"Then you speak Spanish like an Argentine, eh?"
"Well—er—no; but I've picked up enough to scrape along on."
"Could you take charge of a hundred Argentines and talk business to them as well as an Argentine?"
"No; I wouldn't like to say that."
"Could you write a technical business letter in Spanish?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Good day, my young friend. I should have been glad to have helped you, but I want a man who would not be sure to make mistakes."
There is a number of that pattern of Englishman in Buenos Aires. There are excuses for them. They go out under a three- or a five-years' contract to some post. A lad is a stranger in a strange land, and has yet to pick up Spanish. He naturally consorts with his own countrymen. They dine together; they meet in the same café; they belong to the same club; they seek their pleasures together. It is very hard for a fellow under such circumstances to become quick with the language, or extend his knowledge to any great extent as to the Argentine way of doing things. He can get all his requirements with a sort of pidgin-Spanish. So at last he does not bother. That is the kind of man who sticks in the same position all his life, and occasionally rails at his luck in not getting a big post.
That is one side of the picture. There is the other. I have in my mind a man who holds a high position in Argentina. When he went out twenty years ago he saw that the first essential was to know the language. At the risk of being thought unsociable, he lived with Spanish Argentines for two years, and made friends with young Argentines rather than with Englishmen. He made it a habit to read the Buenos Aires Spanish morning papers. He has gone ahead and done exceedingly well, although I would not describe him as a brilliant business man. Then there was a youth with whom I made acquaintance on the boat. I noticed he was spending a good deal of his time with a Spanish grammar. He told me he was going out under a five-years' contract to be a clerk in one of the banks. "But I am not going to stop a bank clerk," he confided to me, "though that will be all right for five years. By then I hope to have got a good grip of the language and picked up something about Argentina, and if then I'm not able to go to some boss and get one of the good jobs, well, it will be my own fault." With that spirit he would be a success. All over the country I was meeting Englishmen of that standard, and, because they can be relied upon, they are esteemed and trusted.