Rather would I instance the children’s fondness for balloons, which one notices everywhere, as more in tune with the spirit of the country! Every day at certain hours a man will be seen bustling down Calle Florida with some hundreds of penny balloons inflated with gas, taking them to one of the large drapery establishments, where each customer may receive a balloon as a present. During the afternoon, mothers and nurses and children innumerable will be seen about the streets with their balloons. It is indeed un país de niños—a land of children! Yes, after reviewing all the various manifestations of the national spirit, down to its love of the morbid, its revelling in stories and scenes of crime, its lack of humour, I am persuaded that most representative is this childishness. Perhaps it is because the Argentines are children at heart that they are so lacking in the sense of humour. Children are notoriously humourless, though they may be the cause of infinite humour in others. The keen relish of life’s lighter side comes with advancing years. So with young nations. The Argentine is not old enough yet to have developed the sense of humour; it is still seriously young. But with this youth it also has that wonder sense which is the privilege of all youth, and just as the sand-built castles of the children by the sea shore are to them more wonderful than the Pyramids of Egypt, so are all things in his republic to the Argentine.
General View of the City of Montevideo and the River Plate.
Most of the corruption which exists in public life is due to the participation of foreigners therein; Italians chiefly. That will pass. The nation is young and is gradually adjusting its perspective. The boastfulness of the younger generation, so irritating to the visitor who is prepared to admire all that is worthy of admiration in the Republic, is another fault of youth. It too will pass. The young Argentine who to-day talks of his country as a great empire of the future, dominating not only the Western hemisphere, but influencing profoundly the whole civilised world of the future, is still bien jeune. He will grow older, and his vision of the wonders that may be shall grow dimmer.
Remains the fact that eminent among the public men of the Argentine are many of supreme ability and integrity. Rather let us think of them than of the baser sort. They are the true patriots, and they also once were young. I have read many speeches and articles by such publicists as Dr. Luís María Drago, Dr. E. S. Zeballos, Dr. Quesada, Dr. Ramos-Mexía, and Dr. David Peña, (all doctors of law, the use of such degrees being universal) to mention a few only of the scores of names that one might muster, worthy to rank with the best expressions of modern statesmanship. With these leaders, and such as these, the Argentine is not only assured of material progress, but intellectually equipped for a future which will see the abolition of innumerable abuses that darken its public life to-day. The spirit of the country is the spirit of youth, and youth, as we know, has its faults. But there is “no fool like an old fool,” and the old nation that is wedded to its folly is of human institutions ever the most hopeless.
Such follies as we can detect in abundance in the Argentine are either the immediate follies of youth, or corrupting influences imported from Europe. For my part, I am persuaded that the people as a whole constitute a nation in earnest. With their heart set on progress, small wonder if its material forms should first engage them, but there is no lack of forces making for better things, and if at the moment too many of the younger generation of Argentine writers seem to have fallen under the spell of the French decadent school, that, too, will prove no more than a passing phase. There is a far finer appreciation of literature, an infinitely more important body of national literature, in the Argentine than in Australia or in Canada. And there is a certain veneration for old things and ancient culture, not usually consonant with the spirit of youth. Even the United States have not yet entirely emerged from that condition of youthful disrespect inseparable from great material progress in a young country. In the Argentine one finds a very remarkable degree of admiration for the fine old things of Spanish civilisation. Spain was a harsh mother to her, yet she is remembered as the mother, and her harshness as that of la madre pátria. Her glorious literature has the profoundest admiration of the Argentine. Still, the Argentine is never blind to the failings of Spain and the conditions of his national life having tended to put a finer edge on his wits than those of the Spaniard can boast, he is always ready to assert his independence. A good instance of this is furnished by an anecdote of a well-known Buenos Ayres abogado who was present at a lecture by the eminent Spanish novelist, Señor Blasco Ibáñez, when the latter declared, in alluding to the Spanish colonisation of South America and the West Indies, that Spain, after having given to the world sixteen children, was now exhausted. The acute Argentine lawyer retorted:
“That may be so, but England has had more children than Spain; among them the United States, India, and Australia; and after each new birth she has gone forward acquiring new strength, and greater force.”
The Republic may thus be said to look towards the motherland for her culture, but to the Anglo-Saxons for social ideals. She has probably looked more than she has followed. She is essentially a child of Spain, still young, but entirely independent of her mother, with much character of her own and a willingness to emulate good examples. For “a land of children,” these are surely conditions that will make for greatness when it has grown up.