THE GERMAN OUTLOOK ON LATIN AMERICA
"South America is the special theatre and object of German commercial industry." This emphatic declaration—reiterated in various forms by other German authorities—is the theme treated by Professor Gast, Director of the German South American Institute at Aix-la-Chapelle, in a pamphlet entitled Deutschland und Süd-Amerika, which may be regarded as a semi-official exposition of German objects and opportunities. The pamphlet appeared in the latter part of 1915. The events which have since occurred, however damaging they may be to German hopes, do not affect the views expressed. Since this advice from a German authority to Germans is a frank revelation of German views, it seems worth giving a very brief abstract of the main points, which the writer elaborates at great length, though he does not enter upon details of business method.
"The German Press," says Professor Gast, "has never published so much about Latin America as during this war. This proves the importance of German relations there and the need of clear ideas concerning them. An economic competition, intense beyond all example, has sprung up concerning Latin America. The chief feature is the 'Financial Offensive' of the United States. The present grouping of competitors is accidental and false. The natural conflict is between the United States on the one side, and on the other side all industrial and exporting peoples, including Japan. The United States, the most dangerous competitor, is handicapped by the higher cost of production in North America and by the want of that facility of adaptation to customers' needs in which Germany excels. Yet the war has revealed the weakness of German reputation. Everywhere the prevailing strain is antipathy to Germany. It is the duty of Germans to put aside resentment and to strengthen their economic position. For trade with the two Americas is the chief source of prosperity for modern German commerce, particularly that of Hamburg. And after the war this trans-Oceanic trade will be a matter of yet more urgent national importance."
This general survey is followed by an examination of special opportunities open to Germans. "Germany has not the many-sided relations with Latin America possessed by the Latin peoples of Europe, nor the politico-geographical advantages of the United States, nor the strong capitalist position of Great Britain. She must make the most of what she does possess. Her main asset is the German in South America. Every German abroad means the investment of interest-bearing capital for German cultural expansion. Two things are required of him, to win esteem by good work and to place his personal influence at the disposal of German national ends. The compact German communities in Brazil and in Southern Chile should be supported and organised from home, but not obtrusively, lest local feeling be aroused. They may perhaps serve Germany best by a partial mingling with the native population, so as to spread German culture and the taste for German goods. But, everywhere, all individual Germans are Germanising agents. The German merchant particularly is the missionary of cultural and political influence. So also the German soldier, particularly the German officers employed as instructors in Chile and Argentina. Most South American officers feel a professional sympathy for Germany. Hence spring useful personal friendships: to foster and enlarge these is an urgent duty. Germans exercise other professions which facilitate the patriotic diffusion of German culture. Such are physicians, who find peculiar opportunities in their intimate relations with families in their homes; the clergy, both Protestant and Roman Catholic; teachers, whose proved idealism is an admirable equipment for the spread of German culture; scientific men, journalists, surveyors, geologists, professors in training colleges. If possible they should work in combination, as they do in the German Scientific Club of Buenos Aires. Every one of them must use every professional opportunity and every item of personal influence and private friendship for the advantage of Germany.
"A knowledge of German culture must be spread by a systematic educational movement. But this must be done tactfully. The German's propensity to foreign studies will aid him. He must equip himself by assimilating Latin culture, must use his knowledge of French culture, must oppose French influence by encouraging Spanish culture. His object is to catch souls; and, next to financial strength, the first necessity is tact."
Two points stand out in this very candid statement. First, every German abroad is an item in the national balance-sheet; he must earn interest. The intimacy between the pastor and his flock, the physician's intercourse with his patient, are set down on the credit side of the national profit-and-loss account. Secondly, the most profitable method is a liberal education. There is something whimsical in the combination of inhuman material calculation with humanising influences, and one may smile at the heavy solemnity of the suggestion that the German will find it pay to acquire tact and to Latinise himself for outside intercourse. But the suggestion should not be dismissed as absurd. Whatever can be done by effort, study, and will-power the German will do. He is training himself to be a more formidable competitor than ever in the economic arena.
Indeed, the pamphlet is valuable, not only as a hint for the future, but also as an avowal of methods which are already at work. One of these is a deliberate system of politic and profitable marriages. German clerks receive promotion only on condition that they marry native girls and establish homes in the country. This policy has been so steadily pursued that everywhere German business men have entered Latin-American families and exercise a Teutonising influence. Through marriage also, accompanied by skilled and profitable management, Germans acquire control of property and of trading concerns. Again, owing to their reputation for expert efficiency and scientific competence, Germans fill many posts of influence and trust in universities, scientific institutions and government departments. Argentina is an example. In the National University Germans control the engineering and chemical sections, where their pupils are trained to use German apparatus and methods. German curators in the Geological Museum receive early information as to any discoveries of minerals or oil. Germans employed as experts in the public service learn details of any public works proposed by the government or the municipalities. Reports on such schemes pass through their hands and, since estimates are not carefully checked, they are thus able to favour German trade at the expense of the Argentine tax-payer.
In every city the German Verein unites the German community, so that Germans may avoid competition and may co-operate with one another and with Germans in the Fatherland. The bank and the merchant work in close combination and have at their disposal all the information gathered by German employees in other banks and in business firms. The German has been quick to anticipate others in occupying new ground: for example, in the remote but vast and productive region of Eastern Bolivia, watered by the three great navigable affluents of the Madeira, a region which is just beginning to awake to the promise of a great future, the German trader hitherto has scarcely had a competitor. Again, the German has won predominance in the electrical and chemical industries by applying his practical scientific aptitude to the supply of new wants. Lastly, the German is distinguished by close attention to detail and adaptation to local needs.
Yet Germans note and deplore "a constant strain of antipathy to Germany, a wave of anti-German hate." The remedies suggested are: first, a more efficient German service of news, and secondly, "a systematic cultural activity, conducted with push and comprehensive inspiration."
What is being done in Germany to realise these methods? First may be mentioned the various associations for extending German influence abroad and binding to the Fatherland all Germans living abroad, whether in South America or elsewhere. Such are the Pan-German League, the German Navy League, the League for Germanism abroad, the League for German Art abroad, the School League which gives support to German schools outside Germany, the German rifle club, with its headquarters in Nuremberg, to which rifle clubs abroad are affiliated, and, lastly, the Foreign Museum, recently founded under the highest official patronage, which arranges economic exhibitions in various German cities. Although these associations were not founded particularly for Latin-American objects, their present efforts are particularly bent in that direction, as the Pan-German League lately declared. But, besides these comprehensive agencies, Germany possesses three institutions specially devoted to Latin-American purposes. One of these existed before the war, namely the German South American Institute at Aix-la-Chapelle, to which the Imperial and Prussian authorities have entrusted "the cultivation of scientific and artistic relations with South and Central America on the lines of a general cultural policy." Its objects are to draw together German and South American students, to maintain a South American library and information bureau, to encourage in Germany the study of South American matters by prize essays, travelling scholarships and similar methods, and to use every means of making German intellectual work known to South Americans. The Institute publishes a Spanish monthly illustrated periodical, El Mensajero de Ultramar, and also a Portuguese version, O Transatlántico. These papers are well calculated to uphold German culture across the Atlantic: they are admirably got up and aim at presenting an attractive picture of German life and institutions, dwelling particularly on the steady continuance of German industry, artistic production and even sport during the war. The Institute also publishes a German periodical, strictly business-like and containing only technical illustrations, for the purpose of keeping Germans informed on Latin-American affairs.
The Institute at Aix, although its ultimate object is mainly economic, leaves business methods and matters of immediate economic concern to other agencies. Before the war there flourished already in Germany a League for Argentina and one for Brazil. In 1915 these two Associations combined in order to form a German Economic League for South and Central America. A prospectus was issued and a meeting was held in Berlin under the presidency of Herr Dernburg, who spoke of the coming economic struggle and pointed out that German trade, except in the electrical industry, was not supported by large capital investments such as their rivals possessed. The dependence of South America on other industrial nations, owing to want of coal and iron, would facilitate German investment, to supply this defect. Germans had failed to make friends through not understanding the psychology of South Americans. German strength and practical energy must avoid arrogant pedagogic ways and must make their way through a tactful and sympathetic propaganda.
At this meeting the league was inaugurated with 120 members. Very soon it numbered 1000. Among the associations which figure as members are the German Industrialist League, the German Mercantile League, the Berlin Chamber of Commerce, the South German Export League, the League for Germanism abroad, the Society for German Art abroad. The three great banks, known in Germany as the three D.'s, are members, so also the great Shipping Companies; also newspaper and publishing firms; also many of the great industrial syndicates. A notable feature in the work of the league is the maintenance of a club in Berlin where business men and other travellers from South America are welcomed. A great point is made of this work of personal cultivation. The object is to make by hospitable attentions a Germanophil convert of every Latin-American visitor to Berlin and send him back across the Atlantic a missionary for German culture and German business. But the principal aim of the league is to unite all Germans who have any business interests in any part of Latin America, so as to pool together their knowledge, their resources, and their efforts. In this economic war the Germans move, as it were, in mass formation. Branches of the league were speedily established in every one of the twenty-one American republics, and these branches co-operate actively with the parent society at home in the furtherance of German influence and economic advantage.
A third institution, the Hamburg Ibero-American League, has been formed in the metropolis of German Latin-American trade. Already before the war, besides the usual trading organisations of a great port, Hamburg possessed a Technical High School which is practically a university of trade and industry; a Seminary for Romance languages and culture, which maintains a South American library; and a singularly complete bureau of information concerning all over-sea countries, which is known as the Hamburg Colonial Institute.
But Hamburg still felt a want, which was supplied by the formation of the Hamburg Ibero-American League. Its objects are: (1) in Spain and Spanish America: to spread a knowledge of Germany's resources and to cultivate friendly relations in government departments, semi-official institutions and social, literary and scientific circles. To circulate the illustrated weekly El Heraldo de Hamburgo, also pamphlets in Spanish and Portuguese; to station confidential emissaries in appropriate posts; to encourage interchange of visits and to inculcate the advantages which Germany offers as a training-ground for every calling. (2) In Hamburg: to prepare for intercourse after the war by arranging lectures and by organising language courses in German, Spanish and Portuguese, and particularly to establish a Centro Ibero-Americano with club, reading room, and information bureau, a house fully equipped for the hospitable reception of travellers from the Peninsula and from South America. The league is to consist of twenty-two sections, one for Spain, one for Portugal, one for each of the twenty Latin-American republics, in order that all who have interests in any part of the Ibero-American world may support one another.
A fourth association, the Germanic League for South America, has been formed more recently for the purpose of uniting together persons of German speech and origin in Latin America and preserving their Germanic character, particularly by means of German schools. This institution has a special significance just at the time when the Brazilian Government has determined that all its citizens shall be Brazilians and nothing else.
The three leagues which have their headquarters in Berlin, Hamburg and Aix-la-Chapelle have been in active movement for some time, and there is evidence from South America that they do their work in a thorough and effective fashion and have won considerable success, particularly through cultivating the friendship of South American visitors to Germany.
But in estimating German designs, we must look beyond these German leagues, which are merely an incidental part of German economic organisation. That subject far transcends the present topic, but embraces it so closely that the main outlines may be indicated. Most of the German industries are consolidated into cartels or syndicates in such a way as to eliminate competition, regulate prices and output, distribute risks or losses, facilitate the export of surplus products, and apportion business between the members of the cartel. The whole body of industrialists is united in league; merchants or exporters are similarly united; a small group of great banks, practically constituting one power, manages the financial side of the national industry and commerce with a singular mixture of daring and judgment, guided by a wonderfully complete enquiry system, a veritable international secret service; the great shipping companies, which coalesce more and more into a single huge national concern, work in close co-operation with organised industry and organised trade; railway transport is managed by the state so as to dovetail into the same machine: and the whole forms altogether a carefully constructed system of co-operation, cohesion and united action. That organisation has not fallen into abeyance during the present war. On the contrary, month by month it is being perfected, rounded off. Lastly, Germany has appointed, as it were, an economic headquarters staff, a small group of expert business men who for two years past have been devoting themselves to the working out of means for transferring Germany from a war basis to a peace basis with the least possible disturbance and delay. This higher command has its hand upon the levers of the whole machine, which, upon the conclusion of peace, is at once to resume with redoubled energy its interrupted task, industrial and commercial recovery, and particularly the economic conquest of Latin America.
In order that we may know what Germany is doing, these German organisations have been noted here. It would be impertinent, in both senses of the word, to compare or to criticise British methods. The problem of British reorganisation is being studied by experts and worked out by those in authority, and it is constantly expounded in official publications. But, without attempting to give individual opinions, one may quote some of authority.
"Great nations do not imitate." We may learn much in detail from the Germans; but Englishmen could not adopt the German system unless by first turning themselves into Prussians. Our people would never submit to Prussian methods of state control. Moreover all British experience shows that in this country such control would be disastrous. Yet competent authorities agree that immediate organisation is a necessity. It cannot be beyond the wit of Englishmen to devise means whereby British individual enterprise, common sense and self-reliance may work through methods of systematic organisation, combination, united action. From the friends of Britain everywhere comes the same warning. It is most appropriate to conclude with one uttered by a South American of unimpeachable authority, Don Pedro Cosio, former Uruguayan Finance Minister, who recently represented the Republic of Uruguay in this country. In a report to his government on the organisation of labour in the United Kingdom he writes, "The nation which is the first to organise its industry for the commercial campaign will be the one which will occupy the forefront in foreign markets."