A glance now towards the future of these great lands beneath the Southern American sun, and our task will be done. What is to be their future; what part are they to play in the great scene-shifting of the developing world?
First we shall have remarked that the Latin American people are material in the making. They are not a worn-out race; they are, rather, unformed, plastic, with their life before them. Second, they inhabit perhaps the richest portion of the surface of the globe, which, so far from being exhausted, has not been heavily drawn upon in some respects. It is true that coal, that adjunct of the civilization of the industrial age, is not plentiful (except in certain districts). But the future may not be so largely dependent upon this mineral. Possibly, moreover, Nature had a purpose in the absence of coal, ordaining that at least one of the world's continents should not undergo the terrors of the factory age!
Let us turn now to certain more general conditions.
The growth of the Latin American republics might seem to offer a future for the growth and even regeneration (and some writers have said the predominance again) of the Latin races in the world generally. Here, at least, is an enormous territory, some of the richest and most fertile on the globe, at present but thinly inhabited. By the close of the present century it might be that South America would contain 250 million people. A century ago there were but 15 millions. Of course the enormous growth of the population in Europe and the United States has been a result of the machine, or industrial age—by no means an unmixed good. This has depended upon the resources of coal, iron and so forth in their soils, and statistics and forecasts show that these resources, under the present system of depletion and waste, especially in England and the United States, will tend to exhaustion in a few generations. Whether that will lead to a corresponding decline in population remains to be seen, but in this and other respects it may be said that coming events cast their shadows before. Probably the greatest reproach that can be placed upon Anglo-Saxon life to-day is that we are drawing heavily upon the exhaustible resources of the earth without establishing the basis of a permanent or adequate civilization.
It should be urged that the time has come when we should take a more comprehensive, judicious and constructive outlook upon the world—its natural resources and its folk. We are inclined to think that Nature's resources, because partly unexplored here and there, are "exhaustless." The Spanish American people are fond of speaking of their inagotable riqueza natural—their "inexhaustible natural resources"; but these are not inexhaustible, as I have elsewhere remarked. We need a survey, a stocktaking, of the earth's resources; we need to conserve, to economize them. It is a remarkable fact, however, that the latest pronouncement of the League of Nations contains no idea or suggestion of a fundamental policy of retrenchment, conservation, development of these potentialities. The pronouncement, which seems to be largely an echo of President Wilson's original "Fourteen Points"—which doubtless had among them certain merits at the time of their enunciation—does not get beyond advocating "increased production," the "entire removal of all economic barriers," in this respect. In brief, it is the old dreary doctrine, largely, of creating and selling, of forcing goods on communities and folk who do not necessarily need them, without any scientific outlook upon the native potentialities and requirements, or the world's natural divisions—a dreadful "internationalism" which we hoped was declining. The League of Nations, as regards its economic knowledge and spirit, is a magnificent opportunity wasted, or will be so unless it develops into something far more fundamentally intelligent. This matter of outlook by so important a body is of vital importance to the Latin American States, as to all others. The exploitation of the great remaining natural resources of these countries—as is the case with many others—cannot be successfully done under the present relations of labour and capital. Capital must have its fair reward, labour must be fairly paid; but the two things at present clash, and we shall have to find the way out before the enormous, but not fruitless, wilderness of South America and Mexico can yield up what they contain. The cream of the earth's resources has been skimmed everywhere; the remainder calls for much more scientific consideration.
Indeed, it is impossible to forecast what the future of the world—which has been shaken to its foundations by recent events—is to be. Civilization may advance or it might recede, or hang fire for centuries. That depends upon the efforts and the conscience of mankind. It may be that a quieter, less strenuous life awaits it, with less of material activity and more of moral and intellectual growth. In fact, some of us who have studied the world in its economic and political aspects, will doubt if the present type of civilization has not reached its apogee and is to enter on some other phase, a phase which we believe and hope is to be of the nature indicated.
If that be so, there is no reason why the Latin American States should not acquire growing importance. The character of their more thoughtful and educated classes is towards such a life, whilst the resources of Nature they command could afford them everything needful for their existence. The Spanish American lands have been dowered with every variety of climate and product, and by going up or down their valleys their folk can gather every known food-product or thing of the animal, vegetable and mineral world.
As to their character for national turbulence, it has been shown in these pages that such disturbing influences are but the activities of a relatively small class. Their ideals are high, their aim is towards a high civilization. Some of the nations of the Old World that considered themselves foremost in civilization—such as Germany and Austria—have shown by their actions that they can fall lower in barbarity than any of the most backward nations. Moreover, all nations are restless, all their cultures are in the melting-pot, all are at fault. There must be regeneration and reconstruction everywhere.
The future of the world will be in the exercise of true spiritual factors, interwoven with or influencing what I have, elsewhere, ventured to term ethical-economic constructive principles.[45] From a wise consideration of these, there must emerge a "science of corporate life," or science of humanity, which will learn to build up the true "economic structure" of society, in conjunction with its intellectual and spiritual activities—a constructive human geography, which will aim at the true and final reaction of mankind from its environment. Elemental forces are at work, for good or ill, at the present time, and elemental forces must be met by fundamental principles. One nation to-day is almost as far from such a philosophy as another, although to-morrow might see the turning of a page which should disclose its beginnings. In this evolving book of life the Latin American Republics have their opportunity, as far as the possible exercise of principle goes, with all other nations.
The problem for these nations is to bring on their own culture, avoiding, if possible, the errors of Europe and the United States: that is, avoiding the factors of industrial unrest and economic waste that have accompanied progress. They could profit by example and experience gained by these other lands: to bring on the education and economic uplifting of the backward masses of their people, not by crowding them into factories or refusing them a living wage, not by drawing so heavily on their fruitful soils as to begin to exhaust these, but by methods more in accordance with those principles which alone can ensure permanence and nobility.