I am not unduly enthusiastic, I am only speaking the plain truth, when I affirm that the Republican Imperialism of the United States has been most beneficent, having guaranteed to Mankind the inestimable boon of laying deep and strong in a virgin soil, providentially gifted with the most varied, the most abundant, the richest resources, the destinies of a great Sovereign Nation comprising numerous ethnical groups. This liberal, progressive, peaceful, harmonious Imperialism, it is a duty to approve wishing it to achieve new triumphs for the general good of Humanity.
Republican Imperialism is also making its way—contaminating it, our "Nationalists" would say—in Southern America. This large and splendid half of the New World has been for too many years the theatre of civil troubles which appeared endless. A great change for the better has taken place since the beginning of the concentration movement which has united almost the entire Southern American Continent into eight Sovereign States, two of which with really Imperial proportions.
The Brazilian Republic has a territorial area of 3,218,991 square miles, with a population of more than 24,000,000 increasing at the average rate of six or seven hundred thousand a year. With the great natural resources at her command, she will certainly develop into one great Power. The day is not so far distant when it will have a population exceeding fifty millions living in comfort on a soil of luxurious wealth.
The Argentine Republic has a territory of 1,153,119 square miles in extent. Her population is over 8,000,000, having doubled during the last twenty years. At this rate of a yearly increase of five per cent., it is easily foreseen what large total it will reach in a few years. It is wealthy, doing the best with her splendid resources, already contributing extensively to feed the population of Europe.
The other Southern American Republics—the Bolivian, the Chilean, the Colombian, the Peruvian, the Venezuelan—have all territorial areas double in extent of those of the Great Powers of Western and Central Europe.
In Southern America, like everywhere else, the rising tide is not running in favour of a multiplicity of small Sovereignties, always in a warring frame of mind. Since her political reorganization, South America, as a whole, has enjoyed the advantages of peace and of a large material progress.
In reality the same political phenomenon is to be found in the five continents forming the whole earthly globe. Let the "Nationalists" call it Imperialism if they like, I cannot help concluding that it is the outgrowth of natural causes operating in the sense of larger political units, giving to the Nations getting so constituted, prestige, power, grandeur, favouring public order and, in many instances, the development of free institutions.