and more confident of its own destiny than at any other period of its history; and the increase of its revenues and the rapid growth of its prosperity have secured the attention of the great financial centres of Europe.
Public curiosity being thus awakened, many people have inquired: What is the Argentine? How far is the development of its wealth a sound and durable process? What is the probable future of its people? Is it a meteor that flashes brilliantly through space, or a star rising upon the economic and political horizon?
While some content themselves with asking such questions and awaiting their reply, M. Lewandowski, the representative of one of the greatest credit establishments in France, wished to gain some practical experience of the phenomenon. He took the most certain, most practical means; took steamer, crossed the ocean, and landed in the Argentine. With the learned collaboration of Señor Alberto Martinez, one of the most competent of men in matters of statistics and finance, he made a profound study of economic questions, and the present book is the outcome of their common observations.
This book should be read by all those who are not convinced that the word Europe sums up all humanity; but who take the pains, on the contrary, to follow the development of all other nations; understanding how necessary it is for the great nations to observe the progress and evolution of the younger peoples. Thus they avoid the risk of being surprised by the sudden apparition of great economic or political forces which they had not foreseen, or by which they had not known how to profit.
South America suffers from a prejudice that we cannot unhappily disclaim as being unjustified. The directing classes in France, as in all other European nations, with the exception of a small commercial and financial circle, seem to have been kept in intentional ignorance of all things relating to the nations of the new continent. The Argentine, Chili, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador,—countries separated one from another by enormous distances—are none the less, for the generality of Europeans, more or less one and the same thing; that is, they form a kind of a geographical nebulosity, which
is known as South America. The post-office employés of Buenos Ayres have often occasion to smile when they read the addresses inscribed on the envelopes of letters dispatched by the learned and scientific bodies of Europe, and Argentines residing abroad continually find food for reflection in the questions asked them by persons occupying the highest positions.
Yet for the old world there is every incentive to study more closely the development of these new peoples. It is enough to point out that the Argentine to-day occupies as significant a position as that held by the United States at the beginning of the nineteenth century; and that its continued evolution will undoubtedly, before the end of the present century, give it an importance equal to that of the United States at the present time.
In a conversation with Mr Roosevelt and his Secretary of State, Colonel John Hay, I had occasion to make this very remark, and the President replied, with the rapidity of judgment and the affirmative tone which are so characteristic of his mind: “In less time than that; you will find fifty years enough; for you will profit by all our experience and all the human progress effected during the nineteenth century.”
The shadow of discredit which has hitherto lain upon South America is explained by the continual anarchy to which the majority of its peoples have lent themselves since the immense colonial empire of Spain threw off its fetters in the first quarter of the last century, in order to break up into fifteen separate republics. This anarchy and disorganisation, compared with the orderly spirit of progress which has reigned in the great republic of the North, have given rise to the belief, to-day general, that the so different destiny of these States was due to the special qualities and aptitudes of the Anglo-Saxon race, which the Latin races lacked.
This belief results from a superficial and incomplete examination of the facts, and has gained easy acceptance, even in works of a more or less scientific nature, such as The Psychological Laws of the Evolution of Peoples, in which the author cites, with regard to the Latin races and the peoples of South America, a number of inaccurate and