A JUNGLE CATHEDRAL
But the largest factor in the new American situation grows out of the new world-emphasis on the Golden Rule. At last the world understands as never before how finally determinative is the moral and spiritual factor in all human progress. We may never know just how much the world had paid to clear away the rubbish of autocracy and found the new age on the principle of a square deal for great and small; but the deed is done, and henceforth the one compelling sanction in all life must be the essential principle for which the Allies have spent their treasure and spilled their blood. The new internationalism will underlie all further development of relations between the two Americas, which opens a new world of social discovery and growth as fascinating as that which Columbus found in the physical surface of the globe.
The greater results of the closer fellowship of North and South America will be registered in the realms of mind and spirit. Trade balances and stock dividends there will be, but back of and beyond these will rise the new American spirit, uniting the finest courtesy and artistic temperament of the Latin with the practical initiative and efficient vigor of the blend of blood in the United States. There is no gulf, great or small, fixed between the two races. Each has something that the other needs, and close fellowship will result in new race sympathy and mutual advantage.
To ignore this basis of development is to forget that cold commercialism will in time chill the fervor of friendships and alienate the growing sympathy of nations. If we are to have no interest in our neighbors other than the profits we may make from their trade, we will soon cease to be friends and become bitter rivals at the big game of getting all we can.
It takes two to play the game of reciprocal commercial success. If we succeed on the great international chess board, it will be not by shrewd defeat of our friends but by the coming to maturity of a high sense of honor and fair play on both sides. It is not one of us against the other, but both of us together against the normal difficulties of growth and production.
One of the native leaders of Latin-American life has explained that South America was unfortunate in the character of the founders of her national institutions. Adventurers, explorers for gain, greedy conquistadores made the beginnings here, and the moral foundations were laid by religious leaders who traveled with pirates and plunderers and officially blessed their every act of crime. And from the beginning until now the type of religion that has prevailed in Latin-America has not assisted in the building up of free institutions, nor has it produced a high morality among the people.
The South American struggle for self-government and free ideals has been a long, bloody, and heroic grapple with the reactionary and despotic forces brought over from mediæval Europe. Men like San Martin and Bolivar deserve high honor for their work in breaking the bondage that held all life helpless. One by one the colonies threw off their political yokes and became republics, every one of them, in theory, modeled after the United States. The passion of the South American patriot has been home-rule, but, unfortunately, home-rule has not always meant self-government. That is quite a different matter. The overthrow of European despotisms was followed by innumerable internal revolutions. Panama had no monopoly on internal dissensions, and makes no claim that her fifty-three revolutions in fifty-seven years is the high-water mark of insurrections for South or Central America.
In short, the mere overthrow of a despotic government does not assure stable political institutions nor efficient administration of public affairs. Good government by popular sovereignty is something far more fundamental than a matter of printed constitutions or shouting "Viva independencia!" in the plazas. Without moral responsibility and free consciences there can never be a successful democracy on earth.