Religious scholastic institutions are many, several of the great Orders, such as the Benedictines, Franciscans, and of course the Jesuits, maintaining splendid, large, and wealthy colleges. Convents for girls are also of first-class importance in the Brazilian educational field, the Sacred Heart institutions taking thousands of girls, and apparently giving them a good training. In São Paulo there are several schools of Italian origin; there is a popular French Lycée in Rio; the American Mackenzie College in São Paulo, founded by Dr. Horace Lane, is a fine institution doing good work—possessing a kindergarten branch for young children as well as upper grade classes and technical courses; and there is a series of excellent and popular schools known as the Gymnasio Anglo-Brazileiro. The first of these was started in 1899 by an Englishman, Mr. Charles W. Armstrong, in São Paulo, for boys; subsequently a beautiful property was acquired among the woods on the lower slopes of the Dois Irmãos mountain just outside Rio, and a second school opened there, followed in 1913 by the foundation of a school for girls on the slopes of the Gavea. Sixty-two per cent of the pupils are Brazilians, who seem to take to the healthy open-air games of the Anglo-Saxon with a great deal of appreciation.
Agricultural School at Piracicaba, S. Paulo State.
Maintained by the State Government; teaches scientific agriculture, conducts chemical experiments and maintains a splendid demonstration farm. Director, Dr. Emilio Castello.
The Butantan Institute, S. Paulo City.
The Instituto Serumtherapico do Estado de São Paulo is maintained by the State Government. Several thousand poisonous snakes are kept here in the Serpentario and from them venom is extracted and injected into horses; the resulting serum is prepared as an antidote for snakebite, and is distributed all over Brazil. The Director is Dr. Vital Brasil.
The more southerly colonies have their own schools, generally taught in their own languages; the only criticism of this retention of the immigrants’ tongue and ideas that I have ever heard in Brazil made itself known at the time when rumours were freely repeated of plots in the German settlements of Rio Grande do Sul, soon after the outbreak of war in Europe, and which were strengthened by von Tannenberg’s book on German expansion, which discussed the annexation of South Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. Brazilian newspapers ran stories dealing with the possibility of German naval victories being followed by the occupation of Rio Grande and the use of the Lagôa dos Patos as a base for vessels, and while the defeat of Admiral von Spee off the Falkland Islands disposed of such a plan if it ever existed, the suggestion drew the attention of many formerly indifferent people to the self-centred life of some of the German colonies. It was complained that nothing but the German language was taught in the schools, that public notices and records were issued in German, and the German ideal held before the people to the exclusion of any other. The matter was very warmly argued, the colonists scouting, and with a show of reason, any evil intention; it is hardly to be supposed that any sane person could plan the deliverance of a piece of South American territory to a foreign power, with the surrounding republics, not to speak of Brazil herself, looking quietly on. But so much feeling was expressed that the Governor of Rio Grande thought it well to announce new introductions of the Portuguese language into schools. As a matter of fact the Italians in Rio Grande out-number the inhabitants of German blood, few of whom are German born; emigration to Brazil was forbidden by the German Government in the year 1859, after some eighty thousand people had settled: the survivors with their descendants are said today to number two hundred and fifty thousand. Living as they have chiefly done, in isolated towns, it would be strange if they had acquired any habits and customs other than those of their European fathers; they speak German for the same reasons that they sleep on feather beds, brew beer, plant gardens and build comfortable houses.
The sweeping charge that South America is a land of revolutions is made so often and so lightly that few people stop to consider the record of the vastly different countries comprising the area below Panama. When the writer has remarked—outside Brazil—that Brazil has never as a whole had any blood-stained revolution, the statement has been received with looks of polite incredulity, and yet it is true. Prior to separation from Portugal a few local, factional feuds occurred, as in Pernambuco when the natives quarrelled with the petty merchant Portuguese, and in Minas when the Paulistas fought the men of other states for claims to the gold mines, but there was no more serious internal disturbance. Independence from Portugal was achieved almost without bloodshed, by force of a proclamation: the end of the monarchy and establishment of a republic was attained peacefully.
After the republican régime began there was occasional trouble, a mere candle flicker compared to the republican bonfires in neighbour states, the insurgents of Rio Grande giving trouble for some years; there were two revolts by the navy, of a not too creditable kind. In none of these were the Brazilian people deeply concerned, nor did they affect the government of the country. No Viceroy of Brazil, no King and no President, has been assassinated in the history of the country.
External troubles, excluding the fights for twenty-four years to expel the Dutch from Pernambuco, are limited to two, with neighbours in the south; the first of these was as much the fault of Brazil as that of Argentina, and she was forced to give up the Cisplatine Province (Uruguay) forcibly annexed: but in the second, the Paraguayan war, Brazil acted only after years of aggression obliged her to take up arms. The fact is that the Brazilian is a peace lover, that Brazil has had few wars in the past and has no cause for quarrel as far as can be foreseen.
Wars between South American states have frequently hinged upon questions of boundaries, the result of vague delimitation in colonial days when much of the interior was still a sealed book. Brazil took steps early in her history as a republic to avoid such differences: that good diplomat the Barão de Rio Branco worked for years on the subject of Brazilian boundaries, and succeeded in making definite settlements with the Argentine, Bolivia and French Guiana.
Another big step for the preservation of Brazilian peace was made when in 1915 a pact was arranged between Argentina, Brazil and Chile which binds the three greatest South American states in a closer alliance than has yet been possible between North American countries. The terms include “rules for proceeding to facilitate the friendly solution of questions that were formerly excluded from arbitration” in virtue of the treaty of 1899 between Brazil and Chile, of 1902 between Chile and Argentina, and of 1905 between Argentina and Brazil. The articles of the new agreement arrange for the submission of disputes to a permanent Commission, the signatories agreeing not to commit hostile acts while the Commission’s report is pending or until one year has elapsed: the constitution of the Commission is provided for, and it is agreed that any one of the three contracting parties has power to convoke it; the seat of the Commission was fixed in the neighbouring (and presumably neutral) Republic of Uruguay—at Montevideo—and after it had presented its report upon matters in dispute the contracting parties, it was agreed, would recover liberty of action “to proceed as best consults their interest in the matter under investigation.”
The A. B. C. Treaty, as it is known, was signed at Buenos Aires on May 25, 1915, by representatives of the three Governments; its strength has not been tested, but there is little reason to doubt that the formal acceptance of the arbitration principle by these three powerful states in the agreement is a big step forward in American history. “Brazil has always been an advocate of arbitration, and has accepted the fiats of arbitrators even when against her interests,” says J. P. Wileman, adding that the actual treaty is but a development of Brazil’s historic policy, though in the particular form it has taken the formula adopted by the United States has been followed; it is also significant because it “diminishes, although it does not eliminate, chances of war between the three leading South American countries,” and “leaves no excuse for the ruinous competition in armaments that has contributed so powerfully to the actual financial crises in all three countries.” With burdensome purchases of fighting vessels, rifles and cannon eliminated from their budgets the Argentine, Brazil and Chile can therefore “in future devote all their energies and resources to the moral and material advancement of their peoples.”