There are a hundred million Slavs scattered over an immense Asiatic and European territory, which stretches from Vladivostock to the Baltic Sea; two and a half milliards of hectares are waiting for the children of this prodigious race. By uniting the peoples of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland to the Germans of Austria, the German race, whether it propagates the gospel of Pan-Germanism by commercial penetration or by violence, possesses about 100 million hectares for 93 millions of men. The Anglo-Saxons, the natural enemies of German expansion, the rivals of the Deutschtum in Asia, Africa, and America, rule an almost unlimited area of milliards of hectares; India, Canada, the United States, South Africa, Egypt, Australia, conquered territories and kingdoms held in tutelage, peoples of all faiths and all races. More than 200 millions of Anglo-Saxons people this "greater Britain" without including India, which is not assimilable.
The territory occupied by the Latin peoples in Europe, America, and Africa is 3.9 million hectares, inhabited by 250 millions of men; the number of Latins is thus not really inferior to that of the Anglo-Saxons, nor are the territories open to Latin expansion inferior to those reserved for the rival race. With the French colonies in Asia they amount to 4 milliards of hectares.
Here we have a Latin superiority; by the extent of their territories and their numbers the Latins outnumber the Slavs and the Germans. They do not yield to the English either in human capital nor in wealth of exploitable territory. And England has reached the zenith of her industrial period, the maximum of her political development; the figures of the birth-rate in the industrial towns are diminishing, and emigration has almost ceased. The State is becoming the protector of a demagogic and decadent crowd. The United States seek to conquer new territories for their imperialist race. But the Latins possess in South America a rich and almost uninhabited continent, and in the north of Africa the French are in process of founding a colonial empire which will rival Egypt in wealth and importance, and will reach from Morocco to the Congo and from Dakar to Tunis.
Reclus calculates that Latin America could feed a hundred persons per square kilometre. While the natality of the Anglo-Saxon cities of the Atlantic seaboard in the United States remains stationary the Latin American population is increasing prodigiously; it is to-day 80 millions, and a century ago, when Humboldt visited the New World, it was approximately only 15 millions. It is possible that by the last years of the present century the number of South Americans will have reached 250 millions; the equilibrium between Latins and Anglo-Saxons will then be broken in favour of the former.
America is thus an essential factor of the future of the Latin nations. The destiny of France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy would be different if the 80 millions of Latin Americans were to lose their racial traditions; if in a century or two America were to pass under the sceptre of the United States, or if the Germans and Anglo-Saxons were to attack and oppress the nucleus of civilisation formed by the Argentine, Uruguay, and Southern Brazil. Economically America would lose markets; intellectually, docile colonies; practically, centres of expansion. To-day Anglo-Saxons, Germans, Slavs, and Neo-Latins are balancing forces which may develop in harmony in the framework of Christian civilisation without wars of conquest and without ambitions of monopoly. The moral unity of South America would contribute to the realisation of such an ideal. A new Anglo-Saxon continent running from Alaska to Cape Horn, built on the ruins of twenty Spanish republics, would be the presage of a final decadence. In the struggles of hundreds of years' duration between the Latin States and the barbarians, between Catholicism and Protestantism, between the French genius and the Teutonic spirit, between the Renaissance and the Reformation, the Latins would have lost the last battle.
America is a laboratory of free peoples. Dr. Charles W. Eliott, rector of the great University of Harvard, has studied the contribution of the United States to modern civilisation. Arbitration as a universal principle, toleration, universal suffrage, material well-being, and political liberty seem to him to be the characteristics of North American culture. In the Latin South we encounter similar principles. Arbitration is the basis of international relations; tolerance from the religious point of view is in process of development. Political liberty is still more a matter of Constitutions than of custom; but the liberal political charters, adapted to the principles of modern civilisation, are the ideal of these republics. When the wilderness is peopled by new races, democracies will grow to maturity within this scaffolding, and universal suffrage, individual rights and tolerance will be realities.
In Latin America, above all among the southern nations, one cannot conceive of the restoration of the old social order, or of despotism and religious inquisition. The new continent, whether Saxon or Latin, is democratic and liberal.
If as in the time of the Holy Alliance the theocratic peoples were to ally themselves—Catholic and warlike Austria, Germany, dominated by Prussian feudalism, Russia, mystic and formidable—the whole American continent would be the bulwark of liberty. If Germans and Latins or Latins and Anglo-Saxtons were to fight between themselves the overseas democracies would greatly contribute to the vitality of the Latin race. If in a Europe dominated by Slavs and Germans the peoples of the Mediterranean were forced to withdraw in painful exodus towards the blue sea peopled by the Greek islands and symbols old as the world, it is probable that the ancient myth would be realised anew, and that the torch which bears the ideal of Latin civilisation would pass from Paris to Buenos-Ayres or Rio de Janeiro, as it passed from Rome to Paris in the modern epoch, or from Greece to Rome in the classic period. America, to-day desert and divided, would save the culture of France and Italy, the heritage of the Revolution and the Renaissance, and would thus have justified to the utmost the fortunate audacity of Christopher Columbus.
[[1]] Essai sur le gouvernement de la Nouvelle Espagne, vol. i.
[[2]] Works, vol. ii. p. 160.