Although the Argentines under San Martín helped the Chilians to throw off the Spanish yoke, there lingers something of old rivalry and distrust between the two nations, notwithstanding such diplomatic courtesies as each government presenting the other with a fine house for its embassy in their respective capitals. Peru and Chili, too, while making much parade of cordial relationships, are still existing in a state of veiled enmity. In fine, South American politics are just as full of international jealousies and complications as those of Europe, and the Argentine, as the most progressive of these powers, must depend upon her strength and preparedness for the maintenance of her position among them. The Christ of the Andes, that giant statue on the Cordillera frontier of the two republics, is a pious expression of the hope that Chili and the Argentine may never go to war again, but we know that these pious expressions are no more binding than inconvenient treaties. Hence the question of armaments is an important one with most of the republics—with Chili probably most of all, but only in a lesser degree at present with the Argentine.
There is another reason for this, and one which in Europe is little understood. The North American menace. While the Monroe doctrine is not entirely despised among the Latin Republics, the Drago doctrine, formulated by the great jurisconsult of Buenos Ayres, which asserts the independence of their nationalities and maintains the principle that no power by force of arms may impose itself upon any of them, is much more acceptable to Latin America. The Republic of the United States, comparatively little known, and exercising very small influence throughout South America, is looked upon with increasing suspicion. The making of the Panama Canal, instead of appealing to South Americans as a great new factor in their economic lives, is viewed in many quarters as the first step towards attacking their existence as independent nations. The United States are suspected of an aggressive policy towards the South, and with such diplomatists as Mr. Theodore Roosevelt publicly stating at Rio that the United States, in alliance with Brazil, could dominate the whole western hemisphere, the road to a better understanding is not made unnecessarily smooth.
The great protagonist of the “anti-Yankee” movement, which is steadily gaining ground throughout all the republics, is a Buenos Ayres gentleman of some local celebrity as a litterateur, Dr. Manuel Ugarte. He has stumped the whole of South America, and everywhere he has been received with open arms. As a prophet, he warns the nations of the danger that threatens in the North; he sees in the Panama Canal an instrument deliberately prepared by the United States, not so much for her own commercial expansion, but the better to impose yanqui authority on the Southern Continent. He has no difficulty in making out an excellent case, as he need do no more than quote from some of the ravings of those American senators who publicly talk of “one flag from Pole to Pole and from Ocean to Ocean.” A South American politician may be excused if he does not readily discriminate between such insensate bombast and the saner United States opinion which realises very well the impossibility of bringing the mighty Southern Continent into the Union, and knows what a handful the little Philippine Islands have proved. The excuse for such agitators as Dr. Ugarte is the greater so long as Mr. Roosevelt is allowed at large to make speeches wherein he can undo in five minutes the work of years of diplomacy.
The distrust of North America is a very real thing throughout these republics, and when in the autumn of 1913 Mr. Robert Bacon, formerly American Ambassador to Paris, was engaged at considerable expense by Mr. Andrew Carnegie and sent to deliver lectures in all the South American capitals on behalf of “Universal Peace,” his mission was looked upon in most quarters with suspicion. True, he was received with much pomp and circumstance, and treated with great display of cordiality, but a metaphorical finger was laid to the national nose at his departure, and the national eye winked knowingly. As one gentleman rather cogently observed to me, when the said Mr. Bacon was present as the evangel of peace in Lima, “Why doesn’t he pack off with his lectures to Mexico just now? That’s where he might be of some service, as we’re all quite peaceful down here.” It is quite useless to endeavour to convince a South American that the United States have not as deliberately engineered the revolution in Mexico as they are supposed to have done that quaint little affair in Panama.
This of the future is certain—that the surest way to produce an alliance of all the South American powers, in which their national differences would for the time vanish and the whole join together as one great nation, would be for the United States to pursue a policy of aggression in respect to any single one of them. To an extent little appreciated either in North America or in Europe, these South American republics have each their racial distinctions, and in all there is an intense feeling of nationality, which, rather than diminishing, is steadily growing, and is the object of the most assiduous cultivation on the part of the leaders of the people. But the Drago doctrine is vital to their national destinies and the very reasons that make them district entities would unite them as a whole to confront a common enemy.
In the development of South America, the Argentine has an important rôle to play, and as that country has been the pioneer in putting a stop to the old foolish era of revolutions and internecine strife, turning towards Europe not only for ideals of political advancement, but for that material help which at once places the country under an obligation and calls forth its own best energy, and is the best pledge of peaceful intentions, it is safe to assume that, despite such temporary set-backs as the commercial crisis through which it is passing as these lines are being penned, the Argentine will maintain undismayed her political and commercial expansion to splendid issue.
CHAPTER XX
OUR SUMMER IN MONTEVIDEO
No matter how little we may love a place, we shall surely feel some sentiment of regret at leaving. If I had been told after my first few weeks in Buenos Ayres that I might come to entertain a kindly feeling towards that stony-hearted city, I doubt not that I should have scouted the suggestion. And yet when it came to saying good-bye to the friends we had made, taking a farewell look at the scenes amidst which for eight months it had been our lot to live, and setting our faces towards another town, a different country, and new conditions of life, Buenos Ayres did appear almost friendly. The long, low line of flickering lights stretching for many miles by the riverside, and inland a myriad others picking out the topography of the great city, seemed more picturesque than I had hitherto thought, as we looked upon them that sultry December night when we steamed away from the Dársena Sud on our night journey to Montevideo.