the trial of a white man and an American citizen by a South American jury composed of Indians, negroes, and half-breeds? Would the South Americans find any less objectionable the trial of a South American citizen by a jury in Texas or Arizona? The burning of negroes and the lynching of "greasers" have made a decided impression in Latin America, and are a good deal more common in the United States than most of us realize. Here the mutual faith and confidence of the various communities would be most essential, and here its absence would do the most harm. As conditions are at present, it would be scarcely possible to convince public sentiment in certain parts of the United States that an American citizen convicted by a South American jury was not hanged on general principles, or to demonstrate to a good many portions of the South American public that a South American criminal was not dealt with harshly in our Southern States because of his race and color.
Commercial cases would be the most common, and would present difficulties less serious in degree, but not less grave in nature. The most valuable service a uniform system of courts might render would be the decision of cases between the citizens of different states and those widely sundered in space. Among the cases which would appear before such tribunals would be naturally those upon the border-line between law and equity, where the adjustment of the interests of the parties could not be effected by the plain interpretation of principles or yet by clearly established precedent. These are always the most difficult types to decide, because they involve the interpretation of principles and precedents in the light of the general notions of lawyers and judges as to what is fair, right, and expedient. Decisions of this sort would be less certain to meet the approval of parties as little acquainted with each other as Latin Americans and citizens of the United States. The interpretation of oral contracts, the definition of equities in property, the decision about the facts in cases arising from the failure specifically to perform contracts---all these would inevitably appear. They would present the maximum difficulties of solution, because of the ease with which one party or the other could plead an insufficient knowledge of the other's language, and therefore a misunderstanding of what he said, or a difference in commercial customs, permitting him to demand certain allowances for a delay in specific performance, which the other would regard as unjust and unnecessary in the light of the business ethics of his own community. The judges would be continually meeting a series of irreconcilable differences, where compromises would be difficult, because both parties were right according to their own customs. The American business temperament furthermore accommodates itself with impatience to the dilatory proceedings in our own courts. It would regard proceedings that we considered normally swift in South America as entirely impossible. Here, again, would be a constant source of friction.
The most difficult issue before the confederation as a whole would be that of some sanction which would enforce obedience to its commands, and insure the payment of its taxes by its own members and their respective citizens. The seventeen smaller states would easily be dealt with; but it is difficult to see what would happen if the confederation decided, after due deliberation, that some rule or statute was vital for the vast majority of its members that the United States or Brazil should declare with equal solemnity and vehemence was destructive of its interests. How could the confederation possibly compel one of its largest states to yield obedience? Would not a confederation dependent upon voluntary obedience degenerate promptly into something as weak and despicable as the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire in the eighteenth century? Coercion would be out of the question, partly because of the distance between the strong powers who would necessarily furnish the major part of any army which the confederation might form, but chiefly because the confederation could not possibly keep under arms an army large enough to coerce one of the four large states. It would be as hopeless to attack Brazil as to coerce the United States. There has been some dispute among political scientists as to how far force is necessary for the existence of a strong government, but the general opinion seems to be that adequate force must be at least latent and potential, and the will of the community to use it thoroughly well understood. In the United States the existence of that force is now admitted, but it is not so generally conceded in Latin America. Certainly, any confederation supposedly created for the common interests of twenty-one sovereign states, four of which could virtually nullify any of its decisions, could never have had any really strong corporate existence.
The experience of confederations of sovereign states in the past proves only too conclusively that a union between numerous small communities and two or three large states, with one state as large as all the rest, invariably results either in the domination of the confederation by that single state or in the administrative weakness and practical nullity of the confederation as a result of the union of the majority against the one. Either eventuality would be fatal to Pan-Americanism; the actual superiority of the United States would lead either to its domination of the confederation or to its disruption. A political deputation once waited upon Lincoln with some request which he deemed unreasonable, and was asked by the President how many legs a sheep would have if you called its tail a leg. They promptly replied, as was expected, "Five." "No," said Lincoln, "calling its tail a leg would not make it one." Calling the United States, therefore, the equal of each of the twenty Latin-American republics would not change the fact that the United States is more populous, wealthy, and powerful than the twenty added together. We who live in the United States are apt to forget this. It is rarely, if ever, forgotten south of the Rio Grande.
We shall have made as students little progress toward the comprehension of currents of thought in Latin America if we have failed to appreciate the strength of the democratic movement. They are glad to have the United States protect them from European aggression, they are anxious to call in England or Germany to protect them from the United States; but they have not the slightest intention of forming an alliance of any sort with any power which will give the latter any influence or control, or which will involve any sort of organic union with it. They wish to achieve for Latin America an actual independence of the rest of the world. They consider that they have as much right to political independence as any nation, and as little reason to accept dictation, guidance, instruction, or assistance as the United States itself or any nation in Europe. They look upon themselves as our peers. We shall be lacking in candor if we decline to admit that the impulse behind this movement is identical with the motive of our own Revolution. We denied the right of England to advise us, guide us, help us; we declined to recognize any need for advice or help. Pan-Americanism means in Latin America a united movement by the Latin-American republics against the pretentions of the United States. There is a good deal more active agitation going on south of the Rio Grande for this purpose than for any other purpose the republics have in common.
But they are no less determined to preserve their political independence of one another and have not the slightest intention of sacrificing one jot or tittle of sovereignty to a Latin-American confederation, any more than they have of yielding to the domination of the United States or of Europe. By democracy they understand self-government, the government of a political entity by its own people, and the recognition by the rest of the world of any government they see fit to organize, whether or not it is in harmony with the definition of government in other countries. They themselves have the right, and the exclusive right, to decide what is good government for them; any attempt to interfere with their right to reach a conclusion is domination and conquest, whatever ethical and commercial precepts acceptable to other nations may be quoted in its defense. It is condemned as undemocratic, and unwarranted by the mere fact that it is made, either by arms, by proclamation, or by diplomatic correspondence. The methods and the reasons are not to the point; the thing itself is offensive and wrong, and they will have none of it. They see no more reason for the United States to undertake the alteration of Mexican government than to attempt the reformation of the government of Russia. The present current of South American thought tends strongly toward national independence for the republics individually, not only of the United States and of Europe, but of one another.
.
SOCIAL OBSTACLES
INTIMATE intercourse between the peoples of the various American states, and in particular between Latin Americans as a whole and the citizens of the United States, will be an essential and fundamental factor in any close or successful bond between them. Upon it alone will depend the mutual faith and confidence which each ought to have for the other; to the extent that it is intimate and real will be the depth and verity of the common confidence. Without some such intercourse, the establishment of any kind of bond between the American republics must be problematical and temporary. Without it any administrative connection will be weak and meaningless. Without an actual acquaintanceship of citizens, all diplomatic arrangements between the republics as sovereign states will be empty and artificial forms. Democracy is a very real thing, and a democratic government over the twenty-one republics presumes the cooperation and therefore the acquaintanceship of the individual citizens.
A necessary postulate of Pan-Americanism is the legal equality of the citizens of all of the republics with one another; its unavoidable corollary is social equality. The South Americans frankly and freely discuss the mixed racial character of the various countries, and make no secret of the intermingling of the blood of the red man and of the black man with that of the white man. Mixed marriages are common with full-blooded Indians or negroes, and do not receive social reprobation of any sort. Full-blooded Indians or negroes have risen to positions of great prominence, have, indeed, been presidents of some of the states, and have occupied in the political and social life of Latin America truly significant positions. Their democracy knows nothing of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
There can be no doubt that South America contains many people as broadly intellectual, as widely read, as highly cultivated, with as high moral standards and noble character as the average men and women in the United States. Let us not argue the question whether the ablest South Americans are the equals of the ablest men and women in the United States. There can certainly be no doubt that there are many in South America who are easily the equals in every respect of those who consider themselves in the United States people of education and culture. Abroad, especially in Paris, the South Americans have no more difficulty in securing social recognition than the citizens of the United States have. Indeed, any North American who has spent any length of time in Paris has very likely had the experience of saying that he is an American, and of hearing the query, "A South American?" Unquestionably the South Americans would demand and expect the fullest possible recognition of social equality in all parts of the United States. There is no reason to-day why they should not expect it as a result of the present diplomatic relations. In particular they would expect freedom of access to hotels, theaters, trains, and public places of all sorts without so much as a whisper or a fleeting suspicion in anyone's mind that they did not belong there. Intermarriage would inevitably follow, and this, too, without thought or expectation of any loss of cast or status by either one of the contracting parties. Any other basis of intimate association than this with the South Americans is unthinkable and would be rejected by them with the scorn it would deserve.
Nevertheless, the obstacles in the way of the establishment of such social equality are undeniably great; and the obstacles in the way of its acceptance by large bodies of men and women in certain sections of the United States are indubitably greater. "Half-breeds and their descendants," says Calderon, "govern the Ibero-American democracy." "The native race, the Spanish race, and the Negro race are everywhere mingled in similar proportions." "The people of the United States hate the half-breed. . . . No manifestation of Pan-Americanism could suffice to destroy the racial prejudice as it exists north of Mexico." These temperate but determined sentences represent a feeling of almost passionate strength which usually finds expression among South Americans in anything but a restrained and judicial manner.
The color problem is indeed the most serious question open to consideration in connection with the future of that great continent; but it is not, indeed, the social equality of the various peoples which is under consideration. The real problem of South America lies in the fact that the present inhabitants are the result of the mixture of the Spanish conquerors with a native people whose cultural development had reached the period of middle barbarism only in the most advanced tribes, who were at the time of the conquest perhaps hundreds of thousands of years in development behind the oldest peoples of whom we have any record in Europe. To this mixture of the civilized white and the barbarian was added before it had fairly became a mixture a third element still more incongruous. The negroes, brought as slaves during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to Latin America were literally savages, and were further behind the Indian in ethnical development than the Indian was behind the white man. Of the three elements the whites were numerically the weakest, and in the natural growth of the population the whites and their descendants have not grown as rapidly as the full-blooded types. In the course of time, however the three have become intermingled beyond recognition, and there are few to-day who can prove themselves possessed of pure blood in the ordinarily accepted sense of the word. These three elements thus combined were located by the accident of history upon a tropical soil where industry was difficult, and where agriculture and surface mining were, for many, many decades, the only possible occupations. Generous nature poured before them a profusion of products suited to their needs for sustenance and deprived them of the incentive of work for the purpose of preserving life. According to American and European ideas they have not been industrious as a race, and the problem of labor is a very vital one.
The real issue, causing at present grave concern in the minds of the extremely intelligent leaders is the future of this mixed people. Have they the qualities necessary to enable them to continue indefinitely to own their own land? Are they sufficiently industrious, intelligent, and susceptible of instruction, to perform in South America, with capital borrowed from Europe, and with the aid of European or American engineers and scientists, a feat similar to that achieved by the Japanese? Unquestionably, a considerable proportion of the population has already demonstrated its possession of these qualities, but we must not forget that there are millions of people in South America who are not yet so advanced, and whose capacity and industry still remain open to question. This section of the population is poor, densely ignorant, superstitious, and apparently lacks any disposition of its own toward the accumulation of information, wealth, or cultivation. They are satisfied with what they have; the natural produce of the country suffices for their simple wants and they are unconscious of their own deficiencies judged by other standards. They do not conceive any useful purpose in hard labor and unremitting toil for the acquisition of wealth which they would not know how to spend and whose mere possession would not give them satisfaction. A large proportion of this section of the population are full-blooded Indians, and a considerable number are full-blooded negroes. In the interior regions, still almost unexplored, are a good many hundred thousand savages whose number and condition is a matter of conjecture. Although the one may not be large, the other is in all probability such that it will increase the difficulty of existing problems.
Can this apparently inert population be roused to actual efficiency? Are the more developed really capable of grappling with this stupendous problem of the less developed? Have they the necessary qualifications of leadership as well as the indispensable information and powers of analysis? Have they the practical organizing capacity for the disillusionizing common sense that solves great practical issues and reaches the bottom of vital problems? If South America is to continue in the hands of South Americans for the next century, the people now living in South America and their descendants must show some of these qualities. The leaders already realize that political independence will be only nominal until economic and intellectual development has reached a point which makes the South American states equals in every respect to the great communities in Europe. Equality must be a reality, or independence, real independence, and the actual control of the future and destiny of those peoples will always be in question.
Thus the social problem underlies all others and looms portentous upon the political and economic horizon. They see the fate of the Indian in the United States: the continued dispossession, the lack of social equality of Indians as Indians (except for the few individuals), the lack of legal status, the certainty that the Indian people as a race is about to disappear as the individuals now composing it are slowly absorbed into the community of the whites. The Indian himself has never shown at any time in the United States a capacity of organization sufficient to make effective resistance. Communities like the Creeks and Cherokees, who were certainly as highly trained in agriculture and industry, as capable in organization and administration as the vast majority in many South American states, were unable to resist the steady pressure of the white man's superior development and capacity, and lost little by little their identity and national existence as well as their national independence. As Indians, they are gone. The Cherokee Nation is no more. When the Latin Americans see the great waves of European and Asiatic immigration rolling toward their shores, when they view the communities already founded, their scorn for the half-breed's methods, their readiness to dispossess him and take his land, their belief that they will one day rule him in the person of their descendants, they are apprehensive lest it portend the beginning in Latin America of that same process now almost complete in the United States. They are considering restrictions on immigration, the possibility of erecting a political barrier that will exclude the white man, or at any rate retard this process. Whether or not Latin America can attain this reality of racial independence and perpetuate its present political independence will depend upon the extent to which as a whole they possess the racial qualities essential to the formation and maintenance of strong, efficient governments, capable of peaceful administration, and also to the development of their economic resources by their own labor and intelligence. In particular the future demands leadership from those South Americans who have already attained individually to European standards of efficiency and culture. If they can solve these problems, if, in particular, they can energize the great bulk of the population, they will be able in time to make real this vision of South American independence, this hope of South American democracy, this dream of a South America for South Americans; states which will be powerful, wealthy, cultured, and respected in the Congress of Nations.
They see in the refusal of the United States to recognize their racial capacity and social equality the evidence of a disposition on the part of the United States to interfere with this process before it is well begun. The claims for intervention to preserve stable government, the insistence upon a need for outside help in administration and finance, is to them the denial of the capacity of the more intelligent and educated to grapple successfully with this problem. They fear the intention of the United States to take the problem from their hands and repeat in Central and South America in due time that dread process, slow as the limping foot of time, sure as the coming of death, which spells the racial and national annihilation of these halfbreeds. They resent passionately the very notion that they are incapable of solving their own problems. They are furious that the United States should be unwilling to allow them to try to solve their own problems and should not have faith and confidence that time and experience might teach them to deal successfully with them. Mr. Wilson's attitude toward Mexico they understand and admire. It means for the first time the handing over of the problem to the natives of the country for them to settle, even although they regard as regrettable Mr. Wilson's statement that the settlement must eventually accord with American concepts of business, order, and efficiency.
All of these things then, the social problem connotes to the Latin American of intelligence. The racial prejudice against half-breeds in the United States connotes the same fears. Nor is it certain that this social line in the United States is not a most tangible obstacle in the way of convincing the Latin American that we do not intend aggression and conquest.
It is, therefore, thoroughly unfortunate that any attempt to create a closer bond of Pan-Americanism. should lead at once to claims of social equality which it would be fatal for us to deny, and which it would be almost equally ruinous to grant. How could we logically continue to maintain the present social barrier in the United States against the negro and the Indian? There have been numerous instances where individuals of both races have received under certain circumstances public and distinguished consideration; there are even parts of the country where something approaching social equality for all exists; but there can be no doubt that there is a feeling as wide-spread as the country that it would not be advisable to invite a negro or an Indian to dine in a conventional way, nor desirable to marry him to one's daughter. These are the vital things. To tolerate negroes and Indians in hotels, theaters, and sleeping-cars is a very slight concession, although one which is yet to be obtained in broad areas of the United States; but actual social intercourse on precisely the same plane with white people, and, chiefest of all, intermarriage; these are not seriously contemplated anywhere in the United States, while the mere suggestion arouses in the South and West passionate aversion. The social position of negroes and Indians of culture and intelligence is already difficult; it would become unendurable the moment Pan-Americanism became a reality. Its flagrant inconsistency with our own democratic and social premises would become so patent that it could not be maintained in decency after actual equality had been conceded to the Latin Americans. It is highly probable that an actual majority of the people of the United States would reject any closer union with Latin America, if they once clearly understood that it involved beyond doubt or question the granting of social as well as legal equality to Indians and negroes in the United States. It is only too clear that any closer union would be unanimously rejected south of the Rio Grande which did not provide the most explicit pledges of social equality. Indeed, before any sort of organic connection becomes possible, real demonstrations of social equality for Latin Americans, proving that they are actually accepted as equals in the United States, would be expected and sought by the leaders. If we have the slightest impartiality or candor as students, we shall recognize that they would be foolish even to contemplate anything less.
How far we are from actual union with Latin America, from cooperation based upon mutual trust, confidence, acquaintanceship should be patent to the least informed. Those to whom these considerations are new can scarcely conceive how hollow and vain the talk of close association sounds to those who have long known these facts. While such a social barrier exists, faith, confidence, respect, mutual credit in each other's protestations seem difficult to predicate. The Latin Americans see it, however, as a corollary of the great premise that the world is made for the white man, and that only white men are truly civilized or able to help the darker races toward civilization, or capable of assuming their guardianship through the long generations while they are being transformed into the white man's image. That the red man and the black man do not desire transformation seems never to have occurred to the white man, nor do their protestations and resistance usually avail. The time is at hand when those races in the world which are not white are about to challenge these claims of the white man and question their justice and ethics from the vantage ground of the white man's own premises of democracy. They see in the white man's country multitudes of unsolved problems, combining sorrow, cruelty, want, and ignorance. If the premises of democracy and of the white man's logic confer upon him the right to solve those problems in his own country and to exclude the interference of others, simply because the country is his and because he ought for that reason to solve problems,---they fail to understand how that same logic can vest in the white man not only a right but a bounden duty to interfere in their country for a solution of those same problems. Why should the white man deny a social equality to the red man, and the yellow man, and the black man, while he refuses them the right to deny him equality in their country? It is the premises and not the conclusions upon which we differ from the Latin Americans; upon things that are as indelible and impossible to change or conceal as race, color, and previous condition of servitude.
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DEFENSIVE WEAKNESS
WHAT now of Pan-Americanism as a solution of the problems which the republics in the Western Hemisphere will have to meet when Europe's victor appears? Would a Pan-American union bar his progress and foil his designs? Would a simple defensive alliance between the United States and the Latin republics accomplish the same end? It will surely be important for us to cast aside at this stage of our inquiry hypotheses and expectations, to consider only what seem to be veritable facts, and to estimate the probable success of such a joint attempt to defend the Western Hemisphere from European aggression. If we can show that the United States and Latin America may by their joint efforts conceivably shield each other from the conqueror, and achieve in concert what neither could have hoped to accomplish alone, we shall demonstrate something of the very first importance.
We shall prove something of equal significance, if it becomes probable or even possible that the joint efforts of the republics would not be likely to resist the victor with success.
Edward Everett Hale struck the keynote of the Pan-American situation in a phrase intended for a very different purpose: "No one ever heard of a man shouldering his musket to defend his boarding-house." To arouse individuals to self-sacrifice and lead them forth coolly to face death, there must be some object to defend precious beyond the need of explanation or exhortation. Even if we assume the possession of entirely adequate force by the nations in the Western Hemisphere to resist the victor, united action would still be exceedingly problematical, because the United States and the Latin republics lack a mutual interest to defend. The weakness of Pan-Americanism as a supposed solution of future difficulties lies in the almost certain impossibility of securing the cooperation for any such object.
It is a fallacy of the first importance to suppose that Latin America needs our protection: its political independence is not threatened by Europe because the motive for conquest is almost entirely lacking. If generations in England have deemed it inadvisable to make any attempt to secure dominion by a conquest requiring the use in a distant continent of a large European army, Germany has even more vital objections to such a policy for her position between France and Russia makes dangerous in the extreme the dispatching of any considerable force from the Fatherland. Nor would the conquest of South America be possible without the use of a truly huge army. Its defensive strength is great, not only because of its size, but because the lack of communication at all suitable for military needs between its various entities and between the coast and the interior would make a series of campaigns, rather than a single campaign, an absolute necessity. To subdue one state would be eminently possible; to subdue a group of states would require military operations of the most serious description; the continent would have to be conquered piecemeal. Even if we estimate the military ability of Latin America at the minimum and take little account of its fierce determination to preserve its independence, we shall be compelled to admit that conquest is so difficult as to be almost beyond the resources of even a first-class European power.
Latin America, however, is already lost! It has been in England's hands for nearly a century, and, far from regretting the circumstance, has found the connection profitable and one desirable to continue. All the republics know thoroughly well that England cherishes no designs against their political independence; they believe Germany to be also without intention to conquer them or even to invade them; they fear colonization but have no other reason to dread a closer economic connection with England or Germany. Their interests are the same as those of the Europeans and so long as neither conquest nor colonization is involved, the advantages are mutual beyond dispute.
It would not be wise at this great crisis for us to deny or indeed to fail to recognize frankly the Latin-American belief that the real enemy against whom they need protection and of whose political domination they are certainly afraid is the United States. They would consider the weakening of the position of the United States in the Western Hemisphere at the hands of Europe's victor far from detrimental to them, because the present arrangement between the United States and England, by which the United States has actual control of the Gulf of Mexico, has been almost their only reason for grave apprehension. If the result of the present war should be the expulsion of the United States from their waters, there would be few serious thinkers south of the Rio Grande who would not regard the change as prima facie beneficial.
The second danger of which they are vividly conscious lies in the possibility of the creation by the United States of some artificial situation which would either exclude Europeans from the Latin-American trade in favor of Americans, or which would in some way make intercourse with Europe more difficult. The Monroe Doctrine they are well aware was aimed originally at England rather than at Spain and is still supposed to portend the continued supremacy of the United States in the Western Hemisphere and the right actually to exclude Europeans. If such be its meaning, its maintenance or enforcement would not be to the best interests of Latin America. Inasmuch as the present supremacy of the United States and its claim of paramount interest over European nations in the Western Hemisphere will be the factor really threatened by the victor, the interests of South America are identical with those of European nations and are therefore not threatened. Indeed an alliance with the United States against Europe's victor would be an alliance intended to maintain and preserve the very situation which the Latin Americans consider least desirable and whose continued existence is their chief source of anxiety.
Not less deadly to cooperation between Latin America and the United States than this divergence of interests is the lack of mutual confidence. The fear in the southern countries of aggression from North America would vitally hamper any defensive armament or any concerted action. They would surely fear that the defeat of the victor by combined effort would so strengthen the United States as to put the whole Western Hemisphere permanently in her hands and make possible the schemes of aggression which they believe have been thwarted hitherto by the protection of England. Our pacific intentions proclaimed by certain presidents and diplomats arouse interest but not credulity. They see too clearly what we could do to be willing to credit the supposition that if circumstances should ever permit, we would not embrace the opportunity. This lack of mutual confidence would make doubtful the formation even of a defensive alliance, while the difficulties in the way of legal and administrative efficiency would make any closer bond too weak to be of value for defense. When it is so highly improbable that a Pan-American Confederation would be able to hold itself together and govern its own largest members, where shall we suppose it would find the necessary strength and efficiency to protect itself and its members from European invasion? If a confederation should be formed between the United States and the Latin republics, it would be an artificial unit with so slender a basis that it could hardly survive a clash of interests or the shock of attack.
These formidable obstacles make the defense of the Western Hemisphere by joint effort against the European victor improbable. It remains for us to ask whether such a defense is possible from a military and naval point of view. The control of the sea would undoubtedly be indispensable. Until the combined navies were prepared to maintain intercourse by water between the members of the Confederation, or between the various members of a defensive alliance, defense would be out of the question. The strategic weakness of the position is apparent and alarming. Thousands of miles of coast must be patrolled, the great commercial centers, whose defense would be imperative against action by hostile fleets, are separated from each other by distances so great that they could not be protected by a single fleet. New York is farther in point of time from the Amazon and the Amazon in turn from the Rio de la Plata than the United States is from Europe. It is hardly credible even that a single fleet could defend Galveston, Panama, and the Amazon. It certainly could not do so while England held the Bahamas, the Bermudas, the Windward Islands, Jamaica, Trinidad, and Barbados. These points alone control all the water routes, and a very strong fleet would be needed to take them or to check the operations of a comparatively few commerce destroyers from such bases.
We should have to maintain three fleets, each large enough to dispose successfully of any forces likely to be dispatched from Europe: one off the United States plying between New York and the Chesapeake; one in the Gulf of Mexico; and one in the South Atlantic. Another enormous fleet, large enough to control the whole Atlantic in actual fact and patrol it effectively from one end to the other, would be needed in addition. Cooperation between them in case of attack would be literally impossible; the victor could reach any of them from Europe in practically the same time that assistance could reach them from the other fleets.
At present there is no such fleet in existence and scarcely more than a basis for one of such size, since our navy, even if we assume its defenders' statements to be true, is barely sufficient to protect the United States. Nor are the facilities on either continent adequate for building so large a fleet in time to be of any avail. Even if it could be done, only the United States could build it, and by whatever name it was called it would be none the less in reality the United States fleet and would have to be manned in all probability by Americans. The Latin Americans would be more afraid of it than of the combined English and German navies, because they believe we have a motive to use a fleet against them which they do not believe either the Germans or the English possess. Indeed they very much prefer that the supremacy on the sea should remain where it is, and, if lost by England, should pass to any other nation than the United States. To allay such suspicions by the creation of a unit to be owned by the various republics and stationed at times of peace in their harbors, would create a fleet of no use in time of war because the distance between the various points is so great as to preclude prompt cooperation. Even should the United States and certain groups of the Latin republics create separate fleets, the suspicions of the intentions of the United States would still remain and the superior naval ability of the Americans would still arouse apprehension and in time lead to quarrels and war. No candid student can fail to conclude that the United States is not now in a position to protect South America against European fleets and possesses at present no facilities adequate for creating a navy large enough to perform the task.
Could the United States army protect South America from invasion by European armies? We are supposing, of course, that the fleet has failed to keep the Europeans at a distance. The difficulty of the military defense of South America against invasion is similar to the defense of the Atlantic Ocean. A strategic position controlling the whole continent is entirely lacking; the districts needing defense are widely separated; and the overland communications are so inadequate for military needs that armies located at certain centers would be incapable of movement to other points, in time to prevent a successful invasion by European contingents landed by the fleet controlling the sea. The facility with which the aggressor could shift his attack would seem to make the defence of Latin America by an American army out of the question, even if we assume that there was such an army and that it could be sent to South America in time. In addition, we should have to face a problem of maintaining an army in the southern continent quite as difficult as that before the invader, because the distance by sea to the principal South American centers from our own chief ports is practically the same as from the great European ports. The distance by land through Central America is much greater and the difficulty of maintaining an army overland would be enormous even if there were all-rail communications between the two continents. Without such communications, our lack of control on the sea would spell our inability to place an army in South America, or to maintain or re-enforce it, if by good fortune we should land it there. Nor must we forget that we are not a military nation, and not being prepared to manufacture munitions of war at the rate which modern warfare demands, we should not be able to maintain an army, because we should not be able to make the needed supplies fast enough.
Needless to say, no adequate army at present exists for the defense of Pan-Americanism. The United States army is small; the South American armies are not much larger; the quality of all is much in dispute. While the United States army technically numbers about eighty thousand men, its most ardent advocates are able to demonstrate the existence of only about forty thousand---a single army corps---which would be available for defense against invasion in the United States or for dispatch to South America. There is grave doubt expressed even by the defenders of the army's efficiency, of the adequacy of its equipment, of its artillery, and of its supplies of ammunition. Sincere and honest men who have at least no obvious prejudice make no secret of their opinion that it is not at all what it should be, while the more radical are apt to deny it any efficiency at all. These disputes however have little relation to the real issue we are discussing. Adequacy is determined, not by the quality of the force, but by the requirements of the operation. A hundred thousand excellent troops are of no avail at all where a million are necessary. The lowest figures cited by military students for an army to defend the United States is half a million. If there is any question at all as to our ability to equip and maintain indefinitely one hundred thousand men, it will be entirely obvious that we are not in the least prepared to equip and maintain half a million men. Nor should we forget that the defense of Pan-Americanism against invasion will mean the maintenance at a number of points of a force of men amply large enough to meet any forces which an invader might attempt to land, and that no invader would probably consider coming with a force as small as one hundred thousand men. When we cannot protect ourselves, how shall we also defend Latin America?
Conquest by a European aggressor, it seems more than probable, none of the American republics need fear, though South America is much more nearly immune than is the United States. Invasion is beyond doubt a physical possibility for a first-class European power as there are at present neither naval nor military forces in North or South America adequate in size to prevent it. There are many reasons to suppose that European aggression against the United States may be undertaken to put an end for a generation at least to any chance of American expansion in Latin America. Far from its being true that Pan-Americanism is in danger from Europe, the probabilities seem to indicate that it is the United States which is about to be assailed by Europe in the interests of Latin America. Such are the ideas which convince the Latin Americans that our claim to defend them from European aggression is prima facie an excuse for aggression on our own part.
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THE FUTURE OF PAN-AMERICANISM
IT is difficult for an impartial student, who studies honestly the facts of the situation without purposes of his own to subserve, to see that Pan-Americanism has a future. Beyond all question it has had no past existence and is not a present reality. If we now conclude that it has no future, we must declare it a dream or a nightmare, a vision of peaceful associations or of crude barbarian conquest according as our fundamental premises direct. The postulates which were laid down in a previous chapter would seem to be reasonable, conservative, and inevitable. Pan Americanism assumes at least the geographical proximity of the two American continents and their apparent isolation from Europe, with mutual interests between them and a divergence of interests with Europe. Only from such broad geographic and economic features can a closer bond of any sort derive strength. For America thus to declare and insist upon its independence from Europe predicates as well the self-sufficiency of the Western Hemisphere and its political and economic independence of Europe. It does not necessarily connote absolute isolation or the refusal to trade with Europe, but an ability to dispense with the European connection should it become advisable or expedient in time of war. Not less important would be mutual trust and confidence between the various American states, with its roots deep in mutual intercourse and association. The purpose of a closer union would be the need for mutual aid and protection against Europe (for against Europe Pan-Americanism is directed), and the probability that the American states would be able to furnish each other from their own resources the military or naval strength to make good their independence of Europe, should it be questioned in arms.
Unless we are grievously misled by Latin Americans themselves, as well as by foreign observers, none of these prerequisites exist, and without them, he will be indeed a bold man who will suppose that any sort of a connection worthy of the name can be established. The weakest conceivable relation ---a defensive military and naval understanding between the sovereign republics as sovereign states without administrative relations of any sort ---predicates mutual confidence and a mutual need for protection. Neither exists. The weakest economic and financial bond---a customs or fiscal union of some sort providing for freedom of trade and a uniformity of currency, weights, and measures---would rest upon the belief that the commercial relations between the American states were more important to them than their relations with Europe. The contrary seems to be the truth. A Pan-American Court for business disputes, requiring a compromise between the legal precepts of the southern continent and those of the United States, would be a possibility, but could hardly be efficient, strong, or popular without a greater degree of mutual understanding and acquaintanceship than seems to exist. A Pan-American confederation and administrative bond between sovereign states, with something approaching a federal executive and possibly a legislature, can be real, only as the expression in institutional life of a mutuality of economic interests and an identity of political ideas, of a mutual confidence and an identity of policy. None of these exist. In short, not one of these conceptions from the slightest to the more elaborate seems based upon realities. On the contrary, Pan-Americanism is likely to impress an impartial mind as an absolutely artificial and sentimental concept, diametrically opposed to the racial, economic, political, legal, and social interests of the American republics. A concept so contrary to all the fundamental factors in the situation on whose existence all observers quite agree, an ideal which so clearly lacks an adequate motive in its own fundamental assumptions, demonstrates to the South Americans very convincingly that the advocacy of Pan-Americanism is intended to further the aggressive schemes of the United States by clothing them in so gracious and idealistic a form.
The day is at hand when the Latin American republics will challenge Pan-Americanism, the Monroe Doctrine, and the assumption by the United States of the supremacy of the Western Hemisphere. As soon as a convenient occasion offers, some public manifestation of this intention will appear. The movement is sweeping and inclusive. It will deny that there is any such thing as the rightful supremacy of the Western Hemisphere; it will deny the United States any greater interests, any more significant position, any broader rights, or any more extended privilege than the smallest Central American republic. Equality for all independent nations in the Western Hemisphere, the economic and political equality of European powers and of all American powers will be proclaimed as the true doctrine of Pan-Americanism. It will place the assumption of supremacy or of paramount interests in the Western Hemisphere by any one of the resident powers on the same basis and subject to the same obloquy and scorn as the advancement of a similar claim by one of the European powers. It will demand recognition of the salient features of the situation as they really are and insist upon the acceptance of political and economic postulates based upon them, instead of upon economic and political phenomena of the past which have been obsolete for generations. There seems to be at present no essential reason why the same sort of relationship should not prevail between the republics in the Western Hemisphere as obtain between those same states and European nations. There are no fundamental obstacles in the way of the creation and acceptance of an identity of relations which do not exist between European nations; there are present all the fundamental factors of international association upon which rest the diplomatic intercourse of the great powers themselves. In Latin America, Pan-Americanism stands for equality in the Western Hemisphere, not for supremacy; it stands for the inter-relationship of the American states with each other and with European states on the same basis; it predicates no supremacy for one but the independence of all, not the paramount interests of one, but complementary interests in all. So far as the other is concerned, each should become foreign territory and stand upon the same political, diplomatic, and economic footing as the great powers in their relations with one another.
Future alliances in Latin America are not likely to include all the republics within one administrative or fiscal bond and still less within a single military alliance. Several confederations are more probable than one and the continuance of the present political independence of all is more probable than either contingency. If any closer relationship should be established between the Latin American republics and some other power, it will not be inter-continental but international; its basis will not be a geographical assumption or the accident of historical discovery and colonization, but the strong racial, temperamental, and administrative ties binding South and Central America to the Latin races in Europe---Spain, Portugal, Italy, and France. With them an economic bond would be also far more mutual than any alliance with the United States could conceivably be, although at present the closest economic ties are those with England and Germany. Political conquest by European nations of South America is as remote as the conquest of the United States. Immigration from Europe is as probable and will very likely be as potent in its effect upon the southern continent as has been European immigration in the United States. The real conquest indeed which South and Central America have to fear is the steady influx of alien blood, institutions, language, and interests, which slowly but surely may dominate the existing peoples, their ideals and governmental methods by reason of their greater virility, and create a new South America in which the descendants of the present population might conceivably be robbed of all direction, so that their imprint upon the country and its habits of thought would be erased.
