NO RACE SUICIDE HERE
No one can trace the splendid march of the Latin races through the conquests and explorations and discoveries of the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and then read the record of achievements down to the present time and still maintain that there is anything decadent about the Latin races. Had the Roman yoke been broken from the Latin neck as it was from the Teuton, we should have had a very different tale to tell, and the dominant civilization of the twentieth century might have been Latin instead of Saxon.
A closer examination of the social factors that have dominated the Latin-American world and produced the present composite result on the western hemisphere reveals three decisive factors that have in combination produced our neighbors.
All Latin-America reflects a European background. Nearly all relations of life are defined in European terms. Out of the more or less subconscious inheritance and ideals of European origin arise the sanctions of social relations. Ideals of politics, business, education, home life, social customs, and religion all come from this fountain of associations. The church in South America is the church in southern Europe. The collegio is not the North American college, but the European school which grants a Bachelor of Arts degree at what corresponds to the end of the freshman year in an American college. South American "republics" have their "prime ministers," and the electorate is on the European basis. The presidents of some of these republics exercise more arbitrary power than the king of England or the entire executive of the United States. They are European "presidents." Revolution is not the incurable habit of the "people" but the profession of a few adventurers who oppress and afflict the long-suffering and usually silent populace. This is not saying that revolution is a characteristic of European political procedure, but that the forms of representative government imposed upon the ideals of dictatorship and monarchy produced the curious mixture of revolutionary political progress known as a South or Central American "republic." South American democracy is a hybrid product of European ideals and American forms of government. Naturally enough, it is neither one thing nor the other, and will not be anything very different until new forces are brought to bear upon the political life of the Latin people.
JUNGLE GUIDE
A second factor in the making of the Latin-American is his isolation for three hundred years from the currents of Western economic and political life. Practically all our North American stock of ideas and social sanctions has been developed since the Pilgrims landed in New England. The great basic impulse that sent men and women westward in search of religious liberty has persisted and widened and developed a homogeneous system of political ideal that has become the unquestioned background of our whole political system. From free consciences have come free institutions, free schools, free votes, and as long as it lasted, free land, unrestricted economic opportunity, and a welcome to the world. Upon this foundation have been reared American independence, modern democracy, higher education, the feminist movement, scientific advance, and American Protestantism.
ONE USE FOR A HEAD