a question of prime importance in a country such as the Argentine, where the struggle for existence has taken a particularly keen form, which scarcely favours the development of disinterested sentiments.
It is for the State to develop among its people this national idea, and to turn all individual efforts to its profit. Its duty is to raise its authority above the medley of interest, to restrain ambition within a just limit by the influence of moral and patriotic ideas, and so to ensure the reign of justice and social peace, without which national prosperity will never be more than ephemeral.
In imagining, from this aspect, the formation of a nationality, we have no intention of criticising the country; still less do we deny the process of evolution which has gradually transformed its organisation. A nation is not created in a day, especially when it is a question of a country so young as the Argentine, which in less than a century has issued from the struggle for independence, and even to-day has hardly rid itself of the revolutionary spirit.
For a nation to become self-conscious, centuries must pass; traditions must be formed, and the great moral or intellectual forces of humanity—religion, science, literature, even poetry—must develop the sense of a collective life other than the life of business. And hitherto the Argentine has had no time to produce generations of thinkers, philosophers, and historians; still less poets. The most it has are statisticians, who give it the precise figures of her commercial balance.
We do not doubt, however, that, thanks to material progress, this slow elaboration of a new race will eventually be completed. In the first phase of her existence as a nation Argentina, according to the spirit of her Constitution, fraternally opened her doors to all who wished to inhabit her soil. No restriction was placed upon the entry nor on the permanent immigration of foreigners; on the contrary, legislation and social customs combined to favour immigration. The result is, that the new arrivals have regarded themselves as alien, in matters of economics and politics, to the nationality with which they have become incorporated; believing that their mission consisted solely in creating and
circulating wealth, while regarding the solution of the great national problems with indifference.
But to-day the Argentine has entered upon a new phase; it must no longer merely receive, it must also incorporate all these elements of immigration, and, without awakening antagonism towards the foreigner, it must set to work to absorb him into the soul of the nation.
This faculty of assimilation is a virtue of the American soil. The United States have proved as much for North America, and it now remains for the Argentine to do the same for South America. The new generation of immigrants, having struck root into its hospitable soil, must live completely in the national life, absorbing those feelings of patriotism which animate the new citizen of the United States.
To give expression to these loyalist tendencies, we will confine ourselves to quoting the memorable words which were spoken in the Congress of Wisconsin, by an American congressman, born in Germany, the Hon. Richard Günther; words which were equally applauded and approved in Latin America. We shall perceive, through the very exaltation of his phrases, what unreserved devotion a naturalised foreigner may bring to his new country:
“We know as well as any other class of American citizens where our duty lies. We labour for our country in times of peace, and we shall fight for her in time of war, if ever such time arrive. When I say our country, I naturally mean our country of adoption, the United States of America. After passing through the alembic of naturalisation we are no longer Germans; we are Americans. Our attachment to America cannot be measured by the length of our residence here. We are Americans from the moment when we reach the American shore, until the day when we are laid to rest in an American grave.”