Granted that wealth and prosperity are essentially conservative elements, we have here a serious guarantee of political stability; the more so as the country has already passed the difficult age and is cured of the malady endemic to South America—anarchy.
It is also to be hoped that our Argentine politicians, taught by experience, and comprehending all the responsibilities imposed upon them by their noble mission—the work of racial regeneration and the betterment of South America—will succeed in making constitutional government an actual fact, by restraining and uprooting the tendency to personal power, which is the lamentable heritage of indigenous tradition.
It is a great nation that is rising on the brink of the twentieth century; the mistress of an enormous inheritance. Immigration and the increase of the birth-rate are furnishing it with the arms it requires; it lacks only those reserves of capital which, like all new peoples, it has not as yet had time to create.
In no country can European capital find a more fertile or advantageous field for its operations: a fact already well known in England; and one the authors of this book have wished to emphasise for the greater benefit of French capital. In this they serve the interests of France and, still more particularly, those of the Argentine Republic; and in the name of my own compatriots, as well as for myself, I take this opportunity of expressing my sincere gratitude.
C. PELLEGRINI.
THE ARGENTINE IN THE
20TH CENTURY