mmm^m^i'mmmm EUMifYOF E AMERICAS Qass. Book. -CL The Unity of the Americas A DISCUSSION OF THE POLITICAL, COMMERCIAL, EDUCATIONAL, AND RELIGIOUS RELATIONSHIPS OF ANGLO-AMERICA AND LATIN AMERICA BY ROBERT E. SPEER SECRETARY, BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA LAYMEN'S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT NEW YORK 1916 ^ It 1 8 Published jointly by MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT and LAYMEN'S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT ^/^ 7 •0 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Introduction v I, Political • • i II. Commercial «... 33 III. Educational 63 IV. Religious 89 INTRODUCTION This small volume is merely a sketch of some of the material which the average man may not have at hand regarding Latin-American conditions and of some of the facts and principles which ought to be before him in order that he may think intelligently and sympatheti- cally on the highly important matter of our relations to our Latin- American neighbors. If, as these studies seek to show, we have some things which can be of service to our neighbors, they also have something to teach us of kindness and courtesy and high idealism in the face of great discouragements. There is less unity be- tween them and us than there ought to be. It is the aim of this little book to quicken the desire for more. POLITICAL The unity of the Americas is an aspiration against the facts. Happily not all the facts divide the American peoples, but our easy and optimistic view of the homo- geneity and community of sentiment of the American nations needs to be confronted v^ith its untruth. Diverse Heredities. The Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic nations of North America and the Latin nations of North and South America have diverse political and social ancestries and are divided by the consequences of their unlike inheritances. Senor Pezet, Minister of Peru to the United States in 191 3, set forth some of these facts in an address on "Contrast in the Development of Nation- ality in Anglo-America and Latin America," in which he pointed out the dissimilar charaqter, nature, surround- ing physical conditions, encountered difficulties, racial habits, political ideals, and family life of the two bodies of colonists: "Your territory, at the time of the advent of the white man from Europe, was more or less of a virgin terri- tory, inhabited by savage and semisavage nomadic tribes, thinly scattered all over a very vast area; while our territory was, to a very great extent, organized into states in a measure barbaric, but nevertheless, semicivilized, densely populated, and concentrated in a manner to make for cohesion. . . . "As the news of the discovery of the New World I 2 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS invaded the European countries, two types, that were to mold the destinies of the wonderlands beyond the seas, were brought into play ; the one formed of the oppressed and persecuted by religious intolerance, the other of the adventurous soldiers of fortune, in quest of gold and adventures. ''Both of these started out with set purposes ; the op- pressed and persecuted came to the New World to build up new homes, free from all the troubles left behind; while the adventurous came bent on destroying and carry- ing away everything they could lay their hands on. So here we have the true genesis of the formation of na- tionality in Anglo- and Latin America in the two great classes, the permanent and the temporary, the one to build up, the other to tear down and destroy. The one came with reverence, the other with defiance; both with an equally set purpose, but the one with humility in his heart, the other proud and overbearing: the one full of tender- ness born of his religious zeal, the other cruel and un- scrupulous. . . . "Let us glance," continues Sefior Pezet, "at the types of men who came to your and to our sections of the continent. The colonists of Anglo-America came from those countries of northwestern Europe where there was the greatest freedom, the nearest approach to republican institutions and government of the people and by the people, existent at the time. England, Scotland, and Wales, the Netherlands, French Huguenots, Scandina- vians, and Germans were the stock from which were evolved the American colonies. "The conquerors of Latin America were militarists from the most absolute monarchy in western Europe, POLITICAL 3 and with these soldiers came the adventurers. And after the first news of their wonderful exploits reached the mother country, and the first-fruits of the conquest were shown in Spain, their most Catholic majesties, Ferdinand and Isabella, felt it their duty to send to the new kingdoms, beyond the seas, learned and holy monks and friars, men of science, and scions of noble families. With these came men of means and of great power at home. They brought a very large clerical force, com- posed mainly of younger sons of the upper classes; each one eager to obtain a sinecure, trusting to his rela- tives and powerful sponsors to better his condition, and in time, get his promotion to more important and more lucrative positions. . . . "Our men did not bring their women and families until many years after the conquest. In consequence, the Spaniards from the very commencement took to themselves Indian women and their offspring became the mestizos, a mixed race that the haughty and pure Cas- tilians in Spain never countenanced, although they wxre of their own flesh and blood. Later on, when conditions became more settled, the Spaniards brought their families, and after a time the Creoles came into existence. These were the offspring of European parents born in the New World."! Racial Confusion. How could anything but differ- ence of racial character develop out of such difference of ancestry? The Indian blood in the United States has practically disappeared. In 1900 the population of the United States was made up roughly of one half of British ^Don Federico Alfonso Pezet, "Contrast in the Development of Nationality in Anglo-America and Latin America," 4-7. 4 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS strain, three eighths of other European strains, and one eighth Negro. The dominant blood was European un- mixed with either Indian or Negro. In Latin America, as Sefior F. Garcia Calderon says: "the three races — Iberian, Indian, and African — united by blood, form the population. ... In the United States union with the aborigines is regarded by the colonists with repugnance ; in the South [Latin America] miscegenation is a great national fact; it is universal. "It is always the Indian that prevails, and the Latin democracies are mestizo or indigenous. The ruling class has adopted the costume, the usages, and the laws of Europe, but the population which forms the national mass is Quichua, Aymara, or Aztec. ... Of the total population of Peru and Ecuador the white element only attains to the feeble proportion of 6 per cent., while the Indian element represents 70 per cent, of the population of these countries, and 50 per cent, in Bolivia. In Mexico the Indian is equally in the majority, and we may say that there are four Indian nations on the continent: Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. . . . "The invasion of Negroes affected all the Iberian colonies, where, to replace the outrageously exploited Indian, African slaves were imported by the ingenuous evangelists of the time. In Brazil, Cuba, Panama, Vene- zuela, and Peru this caste forms a high proportion of the total population. In Brazil 15 per cent, of the popula- tion is composed of Negroes, without counting the im- mense number of mulattoes and zamhos.^ Bahia is half an African city. . . . ^A sambo or sambo is the offspring of a Negro and a mulatto or an Indian. The latter union is here meant. POLITICAL 5 "Is unity possible with such numerous castes? Must we not wait for the work of many centuries before a clearly American population be formed ?"i Divergent Political Ideals. The Latin and Anglo- Saxon nations of America have had also wholly different political discipline. The latter were real colonies of the mother countries. The former were not. "Absolutism in government, monopoly in matters of commerce and finance, intolerance in questions of dogma and morality, tutelage and rigorous isolation: these were the founda- tion of Spanish colonization,"^ says Calderon, and he thinks the methods practised by the Dutch and English in their colonies were not essentially different. But there were many and fundamental differences. In Latin America, Lord Bryce observes, "there were no elected assemblies or elected officials. All power came from above ; the people had nothing to do with administration, and were not enough permitted to subject it to public criticism. ... In the English North American colonics the management of church affairs belonged to the laity as well as to the clergy; and the New England Congre- gational churches in particular, founded on the principles of liberty, became direct exponents of popular feeling." When independence came in South America, "the in- habitants, accustomed to be ruled by others in state and in church, had never been given a chance of learning to think of government as their own business nor of them- selves as responsible for public order. When a long and sanguinary war had destroyed the habit of obedience ^F. Garcia Calderon, Latin America: Its Rise and Progress, 356-360. ' Ibid., 51. 6 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS to constituted authority, they were remitted — constitution or no constitution — to that primitive state of things in which force prevails. . . . Whoever travels through these countries, — I include Mexico and Central America, but not Chile or Argentina, — and whoever, having thus obtained some knowledge of their physical and racial character, studies their history, finds himself driven to three conclusions. The first is that these states never have been democracies in any real sense of the word. The second is that they could not have been real democra- cies. To expect peoples so racially composed, very small peoples, spread over a vast area, peoples with no practise in self-government, to be able to create and work demo- cratic institutions was absurd, though the experience which their history has furnished to the world was needed to demonstrate the absurdity. The third conclusion is that injustice is done to the Spanish Americans by cen- sures and criticisms which ignore these fundamental facts. ... To understand these countries, one must think of them as having, under the rule of the Spanish crown and of the church, dropped two centuries behind the general march of civilized mankind."^ Among the leaders of Latin America and the leading foreign students of Latin- American conditions, there are many who frankly advocate oligarchical government. Professor Bingham expresses his sympathy with this view : "The great San Martin foresaw the advantages of oligarchy or monarchy and advocated something of the kind for the Spanish provinces of South America when they secured their independence. Unfortunately, ^James Bryce, South America: Observations and Impressions, 535, 537, 539, 549- POLITICAL 7 his farsighted statesmanship ran counter to the bom- bastic notions of 'Hberty' held by the uneducated Creoles who had secured control of the reins of government and the result was the creation of republics."^ And Calderon, speaking for himself, says frankly, "a young Venezuelan critic, Sefior Machado Hernandez, having studied the history of his country, rent as it has been by. revolutions, considers that the best form of gov- ernment for America^ is that which reinforces the at- tributions of the executive and establishes a dictatorship. In place of the Swiss referendum and the federal organi- zation of the United States, autocracy is, it seems to us, the only practical means of government." He allows exceptions, however: '*In some states in which the eco- nomic life is intense, as in the Argentine, Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay, benevolent despotism does not mark the high- water limit of national development; there new parties are forming themselves, and the caudillos [politi- cal bosses of the old, military type] will soon disappear."^ The Latin-American Spirit and Character. Such a racial and political ancestry has produced a Latin-Ameri- can spirit and society unlike the spirit and society of Anglo-Saxon America. "The absence of that class of intelligent small landowners, which is the soundest and most stable element in the United States and in Switzer- ^ Hiram Bingham, Across South America, 155. ■ North American readers should note that throughout the book, in the quotations from Sr. Calderon, "America" and "Americans" are used as referring to Latin or South America, showing that the monopoly of the name by the United States is not accepted by Latin Americans. ^Latin America: Its Rise and Progress, 374, 372. 8 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS land, and is equally stable, if less politically trained, in France and parts of Germany," says Lord Bryce, "is a grave misfortune for South and Central America."^ Says Professor Ross: *Tn each of these republics there are men of purpose as high and ideas as sound as one will find anywhere. But, in the absence of an intelligent self-assertive commonalty to respond to their appeals and to clothe them with power, this type come into office only by accident, so that in general the man who rules is either the army officer with troops to place and keep him in authority, or else the politician who has gathered about himself a great number of followers animated by the prospect of capturing political jobs and of being let in on such graft as the country may be made to yield."^ And what of Latin-American character? Is there such a character, a real Latin- American personality? Sr. Calderon answers for the higher critical thought of Latin America itself; he quotes Bolivar: "We are not Europeans, nor Indians either, but a kind of halfway species between the aborigines and the Spaniards ; Amer- ican by birth, European by right, we find ourselves forced to dispute our titles of possession with the natives, and to maintain ourselves in the country which saw our birth in spite of the opposition of invaders : so that our case is all the more extraordinary and complicated. . . . Let us be careful not to forget that our race is neither European nor North American; but rather a composite of America and Africa, than an emanation from Europe, since Spain herself ceased to be European by virtue of her African [Arab] blood, her institutions, and her '^ South America: Observations and Impressions, 533. ''Edward A. Ross, South of Panama, 332, 333. POLITICAL 9 character." And Calderon himself analyzes keenly the Latin- American spirit. It "is not a thing apart; it is formed of characteristics common to all the Mediterra- nean peoples. French, Greeks, Italians, Portuguese, and Spaniards find therein the fundamental elements of their national genius, just as in antiquity the Greek women found in Helen the reflection of their own beauty. To this spiritual synthesis Spain contributes her idealism; Italy, the paganism of her children and the eternal sug- gestion of her marbles; France, her harmonious edu- cation. "In the Iberian democracies an inferior Latinity, a Latinity of the decadence prevails ; verbal abundance, in- flated rhetoric, oratorical exaggeration, just as in Roman Spain. The qualities and defects of the classic spirit are revealed in American life; the persistent idealism, which often disdains the conquests of utility; the ideas of humanity and equality, of universality, despite racial variety ; the cult of form ; the Latin instability and vivac- ity ; the faith in pure ideas and political dogmas : all are to be found in these lands oversea, together with the brilliant and superficial intelligence, the Jacobinism, and the oratorical facility. Enthusiasm, sociability, and optimism are also American qualities. "These republics are not free from any of the ordinary weaknesses of the Latin races. The state is omnipotent ; the liberal professions are excessively developed; the power of the bureaucracy becomes alarming. The charac- ter of the average citizen is weak, inferior to his imagina- tion and intelligence; ideas of union and the spirit of solidarity have to contend with the innate indiscipline of the race. These men, dominated by the solicitations of 10 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS the outer world and the tumult of politics, have no inner life; you will find among them no great mystics, no great lyrical writers. They meet realities with an exas- perated individualism. 'Tndisciplined, superficial, brilliant, the South Amer- icans belong to the great Latin family; they are the children of Spain, Portugal, and Italy by blood and by deep-rooted tradition, and by their general ideas they are the children of France. A French politician, M. Clemenceau, found in Brazil, the Argentine, and Uru- guay, 'a superabundant Latinism; a Latinism of feeling, a Latinism of thought and action, with all its immediate and superficial advantages, and all its defects of method, its alternatives of energy and failure in the accomplish- ment of design.' "^ National Distinctions. The governments which the Latin-American race and spirit have established and conducted cannot be indiscriminately generalized with- out injustice. "There is as great a difference between the best and the worst of them as there is between the best and the worst of European monarchies. . . . "We may distinguish three classes of states. The first consists of those in which republican institutions, pur- porting to exist legally, are a mere farce, the government being, in fact, a military despotism, more or less op- pressive and corrupt, according to the character of the ruler, but carried on for the benefit of the executive and his friends. The second includes countries where there is a legislature which imposes some restraint upon the executive and in which there is enough public opinion Latin America: Its Rise and Progress, 7S, 287, 288. POLITICAL 11 to influence the conduct of both legislatures and execu- tive. In these states the rulers, though not scrupulous in their methods of grasping power, recognize some re- sponsibility to the citizens and avoid open violence or gross injustice. The third class are real republics, in which authority has been obtained under constitutional forms, not by armed force, and where the machinery' of government works with regularity and reasonable fair- ness, laws are passed by elected bodies under no executive coercion, and both administrative and judicial work goes on in a duly legal way."^ The general Latin- American principle is not federation but unity. As to political fraud and oligarchical domi- nation and revolutions the facts are not denied. "In Chile," says Professor Ross, "the reliance of the oli- garchy is not on force at the ballot-box but on fraud." "Educated in the Roman Church," says Calderon, "Amer- icans bring into politics the absolutism of religious dog- mas; they have no conception of toleration. The domi- nant party prefers to annihilate its adversaries, to realize the complete unanimity of the nation ; the hatred of one's opponents is the first duty of the prominent politician. The opix)sition can hardly pretend to fill a place of influence in the assemblies, or slowly to acquire power. It is only by violence that the parties can emerge from the condition of ostracism in which the}' are held by the faction in |X)wer, and it is by violence that the\' return to that condition. Apart from the rule of the caudillos the political lie is tritmiphant; the freedom of the suffrage is only a platonic promise inscribed in the constitution; -Bnce, South America: Observations and Impressions, 526, 541, 542. 12 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS the elections are the work of the government; there is no pubHc opinion. JournaHsm, almost always oppor- tunist, merely reflects the indecision of the parties. Political statutes and social conditions contradict each other ; the former proclaim equality, and there are many races; there is universal suffrage, and the races are illiterate ; liberty and despotic rulers enforce an arbitrary power. ... It is to the excessive simplicity of the political system, in which opinion has no other means of expression than the tyranny of oligarchies on the one hand and the rebellion of the vanquished on the other, that the interminable and sanguinary conflicts of Spanish America are due."^ American Disunity. Many of the political weak- nesses of Latin America have equivalents in the United States, but it is clear that Latin and Teutonic America are fundamentally separate and unlike. But where is there unity anywhere in North and South America? It is not in Canada. From the beginning the Dominion has been troubled by a radical racial discord and its geographical configuration is such that each of the three great divisions of Canada has closer natural relations southwards than it has with its neighboring Canadian people. It is not in the United States. For the first seventy-five years of our history our politics centered in an issue of division and, since the Civil War, besides the Negro problem we have had increasingly the problem of immigrant assimila- tion, and again and again our national political cam- paigns have been waged over supposed conflicting sec- tional interests. It is not in any Latin- American land. Latin America: Its Rise and Progress, 369-371. POLITICAL 13 Each one of these is a strange composite of race stratifica- tion and indiscriminate race blending. There is no unified race in any Latin-American -people. The unity is not to be found within any nation, north or south. A.nd it does not exist between nations. The United States and Canada are more distinctly separated to-day :han ever in their history. Between the different Latin- American nations, in spite of innumerable proposals for ronsolidation, there is no prospect of union and though :here is now creditable peace, there have been bitter wars md there are deep jealousies and divisions. Their )olitical traditions and favorable geographical condi- ions made the union of the United States possible. The 50uth American colonists were never so united as to be ible to make one great nation. "Scattered over an enor- nous area, separated by the greatest natural boundaries hat nature has produced, it was scarcely to be expected hat they too should not follow the traditions of their ■ace and build up local governments instead of forming L federation. The historical and geographical reasons hat prevent the formation of confederations have also nilitated against the building up of strong national governments. "1 And their relations to-day do not greatly converge. On he other hand, Calderon says, "we observe among them . tendency toward further disagreement, toward an .tomic disintegration. Originally a different and a vider movement, in the sense of the close union of similar lationaHties, did manifest itself. The contrary principle )revails to-day, and it results in the separation of 'Bingham, Across South America, 58, 59. 14 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS complementary provinces and the conflict of sister nations. ... "To-day these peoples do not know one another. Paris is their intellectual capital, where their poets, thinkers, and statesmen meet. In America everything makes for separation."! As against our easy rhetorical glorification of our imaginary American unity it is well to recall these facts. It is necessary, if we are to do true thinking and to be fitted to deal with duty, that we should remember the unlikeness and disunity of Latin and Anglo-Saxon America. "Teutonic Americans and Spanish Americans have nothing in common except two names, the name American and the name republican. In essentials they differ as widely as either of them does from any other group of peoples, and far more widely than citizens of the United States differ from Englishmen, or than Chileans and Argentines differ from Spaniards and Frenchmen. "2 The present leading Latin Americans emphasize this difference. "Essential points of differ- ence," says Calderon, "separate the two Americas. Dif- ferences of language and therefore of spirit; the differ- ence between Spanish Catholicism and the multiform Protestantism of the Anglo-Saxons ; between the Yankee individualism and the omnipotence of the state natural to the nations of the South. In their origin, as in their race, we find fundamental antagonisms; the evolution of the North is slow and obedient to the lessons of time, to the influences of custom the history of the southern ^ Latin America: Its Rise and Progress, ZZ^, 344- '' Bryce, South America: Observations and Impressions, 507. POLITICAL 15 peoples is full of revolutions, rich with dreams of an unattainable perfection. . . . ''Instead of dreaming of an impossible fusion the Neo- Latin peoples should conserve the traditions which are proper to them. The development of the European in- fluences which enrich and improve them, the purging of the nation from the stain of miscegenation, and immigra- tion of a kind calculated to form centers of resistance against any possibilities of conquest, are the various aspects of this Latin- Americanism. "^ The United States Distrusted. And it is just as well for us in the United States and Canada to realize that Latin America does not love us and is not occupied in gazing with longing upon our prosperity and with admiration upon our blameless political righteousness. It distrusts and misbelieves our purposes. It derides our commercialism. It looks to France, not to us, for ideas and ideals. "It is evident," says Manuel Ugarte, ''that nothing attracts us toward our neighbors of the North. By her origin, her education, and her spirit, South America is essentially European. We feel our- selves akin to Spain, to whom we owe our civilization, and whose fire we carry in our blood; to France, source and origin of the thought that animates us; to England, who sends us her gold freely; to Germany, who supplies us with her manufactures; and to Italy, who gives us the arms of her sons to wrest from the soil the wealth which is to distribute itself over the world. But to the United States we are united by no ties but those of dis- trust and fear."2 Sr. Calderon calls us "the great plutoc- ^ Latin America: Its Rise and Progress, 311, 312. ^John Bigelow, American Policy, 23. i6 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS racy of the North," "The Yankee peril;" our policy toward Chile he calls ''indecisive, turbid, Machiavelic." He monopolizes "America" as a term of speech applied to South America, as we have monopolized it for the United States. To be unified with the North American spirit would be racial suicide, he thinks. "Where Yankees and Latin Americans intermingle, you may better observe the insoluble contradictions which divide them. The Anglo-Saxons are conquering America commercially and economically, but the traditions, the ideals, and the soul of these republics are hostile to them." He declares, "To save themselves from Yankee imperialism the Amer- ican democracies would almost accept a German alliance, or the aid of Japanese arms ; everywhere the Americans of the North are feared." He sees no real unity in the United States. He does see "the triumph of vulgarity," the increase of divorce and criminality, "plebeian brutality, excessive optimism, violent individualism, con- fusion, uproar, instability." It is with Europe, and not with the United States and Canada-, that Latin America would identify its commercial, political, and cultural interests. "We find," he says, "practical mind, industrial- ism, political liberty in England; organization and in- struction in Germany; in France, inventive genius, culture, wealth, great universities, democracy. From these dominating people the New World should receive the legacy of Western civilization directly. Europe offers to the Latin- American democracies what they ask of Saxon America, which was itself formed in the schools of Europe."^ The people of the United States think of themselves ^Bigelow, American Policy, 24. POLITICAL 17 as so animated with the spirit of justice and good-will that they cannot conceive how other people should mis- trust them. But in the case of Latin America we gave opportunity enough for distrust in our war with Mexico alone, of which General Grant said that it was "one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation." The Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine is the most familiar principle in our relation to Latin America. It had been foreshadowed in declarations of Washing- ton, Jefferson, and Madison, but it received its form and name from President Monroe in 1823. It grew out of a dispute with Russia over the limits of her possessions in the Northwest and alarm at the possible extension to America of the purpose of the Holy AlHance of Prussia, Austria, and Russia. It declared ( i ) that "the American continents, by the free and independent conditions which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European power;" (2) that it did not comport with our poHcy to take part "in the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves;" (3) that the European and American systems of government are essentially different and that the European system cannot be ex- tended to America. With existing colonies or depen- dencies the United States would not interfere, but the United States could not countenance any extension and "with the governments who have declared their inde- pendence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, ac- knowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other i8 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS manner their destiny, by any European power, in any light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposi- tion toward the United States." This was the original doctrine. It has been given successive interpretations, however, which at one time narrowed and at another broadened its scope. Mr. Seward, at the time of the Maximihan Empire in Mexico, made no reference to it in his discussions with the French government. And President Polk in 1845, while he pushed out the meaning of the declaration in some regards, yet mentioned only North America. Bigelow in his excellent little book on American Policy traces the development of the Doctrine and its distinctions from and its confusion with the Bolivar idea of a Latin- American alliance, the Washing- ton precept of isolation of the United States from Euro- pean politics, the dominance of the United States in the western hemisphere, and the idea of Pan- Americanism. For many years the Doctrine was a bond of good-will between Latin America and the United States. The Latin-American nations gratefully accepted the strength and protection which it gave. But two things among others have tended to make the Doctrine a rock of of- fense. One was its extension, in the political thought of the United States, to cover the claim of the United States to practical sovereignty over all the western hemisphere. Can we blame Latin America for resenting this attitude of mind? The other ground of objection to the Monroe Doctrine to-day is the feeling of Latin America that it is able to look after its own affairs, that it prefers European relationships to the domination of the United States, and that the influence of the United States is more to be feared than any other peril. There are some POLITICAL 19 who would abrogate the Doctrine or let it fall into abeyance. Others would have the United States invite Argentina, Brazil, and Chile to unite with the United States in maintaining it. Others would let history stand and would have the United States continue to act alone, doing what Is right and serving others as it can, while they would cultivate to the fullest extent the develop- ment of good-will and confidence and common under- standing through the growth of Pan- Americanism, that tightening of bonds which the Pan-American Union has done so much to promote. American Unity a Reality. Enough has been said about the elements of American disunity. Let us look away from these to the elements of union. There are many of these and they are far stronger than such writers as Calderon and Ugarte, representative though they be of the thought of Latin America, are ready to allow. Latin America and Anglo-Saxon America do already have more in common than either has with Europe as a whole. What are some of these things? (i) The principle of democracy. It is true that Latin America thinks the United States to be a plutocracy and that we think the Latin-American nations to be oligarchies, but as a matter of fact the democratic principle is inveterate in each. No Latin-American nation has ever been in danger of turning monarchy, however autocratic and prolonged Its presidential dictatorship. Sr. Pezet says that without having inborn in them any of the principles of true democracy, the Latin- American nations became over night as it were democratic and representative re- publics. But there was more democracy there than Sr. Pezet allows, and the Latin-American spirit to-day is 20 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS immovably democratic. Titles and rank and dynastic interests are alien to it. It loves freedom. It is more akin to the spirit of the United States than to the spirit of France or any European race. (2) Latin America and Anglo-Saxon America have the common charac- teristics which came from the struggle to tame great areas. Japan is one third the size of Venezuela, but its population is as great as that of all South America. South America has a problem of nature subjugation more than forty-eight times that of Japan. We have fought a good part of our battle and have the qualities resulting from it. Latin America is just entering a nature discipline. (3) Our political community of in- terest is real and fundamental. Drago and Calvo of Argentina and Rio Branco and Ruy Barbosa of Brazil have striven as notably as our own statesmen "for the development and institution of an American international law." All the American nations deplore and must seek together to- protect themselves against the system of state relationships an.d diplomacy which has plunged Europe into the ruin and carnage of its present war. (4) The American nations have a common, traditional love of in- ternational peace. They have never built up great arma- ments or sought to preserve peace with one another by rivalry in arming each against the other. Before the European War it was said: "The twenty armies of Latin America aggregate on a war footing about 1,500,- 000 men. Taking the army of the United States, in- cluding the militia and volunteers, as 2,000,000, we get 3,500,000 as the total of the American military coali- tion. This force, hardly capable of united action, is less than the war army of any one of the three leading military POLITICAL 21 powers of Europe — France, Germany, Russia."^ There have been wars in Latin America and periods of revolu- tion and anarchy and bloody dictatorship, but the heart of all America is a heart of peace. It is a different heart from that of the militaristic peoples. (5) America is less of a Babel than any other continent. Two languages practically cover all America. Portuguese is, of course, different from Spanish, but they are mutually intelligible. There are Indian dialects by the score, but these will die away with popular education. English is taught through- out Latin America, and Spanish increasingly in the United States. And what is more significant, we have more common thought by far than binds any other two continents. (6) We are united by a common faith in and zeal for education. (7) We are also united by a common spirit of hope. We are all Americans. "Seldom in Spanish America does one hear any one speak of the place his ancestors came from. . . . Seldom do South Americans or Mexicans seem to visit Spain. . . . For the Spanish Americans there seems to be no past at all earlier than their own war of independence."^ It is true that France has supplanted Spain, and that France means Paris, but it is not the past of Paris that appeals. The Latin- American people are a people of the future. They and we are moving forward together into new things. Common Problems. Above all, the Latin-American people and ourselves are facing great common problems. Immigration. The section on ''The Significance of Latin America to the Life of the World in Domiciling ^ Bigelow, American Policy, 155. ^Bryce, South America: Observations and Impressions, 514, 515. 22 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS now Overcrowded Populations" in the Report of the Commission on Survey and Occupation to the Congress on Christian Work in Latin America at Panama in Febru- ary, 1 91 6, sets forth the facts with regard to immigra- tion and they cannot be better stated. "Latin America is one of the few remaining large sections of the world at once productive and yet sparsely occupied. History is repeating itself in the turning hither of many to find homes under more favorable economic conditions than those under which they have been liv- ing. With an area of about 8,500,000 square miles it has a population of about 80,000,000, or less than ten persons to each square mile. Argentina, with an area of 1,153,000 square miles, has a population of about 7,500,000, or less than seven to the square mile. New York state with 49,000 square miles has a population of 9,000,000. In other words, Argentina has twenty-three times the area of New York state and about seven ninths of the population. If Argentina were as densely popu- lated as New York state, her people would number 220,- 000,000. Brazil has over 200,000 square miles of terri- tory in excess of the whole of continental United States, but has less than one fourth as many people. Chile, with a territory nearly as large as Norway and Sweden, has less than one half the population. . . . "About 1,000,000 immigrants entered the Latin- Amer- ican countries in 191 3, of whom about 45 per cent, re- turned. Italy and Spain supply most of the immigrants. Many Portuguese, Russians, French, Germans, Syrians, Britons, Austrians, Swiss, Japanese, Chinese, East In- dians, and other people are also entering. While the number departing may appear large, it is not excessive POLITICAL 23 when compared with the corresponding ebb in the United States from which twenty-five per cent, reemigrated in 1 91 3 and forty per cent, in 191 2. The French, Spanish, and Portuguese do not have to change their type of civiU- zation and are soon absorbed into the Hfe of the people. The Enghsh, Germans, and North Americans retain their national habits, more tenaciously, but in the second and third generations are assimilative. . . ., ''Latin America had a population of 15,000,000 a cen- tury ago; to-day it has about 80,000,000. Formerly immigration was restricted to the Latin race. With transportation facilities multiplying and cheapened and the Panama Canal open, these lands face all the congested areas in the world. On the east their doors open to Europe and Africa; on the west, to the millions of Asia. Latin America will have its day in the twentieth century. Calderon predicts a population of 250,000,000 by the end of the century. There are many who believe it can maintain a population of 500,000,000 or one third the world's present total. Reclus makes the statement that Latin America can feed one hundred persons per kilo- meter, or over 2,000,000,000."^ Social Problems. This immigration must be assimi- lated, and, while the climatic pressures are of course automatically active, Latin America lacks the assimilative agency of universal elementary education. The elements which constitute the labor class in Argentina and Chile are economically restless. ''Not long ago," says Pro- fessor Ross, "Efirico Ferri, the Italian sociologist, told the Santiaguans that the social question will find Chile ^Report of Commission I on Survey and Occupation, 14-17. 24 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS worse prepared to meet it than any other country. He was right. Blind to the signs of the times, the masters have neglected popular education, so that once these be- nighted masses come to feel a sense of wrong they will turn savage and destructive. The most thoughtful men in Chile anticipate the outbreak within fifteen or twenty years of a bloody labor revolt, which even the soldiers will not be able to quell because it will be universal."^ Latin America has a huge battle to fight against bad sanitation and hygienic conditions which needlessly in- crease the death-rate and impair national efficiency. In Lima the infant death-rate is double that of Hamburg or New York. In Chile one third of the children die under one year of age. It ought to be one of the most beautiful lands in the world. In Concepcion 46 per cent, of the babies die. What can be done to abate disease has been shown in Rio de Janeiro, which has been trans- formed from a place of death into one of the loveliest cities in the world. Latin America is awaking to the necessity of fighting alcoholism which combines with unhealthful living conditions to debase some of the Latin- American nations. Of Chile, Professor Ross says : "The neglect of public hygiene may be measured from the fact that in one of the finest climates in the world the death-rate equals that of Russia, being more than twice that of the United States and Western Europe and a half more than the mortality of Brazil and Argentina. The avarice of the great wine growers has prevented any state check to an alcoholism which cannot be matched elsewhere on the globe."^ North and South America ^South of Panama, 376. =^ Ibid., 373. POLITICAL 25 have the same battle to fight against this immeasurable evil. Sr. Pezet has spoken of the lax moral ideals brought by the early conquerors. And Sr. Calderon is even more outspoken with regard to the ethical inheritance which Latin America has had to transcend. "Sensuality and mysticism were the pleasures of the colonists. . . . Away from home, a host of illegitimate unions, of concu- bines, of clandestine amours." Latin America comments with just horror on our divorce evil. And at home it has to struggle with the marriage problem and illegitimacy, the latter calling for more lenient judgment than could be claimed where civil marriage prevails or the fees for ecclesiastical marriage are less exacting. Accord- ing to the census of Brazil in 1890, 2,603,489 or be- tween one fifth and one sixth of the population are returned as illegitimate. Mr. W. E. Curtis says that in Ecuador more than one half of the population are of illegitimate birth. At one time in Paraguay, after the long wars, it was estimated that the percentage of illegiti- mate births was over 90 per cent. In Venezuela, accord- ing to the official statistics for 1906, there were that year 47,606 illegitimate births, or 68.8 per cent. In Chile the general percentage is 33 per cent., and the highest in any department a little over 66 per cent. In England the percentage is 6 per cent., and in France and Belgium, 7 per cent. In Uruguay, in 1906, ^^Yi per cent, of the births were illegitimate. The statistics would seem to show that the moral conditions in Brazil are better than in any other South American land unless it be the Argen- tine, for which no statistics of illegitimate births are available. 26 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS The Plenary Council of the Latin- American Bishops held in Rome in 1899, unflinchingly described the moral conditions which it deplored in Latin America. In its Acts and Decrees the Council declared : "The widespread pollution o£ fornication is to be deplored and condemned, but especially the most foul pest of concubinage, which, increasing both in public and in private, in great cities as well as in country villages, is leading not a few men of every station to eternal destruction/' The Advanced Nations. Thus far we have spoken of Latin America as a whole, but, as was suggested in a previous section, it is no more a complete unity than the United States. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uru- guay are so much more advanced and stable than the other republics as to form a group by themselves. Argen- tina is the strongest and at present the richest and most progressive. Its society has shifted most from the old colonial order. The Italian element ranks close to the Spanish in the national character. Its capital is the largest city of the world south of the equator. It is the Latin-American Paris. 'The forces contending for the soul of the Argentine people are the same that we know so well — democracy and plutocracy. The problem is how to transform the spirit of the Creole society with- out at the same time losing the poise, the self-restraint, the sense of honor, and the idealism fostered in the dominant element of the old regime, just as they were fostered in the bygone planter aristocracy of the old South. . . . Our people ought to feel a sisterly sym- pathy with this new motley people, engaged in subduing the wilderness and making it the seat of civilization. We ought to understand the problems forced upon them by POLITICAL 27 the disposal of a vast public domain, the urgent need of means of transportation, the exclusive reliance upon foreign capital, excessive dependence upon oversea markets, heterogeneous immigration, sudden fortunes, the spread of the get-rich-quick spirit, wastefulness in government expenditures, and the reign of sordid in- terests in public life. Have we not had them all?"^ Brazil is the largest Latin-American land. Its area is 3,290,564 square miles. It is one half of South America. It is nearly as large as Europe and larger than Australia plus Germany. It has more than one third the population of South America. It is the most oppressively taxed land in South America; next to Argentina it has been most affected by immigration; it has the largest Negro population; it ranks second in trade; its people are singularly friendly and amiable, and they have done more by themselves to develop their country than any other South American people. Chile is, in Calderon's judgment, **a republic of the Anglo-Saxon type." The names of influential Chilean families show how much Anglo-Saxon blood is in the nation. It is, like Argentina, a land of great estates held chiefly by absentees and the produce of the fields flows into the cities. This is better at least than in Argentina where the wealth flows out to England and Germany. No Latin- American land exceeds Chile in energy or stamina. "Neither lottery nor bull-fight has ever struck root in Chile." The Indian strain has given it a touch of truculence. The nitrate finds taken from Peru have relieved it of the burden of normal taxation. Property 'Ross, South of Panama, 137, 138. 28 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS under $2,000 is not taxed, and on property above that the maximum tax rate is three mills per dollar, or about one tenth of what we pay in many communities in the United States. Mexico. Sr. Calderon has drawn an unbiased pic- ture of Mexico as Diaz left it: "He reorganized the finances. In 1876, at the beginning of Diaz's rule, the Mexican imports amounted to 28,000,000 pesos (silver) and the exports to 32,000,000; in 1901 the amount of the former was 143,000,000 and of the latter 148,000,000. The imports, a proof of the wealth of the country, had increased fivefold; the exports, a sign of agricultural and mineral production, had increased almost in proportion. In twenty years (1880- 1900) the yield of the mining industry increased from 24,000,000 to 60,000,000 and in the same period twenty banks were founded. . . . **He governed with the aid of the 'scientific' party — a group which believes in the virtue and power of science, exiles theology and metaphysics, denies mystery, and confesses utilitarianism as its practise and positivism as its doctrine. The Mexican politicians, in renouncing Catholicism after the Reformation and the passing of the Jacobin laws, have not abandoned dogma and absolu- tism in doctrine and in life. As in modern Brazil, posi- tivism is becoming the official doctrine. . . . "The scientific party, intoxicated by an orgy of utili- tarianism, has not sought to arrest the great plutocracy of the North by means of European alliances. "Unity, wealth, peace: these are the magnificent fea- tures of modern Mexico, the admirable work of the dictatorship. The Yankee peril ; lay dogmas which fetter intellectual evolution; a level of utilitarian medi- POLITICAL 29 ocrity without ideals of expansion, without culture, with- out the true Latin characteristics ; popular ignorance and fresh revolutions: these are the disturbing aspects of this long period of tutelage."^ What inevitably followed this autocratic substitution for democracy we all know. The democracy reasserted itself, and needs help from friends. It is absurd for us to assume that poor Mexico, denied education and gripped in the monopolistic absorp- tion of a "scientific" oligarchy, must be dealt with as a stable and developed state, now that the untrained peo- ple have uprisen. Instead of hostility and misjudgment she needs from us constructive help in projecting a new agricultural democracy and a system of national in- dustries and moral education. Progress Inevitable. Sooner or later a new situation will arise in ever}- Latin-American land, either by proc- ess of peaceful development or through revolution and war. These lands are not standing still. We misjudge them if we regard them as unaffected by the same ideals and hopes which animate us. It is true that there have been many revolutions and that lands like Colombia and Ecuador can remember greater and freer days than they know now. But, as Lord Bryce says : "Argentina is now, like Chile, a constitutional republic, whose defects, what- ever they may be, are the defects of a republic, not of a despotism disguised under republican forms. The ex- amples of these two countries prove that there is nothing in South American air or Spanish blood to prevent re- publican institutions from w^orking. If the working is not perfect, neither is it perfect anpvhere else in the ^ Latin America: Its Rise and Progress, 159-163. 30 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS world. . . . Taking the eleven South American states as a whole, their condition is better than it was sixty years ago. . . . Their difficulties were greater than any European people had to face, and there is no need to be despondent for their future."^ Our Duty. The Panama Canal is a sign and a pledge of our unity with Latin America. The motto of the Canal Zone is 'The Land Divided, the World United," and that motto has its deep moral significance. If the canal is thought of simply as an agency of gain and advantage to the United States and as necessitating the extension of our sovereignty over adjoining territories it will increase the suspicion and fear which Latin America already feels. If it is thought of as our con- tribution to the welfare and unity of all the American nations, as a means of common enrichment, and as a bond of friendship and understanding, we may go forward into a new day. It must be a day of acquaintance. As Sr. Pezet has said: "No man can truly appreciate another if he does not know him. No nation can feel friendship toward another if it does not know it. But to know should imply understanding, without which there can be nothing in common, and understanding is essential to draw in- dividuals together, and this is also true of nations. . . . "Therefore, if such peoples wish to become friendly, they must begin by knowing each other, becoming ac- quainted through intercourse, and thus discover their respective traits and characteristics, so that, in course of time, a sentiment of understanding is born, which, being ^ South America: Observations and Impressions, 545, 548, 551. POLITICAL 31 reciprocal, eventually gives way to friendship, and, in like manner, to amity between nations."^ It must be a day of service. We can begin with the thousand Latin-American students now in the colleges and universities of the United States and we must go out into all the Latin-American lands. There are in these lands, as the Commission on Survey and Occupation said at Panama, "all the conditions maturing for great movements and consequences. Crowded populations made aware of productive, unoccupied lands tend to migrate. The progressive stabilization of the govern- ments calls forth capital formerly reluctant. Railroads throw open regions hitherto inaccessible and idle. The advance of scientific sanitation renders the old cities and new territories safely habitable. Education overtaking illiteracy turns the weakness of nations into strength, raising reciprocally the ambitions, the productivity, and the economic consumption of millions. The resulting civilization, like that of the North, will be a congeries of many peoples and races with variety, yet essential unity. This civilization, fronting East and West, reaching out to all the continents, is veritably seated at a cross-roads of the world. Nations, like individuals, cannot mingle in the markets and exchanges, sit together in world councils, learn one another's languages, interblend their stock, without sharing ideas, ideals, and institutions. The people of Latin America, for their own sake, are eminently worthy to receive the maximum ministry Chris- tianity has to oifer. The multiplying and strengthening relations binding them to all the world render imperative ^ "Contrast in the Development of Nationality in Anglo- America and Latin America," 3. 32 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS and fitting their inclusion and identification with what- ever forces are joining efforts for the estabUshment of the kingdom of God on earth."^ The Latin Americans and ourselves are neighbors on these two continents by the will of God. They are not we, and we are not they. God might have ordered that all this Western world should be theirs or ours. He set us both here with our diverse racial inheritance and political, educational, and national spirit and character, separated by wide and deep divergencies which have pro- duced distrust and suspicion and misjudgments. But his will is a will of concord and unity, not of strife and dis- sension, and the various gifts of the diverse races are all meant for his use and are to be brought into his king- dom. More powerful, accordingly, than all the elements of dissension are his purposes of brotherhood and the forces by which all of the peoples of these Western con- tinents are being educated for a common service. Our similar equipment of natural resources, our kindred prob- lems in mastering nature and in creating honest, gener- ous, and purified societies, and our common duty to God and the world, mark out before us a common way. To- gether we need to seek and to tread that way, to offer and to accept all brotherly help, to sympathize and to under- stand and to trust, and to build in simple purpose and in sincere faith the enduring house of the commonwealth of God. ^Report of Commission I on Survey and Occupation, 87. II COMMERCIAL Latin America's Handicap. In trade and industry as in politics, the Latin-American nations have an inherit- ance to reckon with. The Manifesto "Addressed to all nations of the earth by the General Constituent Congress of the United Provinces of South America, respecting the treatment and cruelties they have experienced from the Spaniards, and which have given rise to the Declara- tion of Independence," adopted at Buenos Aires, October 25, 1817, sets forth in the wholesale style of such docu- ments some of the commercial injustices which the Latin-American peoples suffered. "The Spaniards," declared these sons of Spain who had breathed the air of American freedom, "placed a barrier to the popu- lation of the country. They prohibited, under laws the most rigorous, the ingress of foreigners, and in every pos- sible respect limited that of even Spaniards themselves, although in times more recent the emigration of criminal and immoral men, outcasts, was encouraged, of men such as it was expedient to expel from the Peninsula. . . . "Hundreds of leagues do we still behold, unsettled and uncultivated, in the space intervening from one city to another. Entire towns have, in some places, dis- appeared, either buried in the ruins of mines, or their inhabitants destroyed by the compulsive and poisonous 33 34 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS labor of working them; nor have the cries of all Peru, nor the energetic remonstrances of the most zealous minis- ters, been capable of reforming this exterminating sys- tem of forced labor, carried on within the bowels of the earth. . . . "Commerce has at all times been an exclusive monopoly in the hands of the traders of Spain and the consignees they sent over to America. . . . She carried on an ex- clusive trade because she supposed opulence would make us proud and inclined to free ourselves from outrage. She denied to us the • advancement of industry in order that we might be divested of the means of rising out of misery and poverty; and we were excluded from offices of trust in order that Peninsulars only might hold influ- ence in the country, and form the necessary habits and inclinations, with a view of leaving us in such a state of dependence as to be unable to think or act, unless according to Spanish forms. "^ The picture is doubtless of deeper shade because of the earnestness of the men who drew it, but it is not surprising that they set forth the facts bitterly. Modern Financial History. And the more modern commercial development of Latin America has had un- happy features also. Sr. Calderon sets forth the eco- nomic problems with criticism as competent and unspar- ing as that which he applies to the political conditions: "Unexploited wealth abounds in America. ... By means of long-sustained efforts, an active race would- have won financial independence. The Latin Amer- icans, idle, and accustomed to leave everything to the ^Hezekiah Butterworth, South America, 72-77* COMMERCIAL 35 initiative of the state, have been unable to effect the conquest of the soil, and it is foreign capital that exploits the treasure of America. . . . Loans accumulated, and very soon various states were obliged to solicit the simul- taneous reduction of the capital borrowed and the rate of interest paid. The lamentable history of these bankrupt democracies dates from this period. Little by little these financial contracts lost all semblance of serious business. In the impossibility of obtaining really solid guaranties the bankers imposed preposterous conditions, and issue at a discount became the rule w^ith the new conventions. A series of interventions in Buenos Aires, Mexico, Santo Domingo, and Venezuela, diplomatic con- flicts, and claims for indemnity resulted from this pre- carious procedure. Moreover, thanks to the protection accorded by their respective countries, foreigners ac- quired a privileged position. The Americans were sub- jected to the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts, before which they could demand the payment of their claims on the state; foreigners enjoyed exceptional treatment. A statute was enacted in their favor, and their govern- ments supported them in the recovery of unjustifiable claims. Sir Charles Wyke, English minister to Mexico, wrote to the Foreign Office in 1862: 'Nineteen out of twenty foreigners who reside in this unfortunate coun- try have some claim against the government in one way or another. Many of these claims are really based on the denial of real justice, while others have been fabri- cated throughout, as a good speculation, which would enable the claimant to obtain money for some imaginary wrong; for example, three days' imprisonment which was intentionally provoked with the object of formulat- 36 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS ing a claim which might be pushed to an exorbitant figure.' "In face of the string of debts which arose from the loans themselves, or from claims for damages suffered during the civil wars, the governments could only suc- cumb. The immorality of the fiscal agents and the greed of the foreigner will explain these continual bank- ruptcies, which constitute the financial history of Amer- ica. . . . "On the one hand the budget is loaded to create new employments in order to assuage the national appetite for sinecures, while the protective tariffs are raised to enrich the state. Thus the forces of production dis- appear, life becomes dearer, and poverty can only in- crease. America has until lately known little of pro- ductive loans intended for use in the construction of railways, irrigation works, harbors, or for the organiza- tion of colonies of immigrants. "The product of the customs and other fiscal dues is not enough to stimulate the material progress of a nation. So application is made to the bankers of London or Paris ; but it is the very excess of these loan operations and the bad employment of the funds obtained that im- poverishes the continent. . . . "The budgets of various states complicate still further a situation already difficult. They increase beyond all measure, without the slightest relation to the progress made by the nation. They are based upon taxes which are one of the causes of the national impoverishment, or upon a protectionist tariff which adds greatly to the cost of life. The politicians, thinking chiefly of appear- ances, neglect the development of the national resources COMMERCIAL 37 for the immediate augmentation of the fiscal revenues ; thanks to fresh taxes, the budgets increase. These re- sources are not employed in furthering profitable under- takings, such as building railroads or highways, or in- creasing the navigability of the rivers. The bureaucracy is increased in a like proportion, and the budgets, sv^elled in order to dupe the outside w^orld, serve only to support a nest of parasites. ... "To sum up, the new continent, politically free, is economically a vassal. This dependence is inevitable; without European capital there would have been no railways, no ports, and no stable government in Amer- ica. But the disorder which prevails in the finances of the country changes into a real servitude what might otherwise have been a beneficial relation. By the ac- cumulation of loans frequent crises are provoked, and frequent occasions of foreign intervention." And yet Sr. Calderon closes with this hopeful view: ''Latin America may already be considered as independ- ent from the agricultural point of view ; it possesses riches which are peculiar to it : coffee to Brazil, wheat to the Argentine, sugar to Peru, fruits and rubber to the tropics. Its productive capacity is considerable. It may rule the markets of the world. The systematic exploitation of its mines will reveal treasures which are not even suspected. We may say, then, that even without great industries the American continent, independent in the agricultural domain, and an exporter of precious metals, may win a doubtless precarious economic liberty."^ Area. South America, both in its physical geogra- ^ Latin America: Its Rise and Progress, 378-382, 386. 38 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS phy and in its people, presents vivid contrasts with our own continent. The two continents do not vary greatly in size. The areas of North America and South Amer- ica, according to the figures of the Pan-American Union, are 8,559,000 and 7,598,000 square miles respectively. But the two continents are of strikingly different con- figuration, and in the matter of river systems South America is more richly equipped than any other con- tinent. This water system renders the development of interior South America far simpler than the development of interior Africa. It can be made to do for these republics what China's water system, much of it artificial, has done for China. We can best appreciate the greatness of these South American nations by comparing them with our own states. Brazil exceeds the whole United States in size by an area of 200,000 square miles, or four times the state of New York. 'Tn Argentina, located in the south temperate zone, with a climate like that of the United States, could be placed all that part of our country east of the Mississippi River plus the first tier of states west of it. "Bolivia is comfortably half a dozen times larger than the combined area of New York, New Jersey, Pennsyl- vania, and Delaware. *Tnto Chile could be put four Nebraskas. "Peru would obscure, if placed over them on the map, California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and Idaho. "Paraguay is only four times bigger than the state of Indiana, while little Uruguay could wrap within its limits North Dakota. COMMERCIAL 39 "Texas could be lost twice in Venezuela and still leave room for Kentucky and Tennessee. '*On the globe, Ecuador does not spread like a giant, but it could hold all New England, New York, and New Jersey. "Finally, there is Colombia, a land of splendid promise and mighty resources, whose nearest port is only 950 miles from the nearest port of the United States. This republic has an area as great as that of Germany, France, Holland, and Belgium combined."^ Population. The population of South America is less than one half of that of North America. North America has about 136,000,000 people, of whom less than 100,000,000 are white, and South America has approxi- mately 55,000,000 inhabitants, of whom less than 20,000,- 000 are of pure white blood. South America is more thinly settled, with the population scattered over an immense area, than any other part of the world. Its population has grown less rapidly than that of any other portion of the world unless it is Africa. The 80,000,000 of Latin Americans can be roughly divided into the following racial groups: Whites 18,000,000 Indians 17,000,000 Negroes 6,000,000 Mixed White and Indian 30,000,000 Mixed White and Negro 8,000,000 •Mixed Negro and Indian 700,000 East Indian, Japanese, and Chinese 300,000 80,000,000 The population per square mile of some of the differ- ^John Barrett, "Latin America, the Land of Opportunity," 28. 40 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS ent countries of the world will show the opportunity for development in South America. The following figures are based on statistics published in the Statesman's Year Book and the World Almanac. They are for the most part for the years 191 4, 1915, or 191 6, but allow- ance should be made for the fact that areas and popula- tions of many of the countries now at war have varied greatly in the past two years. Belgium 652 Mexico 19 England and Wales 633 Chile 12 Japan 364 Brazil _ 7.3 France 189 Argentina 6.9 Guatemala 43 Peru 6.6 United States 34 Bolivia 3.4 Natural Resources. It is customary to speak with unlimited wonder of the wealth and resources of South America. It is not to be doubted that the continent has immense riches of agricultural product and mineral treasure waiting to be developed, but the general im- pression produced upon the observant visitor is disap- pointing. There are deserts more barren than the worst of ours. The tropical forests and vegetation are coarse and oppressive. The rain and warmth produce luxuriant growths, but tender things, green grass, and little flowers die in the shadows or are scorched in the heat. The table-lands of the Andes above the timber line and with too high an altitude for corn or wheat, the rainless stretches of arid soil, the sandy wastes even in the tropics, the swamps and miasmic forests must all be measured when we talk of the agricultural possibilities of South America. The great broken ranges of the Andes make many of the mineral resources almost in- COMMERCIAL 41 accessible and the engineering problems involved in railways are far more difficult than with us. This is an overconservative way of stating the case. A much brighter view is possible. The Report of the Panama Congress Commission on Survey and Occupa- tion gives it to us: "Here are vast quantities of raw material with which to supply the world. Latin America has large areas to be eliminated from this reckoning. . . . But on the whole it is apparent that most of the agricultural soil has been little used where broken at all, while the mining resources have been scarcely touched. As soon as the countries are more adequately settled and scientifically developed, raw materials will pour forth in tremendous volume. The fertility of enormous sections in Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Central America, Mexico, Cuba, and Porto Rico cannot be surpassed any- where in the world. The habitable, cultivable area south of the United States exceeds that of the remaining por- tion of the western hemisphere. It extends from the north temperate zone to Cape Horn, and hence has all the climatic conditions from tropical heat to arctic cold. All the varied products of the entire globe can be culti- vated." 1 A land like Argentina justifies such a view. Already the foreign exports of the Argentine far exceed the exports of all the rest of South America combined, ex- cepting Brazil. As a commercial country it rivals Canada and outranks Japan, China, Mexico, Australia, and Spain. The country is still thinly settled, about 7 to the ^Report of Commission I to the Panama Congress, 12. 42 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS square mile as compared with 34 in the United States and 633 in England, and its agricultural resources are only on the threshold of development. There are 21,- 000 miles of railroad as compared with 15,272 in Brazil, with new lines building in both countries. *'The producing capacity of the country is steadily increasing, and in cereal production its status is evidenced by the fact that as a corn exporter the Argentine Re- public took first rank in 1908, occupying the place formerly held by the United States. In the production of this foodstuff the country ranks third, and as a wheat grower fifth. It is first as an exporter of frozen meat and second as a shipper of wool. 'Tn the number of its cattle the republic holds third place among the nations, being ranked with India and the United States. Russia and the United States exceed it in the number of horses, and Australia alone has a greater number of sheep. "^ The facts for the rest of Latin America are well summarized in the Panama Congress Report: ''Brazil is also an agricultural country, producing sugar, cotton, tobacco, timber, rubber, cocoa, and nuts. At least two thirds of the world's coffee supply and one third of the crude rubber come from Brazil. In 191 3 it had about 70,000,000 head of cattle, pigs, sheep, horses, and mules. The state of Pernambuco has forty- seven sugar factories. Brazilian foreign commerce, amounting in 191 3 to about $641,000,000, is still in its infancy. The imports in 191 3 exceeded the exports, but in the ten years previous to 191 3 the excess of exports 'The Argentine Republic, 1909," 11,. 15, 17, 18. COMMERCIAL 43 over imports amounted to $768,000,000. The country- offers " a great market for hardware, implements, and clothing. The mining territory has been only partially explored. Agricultural possibilities are enormous. States like Sao Paulo are proceeding to realize them. Virgin forests are full of rosewood and of other valuable hard- woods. The potential 'white coal' in the mighty Brazil- ian rivers as they drop from the plateaus is incalculable. The development of a single light and power company represents millions of dollars of capital. "The total area of Chile's agricultural land, most of which must be irrigated, is 95,000,000 acres, but less than 2,000,000 acres are under cultivation. There are also nearly 40,000,000 acres of forest land which when cleared will become splendid farming land. The remainder of Chile is sterile, but Chile's ready wealth at present is in its sterile land, because of its great nitrate beds and varied mineral veins. Chile's greatest industry is the mining of nitrates. The value of this export alone was about $120,000,000 in 191 3. Her foreign commerce for the same year amounted to $270,000,000 or about three eighths as much as that of Japan. ''Uruguay is agricultural and pastoral, exporting wool, wheat, flour, corn, linseed, barley, hay, and tobacco. It has a total of about 35,000,000 head of livestock. The foreign trade in 191 3 approximated $120,000,000. ''Paraguay produces a native tea and tobacco. Bolivia exports tin, copper, silver, and rubber. She has extensive tracts of timber in the eastern section. Further agri- cultural development, perhaps remote, will open up mil- lions of acres in the lower levels of the interior. Peru produces gold, silver, copper, cotton, coffee, and sugar, 44 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS and is now beginning to yield valuable rubber, hard- woods, and medicinal vegetable products. Its foreign commerce in 191 3 amounted to $75,000,000. Peru's arable area is equal to the combined areas of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and California, with only seven per cent, of its surface under development. Ecuador pro- duces cocoa, Panama hats, ivorynuts, coffee, and rice. Colombia yields coffee, cocoa, bananas, rubber, salt, coal, and iron, and has probably some of the richest mineral areas in the world. The foreign commerce amounted to about $60,000,000 in 191 3. Venezuela has an immense area and great resources including mountain forests. It can grow a large variety of cereals, though its principal exports have been cattle, cocoa, rubber, and hides. "Mexico is well suited to agriculture, having both a temperate and a tropical climate. Here can be raised all the products grown in the United States and Germany, as well as those grown in central Africa and Ceylon. It produces corn, wheat, rubber, and coffee, and has rich mining territory and what are considered among the richest deposits of petroleum in the world. The mining output has reached about $90,000,000 annually. Foreign commerce before the recent revolution* amounted to nearly $250,000,000 annually. ''The Central American nations in 191 3 had a total foreign commerce of $85,000,000. Cuba gives up al- most its entire energies to the production of tobacco and sugar, and is therefore obliged to import nearly every- thing else needed. Her total foreign commerce in 1913 amounted to $300,000,000. Porto Rico's commerce with the United States and foreign countries in 1914 reached nearly $400,000,000. The principal products are sugar, COMMERCIAL 45 tobacco, coffee, and fruit. Cuba and Porto Rico will increasingly supply the United States with vegetables, fruits, sugar, and • other table articles. Haiti and the Dominican Republic have a combined foreign trade of about $45,000,000; while that of the British, French, and Dutch colonies in Latin America amounts to about S35,- <:|n\ti\tkvn» divei^c racial clci\\cnt.<, the l\ai\lshiiK>i of inouiH^r HtV. awd the pniual wcccsj^ilY of cv^n^vicritv^^ the uatvu^l cuviivunient. A further exi^lanation of this be- latcvl cvlucatiowal dcvcUnnxicnt iv< fovu\d in the gi*eater innver of race aj>.eet\ pi\Hhic<\l u\ vanous areas, but at the s;KM'it\ce of certaiu traits aud essetuials of mass advancement**** ri\c Bcdesiastical Universities. In his admirable re- j[K»rt on Latin- American unix-ersities. Dr. Kvl^^ar IC, Bi^n- dotv gives an acciHU\t of the fvn\x\dation aud charactt^r of the institutions of hi^^xer lei\ruit\g which wel^:^ estab- Ushevl at the outset of the Sj^anish occu^Kxtion f^^r the ti^inin§i^ of the leadet^ of society. 'The S|\u\ish settle- ments in America.'' sa\^ he. ''w^re pawidevl with the means of hig1\er evlucation with celerity ev^ual tv> if not ^it-eater thait that shown in the Kn^i^ish cv^lot\ies. tu less than a half ceutury fi\xu\ the date of the tii^t i^nxiauetit settlement, sclux^ls for advaucevl evlucation. as evlucation was then i-e^^alevl. had l>eeu establishevl it\ due and |H>nuanent fvuin. aud by the end of the ceutury thei^ existevl a chain of cv^Ueges or universities e\tei\ding fmm Mexicv> and the \\ est Indies K> the southenuuost cv>louy of Ai^^ntina. From that time tv> the inxseut. S(\\nish Amenca has l>eeu sealous in the establishmetxt of in- $titutiot»< ^ • ^'aittittg in the lil^eral profess^ionis, and dut^ I'.DIK'A ri( )NAI, 65 ill!; \\\c |).isl (('iitiii\^ Toi I tii;ii(>:u* AnicricM li.is l^rpl \y,\cc w il Ii Iicr lU'ij'Jilior." riio (l.'ilcs of llic ('s(;il)lisliiiuMil of (lioso coloni.-il tini- voisitios wore: Moxioo ;iii(l LiniM, 1551 ; Suiilo l)()iniiip;(), 1558; B()|^'()(a, 1572; C<)i(l(»l>.i. i(»i.^; Sucre, i(»..\\; (Itialc- ni.iln. nhoiil K>75 : Cuzcd, 1692; Caracis, 1721 ; Saiiliaj^o (ic ('iiil(\ \y^><; ll.ivaiia, 1782 ; Quito, T787. " Tlic (luncli \\;is llic prime mover in llieir osla1)lish- nuMil, .illlioti^li iiilliKMilial laytruMi lioldin)^' lii^'li political posiiidiis eotilrihiilcd nolahly to llioir fotindalioii. The principal tilijccl of (".icli iiiiivcrsilv vvas lo proiiiole llio. cause of reli.^ion in llie colonies by pi'ovidin!'; .111 (mIii c.iled ("leri^'v ntniierons enoni;li lo v.wc for lli(> ^;piiiln;d wclfiitc (d" llic selllci;; ;iiid lo finllicr llic work of eVtin- i;cIi/;ilion ;nnonj; liu' natives. Tiie eenlral departiricnt of llie inslilnlion vvas llic faculty of lelleis and pliiloso- plM', llironjdi wITu II .ill slndenp; iiiiisl p.i.;; on llicir way lo llie professional S( liool;;. '\\\c laller were cxcced- injdy liniiled in llie colonial nniv(Msily. Tlicre waS a ninelcenlli (■ciilniy il was llie medicine of llie medieval school incn, a( adcniic and empirical. M'he one professional school Ihal llonrished was the faculty of Iheoloij^y. It was for il lhal llie university was created, and lo il le(l all academic a\'ennes. "Clerical in ils ori.^in and pur[)ose, the colonial uni- versity was also clerical in its f^overnment. Theoretically Ihe corporalion eiijo3'ed larjH- anlonomy, since it formu- 66 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS lated its rules and regulations, chose its officers, and selected professors for vacant chairs. But this autonomy was largely illusory. The professors were almost ex- clusively members of the priesthood, and as such owed implicit obedience to the bishop, and, in addition, the election of officers and new professors required the confirmation of the prelate. University autonomy was, therefore, carefully circumscribed by church preroga- tive, and this equivocal form of government has been transmitted with little change to modern times, except that the state has taken the place of the church,"^ all these universities being now state institutions. The Secular Universities. A second group of insti- tutions originated in the era of national independence. The greatest of these is the University of Buenos Aires. In the university establishments of this period, "the church had no part, at least not as an organization. It was to secular influence that the universities and pro- fessional schools of the early part of the nineteenth cen- tury owe their existence, and from the first they have depended upon civil authority, either local or national. In this same, period the old universities were taken over more or less completely by the state, and in many added importance was at once given to the subjects of medicine and civil law. By their break with the mother country the Spanish states were thrown upon their own resources in matters educational. The continuous stream of gov- ernors, judges, administrators, and physicians that had flowed for three centuries from the metropolis into the colonies was suddenly arrested. The supply must here- ^ United States Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1912, No. 30, II, 12, EDUCATIONAL 67 after come from native sources. Moreover, in the flush of newborn independence there was engendered an in- tense feeHng of local pride and a determination to be- come self-sufficient in culture as well as in politics. The rapid extension of law schools, the increased importance ascribed to this branch of study in the older universities, and the dominant position it has ever since held in the Spanish- American university, is in great measure the result of influence that gathered and pressed upon the public consciousness in those early years of national in- dependence. Society was to be reconstituted, a govern- ment to be organized, colonial thraldom to be replaced by ci^il and political liberty. \\'hat nobler mission for the sons of a new commonwealth than to prepare them- selves by a study of jurisprudence and political sciences for their countr}^'s service ! While ancient principles of law still subsisted and court procedure remained much the same, new codes were made in the several states and republican ideals were substituted for monarchical tradi- tions. It was absolutely necessar}^ for the young re- publics to train their lawgivers, jurists, and public officials in the atmosphere of democratic institutions. National self-preservation demanded national schools of juris- prudence. GDnsequently, in the old universities, as well as in the newly created ones, the faculty of law and political sciences assumed such importance that it soon overshadowed the other faculties and came to be con- sidered by far the most important department of higher education. "The deflnitive organization of the medical faculty as a distinct department of the universit}' dates also from the same period as that of law\ It has been stated that 68 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS the schools of Rio de Janeiro and Bahia were founded in 1808. The medical faculty of Guatemala places its beginning in the year 1804, Lima considers 181 1 the date of its final organization, and Caracas counts from the revised statutes of the university in 1826. In Buenos Aires a school of medicine was founded in 1801 and en- larged in 18 1 3. In 182 1 it amalgamated with the new- university. Political independence did not have the same overwhelming influence on medical studies that it did on the study of law, but separation from the mother country could not fail to encourage the development of local institutions in a subject so important as that of medicine." Scientific faculties were soon developed also. Their origin, Dr. Brandon says, "owes nothing to political or national development, but is rather to be traced to the academic influence of the Encyclopedistes of France, who urged the importance of mathematical and scientific studies, and whose ideas were in great part incorporated into the French system of education under the First Republic, to be imitated later in the Spanish republics of America. In fact, it may be affirmed that the dominant influence in the educational life of Latin-American coun- tries since their emancipation, as well as in their social and political life, has been French and not Spanish." A third group of higher institutions, founded more recently, owes its origin to various circumstances. "The University of Montevideo, beginning with a law school in 1849, marks the final crystallization of Uruguayan nationality." Many provincial or state professional schools have developed. This has been the tendency in- stead of a nationalizing policy, whereas the need in some EDUCATIONAL 69 sections would seem to be now for international uni- versities. For example, in Central America, Dr. Bran- don says, "no one of the five small republics is populous enough or rich enough to maintain a complete first-class university. A solution of the problem of higher educa- tion there might be found in the reestablishment of the old federation and the exercise of the policy of distribut- ing the various branches of the federal government among the states in order to allay local jealousies, as has recently been done so successfully in British South Africa."! Latin-American Universities Unlike Those of the United States. The report of the Panama Congress Commission on Education calls attention to several points of differentiation between the universities of Latin Amer- ica and the United States and Canada. ( 1 ) The former, with a few exceptions, are composed of professional faculties only. There is nothing cor- responding to the North American college. To compen- sate, the curricula of the professional faculties are much broader than those of professional schools in the United States, and the theoretical length of their courses is often six or even seven years. (2) The Latin- American universities have generally no physical unity. As there are only diverse professional faculties no central plant is required. (3) There is no permanent, professional teac-hing staff. The faculties are composed of professional men who give a small part of their time to lectures. "This scheme has certain advantages. It keeps the instruction ^ United States Bureau of Education* Bulletin, 1912, No. 30, 13-15, 18. 70 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS in close touch with the actual problems and interests of life. It brings the student into familiar contact with the actual practitioner of his profession. It freshens and vivifies the instruction. But it misses all of those in- direct and subsidiary advantages of the college and uni- versity life which are most significant for the American or the English boy." (4) There is little or no university organisation or machinery. (5) "The Latin- American universities possess a dis- tinct advantage over similar institutions in the United States in that they form the sole gateway to the profes- sions. The various professional schools not only have the duty of training for the practise of the profession, but as administrative departments of the governments, they are charged with licensing practitioners in the various lines." (6) The Latin- American universities are controlled and conducted by the state. "The minister of education has immediate control. Appointments are often if not usually made directly by the executive head of the gov- ernment. Such appointments include all lectureships, the few administrative officers, and even the most menial assistant. The state also controls the curriculum; it is responsible, so far as responsibility exists, for the living conditions and the conduct of the students as well as for the physical plant and its upkeep. This also explains the fact that whatever influence the student body has in the way of control is exerted through public or political agitation and directly upon the government. Thus student demonstration or agitation concerning political and religious matters is the chief occasion for the expres- EDUCATIONAL . 71 sion of opinion or the exercise of influence by the student body." (7) "As a consequence of all these features, there results one final characteristic of the Latin-American institutions, viz., that there is no unified student life. There is no campus, no dormitory, no class organization, no faculty. There are few common student interests, and students have no means of exercising any control over the university life."^ Prestige of the Universities. The Latin-American nations hold their universities and university degrees in the highest honor. Dr. Brandon says: 'The rapidly increasing enrolment in institutions of higher learning is a phenomenon as striking in several countries of Latin America as it is in the United States. The only differ- ence is that in the latter country the faculty of letters, philosophy, and pure science shares in the increase, while in the former the drift is wholly toward the professional faculties. Chile, with a population of only 3,000,000, enrolls annually almost 2,000 students in the national university and upward of 700 in the Catholic university, a gain of 50 per cent, in a decade. Argentina, with a population of 7,500,000, enrolls in her four universities 7,000 students, of whom about 5,000 are matriculated in the University of Buenos Aires alone. A quarter of a century ago the total university population was less than 800 and the enrolment at Buenos Aires 600. At Lima there are 1,100 students in the university and in the detached schools of engineering and agriculture, while the three provincial universities of Peru add about ^Report of Commission III to the Panama Congress, I3-I5- y2 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS 400 more. In Brazil the number of law and medical students is disproportionately large, and the government is seeking some practicable method of checking the con- stant increase. . . . Other Latin- American nations in proportion to their population show a large student enrolment, and the number is everywhere a surprise when one considers the economic, social, and racial dis- advantages under which some countries labor.''^ 11. Secondary Education "The secondary schools," called liceos or colegios, says the Panama Congress Report, "form the most im- portant and most flourishing part of the educational system of all Latin- American countries. Being the sole gateway to the universities and to the professions, and especially adapted to the interests and needs of the rul- ing classes, they are the objects of peculiar interest to both state and church, by which they are generously supported. Additional reasons for their importance are to be found also in "the indifferent and~ undeveloped character of elementary schools; in the diverse racial elements composing the population ; in the preponderance of the Indian and mixed races (Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay excepted) ; in the aristocratic structure of society and the aristocratic character of education." The secondary schools are state-administered like the uni- versities. They are not directly related to the elementary schools. There are more permanent regular teachers than in the universities. The course is six years. Comparison with the United States. "In comparison ^ United States Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1912, No. 30, 21. EDUCATIONAL 73 with the secondary programs of the United States the following points may again be emphasized: (i) slight attention given to the classics; (2) greater time given to the national language and literature; (3) great em- phasis on modern languages ; (4) the presence of philoso- phy, logic, psychology, ethics, and sociology; (5) similar attention to drawing, geography, and military exercises." "The age of the liceo graduate," says Dr. Brandon, "is about the same as that of the American boy when he finishes the high school. The Latin American is per- haps superior in breadth of vision, cosmopolitan sym- pathy, power of expression, and argumentative ability, but, on the other hand, perhaps inferior in the powers of analysis and initiative and in the spirit of self-re- liance."^ Secondary School Attendance. As the proportion of university students is high, so, to our view, the propor- tion of secondary school students is very low. Colombia, with a population of 4,000,000, reports, says Professor Ross, "229 schools (colegios or liceos) with an attend- ance of 19,000. Two thousand lads are studying in Ecuador in 19 such schools. Peru has 27 state colegios with, an attendance of 2,000 and enough private colegios — most of them belonging to religious orders — to round out the number to 50. Bolivia has 14 such schools — 8 of them government institutions — with 1,800 pupils. Chile has 61 government colegios, two thirds of them for boys, and subsidizes 67 private secondary schools. Argentina records 28 national colegios with an attend- ance of 8,000. Her number of secondary pupils alto- Report of Commission III to the Panama Congress, 16, 18, 19. 74 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS gether does not exceed 15,000. Such a proportion is amazingly low. In Salta, a province of 160,000, only 339 persons are in high school. In Rosario, a city as big as St. Paul, there is one national high school with 450 students. Pennsylvania, with about the same population as Argentina, has six times as many pupils in her high schools, although the number of years is four as against six for the colegios of the southern republic. Obstacles to Secondary Education. "The public high school is obliged to make its way against the opposition of pay schools, some of them with a strong commercial bent like our 'business colleges,' others maintained by the teaching orders — Jesuits, Salesians, Dominicans, Merce- darians. Sacred Heart or Christian Brothers — and favored by the wealthy either as more religious or more exclusive than the free public high schools. The high school, moreover, is not, as with us, the people's college. It is a fitting school for the university and the profes- sional schools. Eighty per cent, of its graduates go on to pursue higher studies. It belongs, therefore, on the whole to the upper class, while the great bulk of the people never aspire to advance their children beyond the ele- mentary school. There is a deep gulf between the two grades of education and between the teachers of the two grades, so that both pupils and teachers are drawn from different social classes."^ III. Elementary Education "The elementary school," says the Panama Congress Report, "is the least developed part of the educational ^ South of Panama, 286. EDUCATIONAL 75 system of Latin America. This fact explains many of the poHtical, social, and intellectual conditions in these countries. But the educational situation is in turn ex- plained by the political and social conditions, to which should be added the influence of natural environment and of historical tradition." And the report proceeds to state some of the elements of the situation which affect the work of elementar}' schools. (i) Racial elements. "The jxjpulations of no other coimtries of modem civilization have racial elements so diverse as those of the Latin-American republics, and there are none in which the backward races are so numer- ous. (2) "Even v.'ith a homogeneous racial composition, sparse settlements and vast extent of territory may make imiversal education well-nigh impossible. In many regions of agricultural Argentina, with its white popula- tion, one hundred square miles would not furnish the children for a school." (3) Class organization and social traditions. ''Both of these factors ox-^erate against a ijoijuIslt elementary school system. Where such schools exist the}^ are seldom attended by children of the influential and better-to-do classes. "The traditions of the Latin races have few of the democratic elements common to the Anglo-Saxons of the north, out of which grew the common school system. The public elementary school system of Latin America was an imix)rtation, the work of the political and revolu- tionar>' idealists influential during different i)eriods of the nineteenth century. . . . The temporar>^ economic in- terests of the classes are not conser\-ed by popular educa- 76 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS tion, while the masses do not have and could not be expected to have an interest in popular education or an appreciation of its value. Such public mass education as they have must come as a gift of the enlightened few. ''This characterization is true when viewed by the Anglo-Saxon. A truer statement, no doubt, is that there is a type of democracy which is Anglo-Saxon and a type which is Latin. Each possesses factors which the other lacks." (4) Attitude of the Roman Church and of the clergy. In few countries does the Roman Catholic Church retain so great a political influence over the government and over the ruling classes in society as in Latin America, and in few do the governments so protect the church. "This remains true notwithstanding the facts that in several the church has been disestablished, that in nearly all, the schools have been taken from the control of the church, that in some no religious instruction whatever is allowed in the schools, and that in all a large class of 'in- tellectuals' of great political and social influence is irrev- ocably committed to hostility to the church. Previous to the establishment of the republican form of govern- ment in the first half of the nineteenth century (except in Brazil), the church controlled all education. For the masses it provided for education in religious, ceremonial, and catechetical instruction, with industrial training for very limited regions and groups. At the present time the church believes in little if any more for the masses. Literary education will be of no advantage to them, it believes, and may be of very great disadvantage — as witness the intellectuals. Hence on the part of the most powerful social institution there is indifference at best EDUCATIONAL 'jy and often active hostility to public elementary education. This situation is rendered no less acute by the fact that the church still remains powerful in the public school system, controlling it in countries like Colombia and Ecuador. Practically all the countries allow religious instruction in the public schools by the established or dominant church. Of the three countries most advanced in public education Chile commands such religious in- struction in the public schools, Argentina permits it, Brazil alone forbids it."^ The facts with regard to the relation of the church to the state and education may be briefly summarized as follows : Roman Catholicism is the state religion or enjoys state support in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Salva- dor, and Haiti. In these republics there are varying degrees of religious instruction, Chile and Colombia mak- ing it compulsory in the public schools ; Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Haiti making it optional or requiring study of the cate- chism. In Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia secondary education practically belongs to the church. In Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Panama, Porto Rico, and Cuba there is entire separation of state and church. Religious instruction is not per- mitted in the schools, except that it is optional in Panama and in various parishes in Cuba. (5) Illiteracy. These factors help to explain the neglect of popular elementary education in Latin Amer- ^Report of Commission III to the Panama Congress, 19-21. 78 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS ica. And that neglect and the reasons for it are responsi- ble for the dead weight of illiteracy and ignorance which the Latin-American republics have to carry and which retard and depress their life and progress. There is no escaping the facts. The Boston Pilot (September 6, 1913) says in an editorial entitled "Slanderers," "The percentage of illiteracy [in South America] is only a little larger than in the majority of the states of North America." On the contrary, the largest percentage of illiteracy in the United States is in Louisiana where the rate is 38 per cent. In Latin America the best estimates are : Brazil, 71 per cent. ; Argentina, 50 per cent, of per- sons six years of age and older ; Chile, 63 per cent. ; Colombia, 80 per cent. ; Uruguay, 40 per cent, of persons six years of age and older; and Mexico, 63 per cent, of persons over 12. Marrion Wilcox, a friend and student of the Latin- American people, writes frankly, "One is obliged to concur in the judgment of the Latin Americans them- selves who admit that it [education] is neglected. While it is true that in most of the countries attendance at school is compulsory, none of the governments enforce the law in this respect owing to the lack of funds. The percentage of school attendance based on the population is as follows: Argentina, 10; Uruguay, 7; Chile, 3.7; Paraguay, 3.5; Peru, 2.36; Brazil, 2; Bolivia, 2."^ The issue of June 23, 1909, of O Estado de Sao Paulo, the leading newspaper in Sao Paulo, contained a letter from a correspondent bemoaning the delinquency of Brazil in the education of her people. In Brazil, he said, only ^ The Student World, January, 1909, 5. EDUCATIONAL 79 28 out of each 1,000 of the population were in school; in Paraguay, 47 ; in Chile, 53 ; in Uruguay, 79 ; in Argen- tina, 96. In the Argentine, out of a population (then) of 6,200,000, 597,203 or 9.632 per cent, were in school; in Brazil, out of 19,910,646 (his figures) only 565,942 or 2.842 per cent. In the United States, 19 per cent, of the entire population are in school; in Germany, over 16 per cent. ; in Japan, over 12 per cent. In other words, about four times as large a proportion of the American population are in school as of the entire population of South America. Latin America has no greater social need than the education of the masses of the people. Re- publics cannot be built upon illiteracy, and the hopeful nations of the South are paralyzed in their highest progress by the dead weight of ignorance which clogs their every step. The Mexico of to-day could never have been had the common people been educated. IV. Educational Needs I. Thoroughness. There is much good work done in higher institutions, and in some countries like Chile and Argentina, in lower schools also, but the educational system is top-heavy and as Sr. Nelson of Argentina says, "theoretical." Much work is showy rather than solid and real. All this is part of the situation to be met. Mr. Wilcox says: 'Tt is absolutely necessary to realize certain characteristics of the Latin- American mind in order to understand present conditions in education in South America. In these matters, our friends in the Southern republics are not self-reliant but dependent, and their attainments are apt to be showy rather than substantial. They themselves characterize their enthu- 8o T^E UNITY OF THE AMERICAS siasms as 'fire in straw/ blazing up quickly but not usually supplying force for sustained effort. As for strength of intellectual fiber, that is always and everywhere a ques- tion of character. In Chile, for example, native boys and young Englishmen work side by side in the same busi- ness houses. The former quite outstrip the latter, show- ing more ability while they are still quite young, but fall- ing behind in the long race simply because they have not learned lessons of self-reliance and self-control. When a solid foundation of good habits shall take the place of irregularity, self-indulgence, and the vices that are too often acquired in the South American home and school, the latent talent of these peoples will command world wide attention."! At the same time it is to be remembered that, as Mr. J. H. Warner of Pernambuco says of the Brazilian students: "We are not dealing, as some believe, with men of inferior intellect. In linguistic ability especially, it is probable that no students excel the Latins. It is no uncommon thing to meet an educated Brazilian audience which is capable of appreciating fully a literary program comprising, besides numbers in Portuguese, selections from Italian, Spanish, French, English, and German literature. In such an audience many are able to speak as well as understand several of these languages. With so many avenues of intercourse and such mental agility, it is not surprising that the Brazilian student is extremely sensitive to any influence that may be brought to bear upon him. 2 ^ The Student World, January, 1909. ^ "Religion among Brazilian Students," The Student World, January, 1909. EDUCATIONAL 8i What is true of the Brazihan is true of others. The South American young men are quick, alert, responsive. They are deserving of all our friendship and assistance. But they need, as we do, moral bottom, character, stability — just the qualities which only robust, ethical, open- minded and fearless religious principle can give them. 2. Modern Methods. There are three great general deficiencies which Professor Rowe sets forth in his paper, published by the United States Commissioner of Educa- tion, on "Educational Progress in the Argentine Republic and Chile :" ( i ) The "tendency to impose the same course of study on every boy and girl, quite irrespective of their taste or subsequent vocations." (2) The lack of a trained "corps of professional teachers for the liceos, or high schools." (3) The neglect of the education of women.^ 3. Elementary Teachers. Latin America needs an army of trained elementary school teachers who will do their work in the highest spirit of patriotism and fidelity. And where the problem of woman's work and training is such a difficult problem the provision of such an army of teachers is no small task. Argentina and Brazil gladly accepted our help in it in early years. And we owe other Latin-American nations all the friendly aid we can give. 4. Industrial Education. Industrial and agricultural education is a great need. The more progressive states are interested in providing such education and the Sale- sian Fathers have done good work in this field. It is the kind of education needed by the great mass of the agricul- tural and industrial body of the nations. 5. Professional Training. There is need, as every- ^Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1909, 325, 326, 327- 82 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS where, for more thorough and efficient normal educa- tion. A teacher in the state of Parana, Brazil, writes — and what he says is typical of education in many Latin- American lands: *T wish to speak of the tremendous educational need of this part of the world. The superintendent of public instruction says in his official report, 'We have professors without competence and without calling.' He speaks of the fact that ten years ago the law allowed most any one without training to teach provisionally, as this was the only way to get teachers. There scarcely existed trained teachers. These unfortunately later received regular appointment. They were not appointed because they were capable but because they were docile instruments of the local political machine. When the timje for exami- nation came no one feared that he would be turned down. There was a ratifying en masse of professors almost illiterate, except for few and honorable exceptions. The other day a man who was talked of in the papers as timber for vice-governor of the state, told me that where he lives a teacher drew salary continually, and for more than a year did not so much as open the door of the school- house. The teacher is politically protected. This case represents a large per cent, indeed of all the public em- ployees of this part of Brazil. The idea of a graded school is almost unknown here. The superintendent further declares, 'We have to-day in the most important cities of the state, schoolhouses where four independent schools function, each one with an excessive number of pupils, distributed in four classes.' It is not unusual for a teacher to have 50 or 60 pupils of all grades. Now when you remember the quality of these teachers and EDUCATIONAL 83 their excessive number of pupils all thrown together (the classification is based on the pupils' preference of teacher), and the fact which our authority cites that there are only 20 per cent, of the children of school age in these inefficient schools, you get some idea of the educational opportunity and duty in Parana. For 120,- 000 children there are only 504 schools. Prepared and efficient teachers are almost unknown. I refer, of course, only to this part of the country. Some states are much worse and some, better." 6. Rational Attitude toward Atheism. The Rornan Catholic Church distrust of higher state education justi- fies itself by pointing to the almost universal unbelief among the ''intellectuals" in all the Latin-American nations. Mr. Charles J. Ewald of Buenos Aires writes: ''The National University at Buenos Aires has enrolled over 4,000 young men of the influential classes of the Argentine Republic. At least half of them come from the smaller cities and towns and live in the boarding houses of the city. The atmosphere in which these students live is not conducive to moral vigor. There is every encouragement to immorality and gambling which are the great vices and, unfortunately, the great majority have no conscience on these sins. "As regards religion, I would say that not over 10 per cent, of them are more than nominally identified with Roman Catholicism, which is the state religion. Another 10 per cent, takes a hostile attitude toward the Roman Church. This hostility does not mean, however, that there is any sympathy with Protestantism, in the best sense of that word. They are in sympathy with a Protestantism that protests but they have had no con- 84 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS tact with evangelical Christianity. Christianity and Romanism, indeed, mean to them one and the same thing. The great mass of students are indifferent, never hav- ing given any thought to religious questions. They be- lieve in nothing." 1 And Mr. Warner has set forth also from personal knowledge the conditions in Brazil : "Senhor Argymiro Galvao was at one time lecturer on philosophy in the law school in Sao Paulo, in many respects the leading law school in Brazil. One of his lectures, 'The Conception of God,' was published as a tract as late as 1906. I quote the following from the lecture: 'The Catholic faith is dead. There is no longer confidence in Christian dogma. The supernatural has been banished from the domain of science. The con- quests of philosophy have done away with the old pre- conception of spirituality. Astronomy, with Laplace, has invaded the heavenly fields and in all celestial space ^.here has not been found a kingdom for your God. . . . We are in the realm of realism. The reason meditates not on theological principles,' but upon facts furnished by experience. God is a myth, he has no reality, he is not an object of science. . . . Man invented gods and God that the world might be ruled. These conceptions resulted from his progressive intelligence. The simple spirit refrains from all criticism and accepts the idea of God without resistance. The cultured spirit repels the idea in virtue of its inherent contradictions.' "Galvao is only one of many educators in the best schools of Brazil who have broken with the church, and, ^ The Student World, January, 1909, 7, 8. EDUCATIONAL 85. of all the hundreds of students that annually sit under these teachings, very few could be found who would question the accuracy of this line of thought or seek to justify the Christian faith. "The great difficulty that confronts the laborer in this field is not that of tearing men away from an old faith. The great majority have already repudiated their old faith. The pity of it is that they think they have repudi- ated Christianity."^ There is urgent need of agencies which will reach these students with the gospel. 7. International Cooperation. There is great need of educational cooperation among the Latin-American nations, in the study of their common problems, the pro- vision of text-books, the training of teachers, and the achievement of ideals. There is no such unity. As Dr. Brandon says, with regard to the need of school texts: "Spanish America is not one unit. On the contrary, it is broken up into 20 different units, widely separated as regards distance and more widely still as regards inter- communication. Difference of climate and local condi- tions are also important elements. National rivalries and animosities are causes of isolation. To a great ex- tent, and certainly to a greater extent than is imagined in North America, each state has led a separate existence. All have been separated from the mother country on account of their remoteness, lack of communication, and want of mutual sympathy. All have been aided in their material advancement by foreign capital and energy, but in those intellectual matters that concern the mother ^Students and the Present Missionary Crisis, Report of the Rochester Student Volunteer Convention, 327f. 86 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS tongue each nation has been forced to march alone. All this has constituted a serious handicap in the matter of school texts. *Tf the entire Spanish-speaking world with its 75,000,- 000 inhabitants formed an intellectual unit, it would provide a public that would appeal to talent and to the publishing industries. If even the Spanish- American countries, with their more than 50,000,000, formed such a unit, the incentive would be all-powerful. . . . /'Another method, however, would be an easier, more logical, more rapid, and more patriotic solution of the difficulty, viz., an intellectual union, not official, but based entirely on intellectual sympathy, between the various Spanish-speaking communities. Such a move- ment will come sooner or later. Already there are signs of its advent. Recent years have witnessed a decided rapprochement between Spain and the Spanish repub- lics. The intellectual life of the two branches of the Spanish family has everything to gain in this tendency, and the schools would be among the first to profit. The softening of national asperities in Spanish America, the advance in means of rapid intercommunication, and the remarkable enthusiasm in favor of education, now so noticeable in almost all nations, will undoubtedly bring about a community of interest in intellectual matters." But Dr. Brandon recognizes that "there are two serious obstacles to an early consummation of this program: first, the bitter hostility existing between some countries on account of acute boundary disputes; second, the fact that the most progressive nations in matters of general education are at the two extremities of the long stretch of Spanish-speaking territory that extends from the EDUCATIONAL 87 islands and the Rio Grande on the north to Cape Horn. However, several boundary disputes as threatening as any that remain have been settled amicably in recent years ; more accurate geographical knowledge will make some others easier of sokition ; and the nations are learn- ing that the surest aggrandizement will come through internal development and the universal education of their population."^ 8. The Press. One of the greatest educational agencies in Latin America is the press. Its influence would be still greater if the percentage of literacy could be increased. And no force at work in these lands ought more zealously to strive for popular education. Some of the best papers published on the western hemisphere are issued in Latin America, papers like the Jornal do Comercio of Rio, La Prensa -of Buenos Aires and El Mer curio of Santiago. And many of the Latin- American republics encourage reading and printing by carrying all printed matter free in the mails. 9. Literature. The problem of clean, helpful litera- ture is one of the most pressing problems in Latin Amer- ica. *'01d Spain," says Lord Bryce, "never supplied to her colonies through books anything approaching the volume of that perennial stream of instruction and stimu- lation which English-speaking writers have for nearly four centuries supplied to those who can read English all over the world, and which France has likewise sup- plied to all who can read her language. In South America, men now learn French in increasing numbers, ^ United States Bu-reau of Education Bulletin, 1912, No. 30, 141-143. 88 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS but they are still a small percentage of the educated popu- lation of Spanish America."^ Dr. Brandon says that probably more than half of the books in the university medical libraries are French. And the book stalls are full of French fiction. This fiction is of the most pernicious character and the tone of too much Latin-American literary production in Spanish during the nineteenth century is set forth by Sr. Calderon. Among its notes as he describes them, some of the most frequent phrases are : "restless passion," "the intoxicating sensuality of the tropics," "the melan- choly of the flesh." Dario's verse possesses "the sensu- ality of a faun." Ricardo Palma "has described in a sumptuous style the life of all Spanish colonies, devout and sensual," with subtle irony and in "joyous and some- what licentious narrative." The tone of "decadent art" prevails. This is Calderon's representation. It is obvious that the Latin Americans like ourselves have war to wage against the processes of rot and defilement which operate through literature. Not only do more Latin-American people need to read but they want a greater abundance of clean and wholesome popular literature. lo. Ideals. Throughout the Latin-American. nations there are earnest and able men who never for a moment relinquish the highest intellectual and moral ideals for their people. Surely these men have a right to look for sympathy and cooperation to the men of Canada and the United States who cannot sustain political and com- mercial relations to Latin America without increased responsibility also for its moral and intellectual advance- ment. ^ South America: Observations and Impressions, S7^- IV RELIGIOUS The best setting forth of the missionary service which the churches of the United States and Canada can and ought to render in Latin America, and of the manner and spirit in which this service should be extended is found in the Report of Commission I on Survey and Occupation, and the Report of Commission II on Mes- sage and Method, presented at the Congress on Chris- tian Work in Latin America, held at Panama in Febru- ary, 191 6. The Report of Commission I dealt first with "The Significance of Latin America to the Life of the World," "i. In respect to culture ; 2. In natural material resources ; 3. In domiciling now overcrowded populations ; 4. As the seat of rising democracies; 5. In the formation of a new world race or races." The report then proceeded to consider I. The Claims of Present-Day Latin America on the Message and Service of Evangelical Christians AND Churches. We cannot do better in this chapter than summarize and make available for the men taking these studies the material of this Report. What are these claims? I. Arising from Immigration and Commerce. The facts as to immigration and trade have already been pre- 89 90 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS sented. What moral and religious obligations do they entail ? "One of the frightful costs of migration the world over relates to the field of morals and religion. If it be some- times pointed out that a weakness of organized Chris- tianity is exposed by the faithlessness of adherents when away from its authority and conventions, the remedy is not the abandonment of institutions, ordinances, in- struction and worship, but the paralleling of immigrants to the ends of the earth with the forms and spirit of Christianity which at home held and inspired them. "This is the place to pay tribute to the many faithful men and women from foreign lands who are proving in Latin America that their morals and faith are real and abiding and not the creatures of custom, climate or convenience. Nothing less than glorious are the pure domestic circles, the family altars, the volunteer Sunday- schools, the unshakable business integrity, the dignified and kindly consideration of employees and business associates which mark here and there souls, who, like Abraham, left not God when they journeyed to the lands of strangers. Full recognition must likewise be given to the number and strength of the temptations that over- whelm the weaker and less faithful. All the evils of the lands they left came along with them or preceded them. Everywhere the evils of a new land are more in evidence and aggressive than are the good and restraining influ- ences. In actual isolation of camp, mine, or mill, or in the yet more demoralizing loneliness of a great alien city, away from home, where no one that counts with them will know and where nobody seems to care — this is the stage on which are enacted the moral tragedies of coloni- RELIGIOUS 91 zation and commerce. It is national material enrichment at the price of national character, for the stream swirls back and bears homeward the worst it found and helped to create. "The continent of Europe and the Anglo-Saxon race have a plain duty to discharge in respect to the moral welfare of Latin America. They have undoubtedly con- ferred certain great blessings, freely and gratefully ac- knowledged by the beneficiaries." Moral Consequence of Immigration. "It is more need- ful here to recount the liabilities of the foreign impact upon these populations. The scholarship of Europe, notably France, in liberating the mind has maimed the faith of thinking Latin America. The intemperance of the west coast of South America and of Central America is not entirely Latin or Indian, but partly foreign in origin. Some of it represents white men with fire-water repeating North America's ravaging of the Indians. . . . The sordid commercial standards which too many foreign business men have adopted will serve long to keep humble and silent their observing and untempted fellow nationals. If bribes have been taken by Latins they have been given often by foreigners. Where industrial injustice is en- trenched many representatives of foreign capital also complacently profit by it. "Whom does all this concern in the home lands from which these destructive influences come? Surely all men who love fairness and to whom this knowledge comes. The situation presents a familiar phenomenon of the modern world wherever there are confluent civili- zations interacting on each other through the contacts of trade, ideas, institutions, habits, and personalities. The 92 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS \ closer relationships are not to be condemned or deplored. They are inevitable and will be multiplied and cemented by mutual consent. The duty of Christians is to abate the attendant evils. Common honor demands that wher- ever one race destroys character in another, it shall seek to upbuild. Where one's countrymen exploit he must serve. The materials of one society are bestowed upon another for loss, not gain, if in the process the spirit and inner life be withheld. The character-building forces of nations that export the products of their breweries and distilleries and other agencies of debauchery may not remain insular in their outreach. While others press forward with their commercialism and all its strain upon integrity, who that are just would withhold or give grudg- ingly the tested conserving processes in their possession by which corruptions are resisted and good reinforced? When neutral or evil personalities go from one people to another, the sending forth of a few hundreds embodying that nation's finest spiritual and moral sense is dictated by the consideration of national self-respect." 2. Because of the Imminent Peril to Faith Among Entire Peoples. "The urgency in the religious condi- tion of Latin Americans arises out of the impending collapse of their traditional Christian faith and the feeble- ness of remedial effort. The peril is imminent, indeed well advanced. It is already coextensive with the in- tellectuals. Serious as is that fact of itself, the implica- tions and sequences of it are as appalling as they are inevitable unless arrested. Given practically universal unbelief as far as modern learning has proceeded ; popular education progressing rapidly under the stronger govern- ments and avowed to be the program of all the govern- RELIGIOUS 93 ments ; the dominant religious leaders devoting their energies to impeding the irresistible currents of un- trammeled learning instead of Christianizing them ; given these, and to all Christians who know the facts and their significance, who care about them, and whose faith has life, power, and appeal to meet such a crisis, the call comprehends every element of obligation and immediacy. "The rise of modern learning in the nineteenth century brought a crisis upon the religious world, Christendom not excepted. Christian thought has been facing a new rationalism, materialism, and pessimism in every form of subtlety and virulence. In so far as the church is found or proves herself willing to become ethically solvent, politically unallianced, and intellectually honest, Christian faith and works are emerging more vital and more com- pelling, purified and fortified by the tests. Wherever she condones and continues disposed to cling to decadent morals, identifies her interests with absolutism and oppression, and flouts her scholars, however reverent, students and other possessors of the scientific spirit and method are either enmeshed by doubt or openly avow their unbelief." The Roman Church Static. "To maintain perspective here, it must be taken into account that the Roman Catho lie Church in Latin America profited little from the Reformation, being the projection of national bodies that reacted from the prospect of religious freedom to the excesses of the Inquisition. Intellectually, most of the clergy languish in the conceptions of the middle ages. Even the most moderate wing of the loyal modernist movement among European Roman Catholics has failed to gain a hearing either from laity or clergy, so that the 94 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS thinking men are without any program to point the way for them to be at once Christians and yet true to the laws of the mind and to the accepted facts of modern knowledge with which their best institutions of higher learning are abreast. "Any strength, therefore, of organized Christianity in learned Latin America lies for the most part entirely outside the personal allegiances which spring from faith in God, the lordship and saviorhood of Jesus Christ, a love of the church, and the ministry to human need as citizens of the kingdom of God. As a political insti- tution, the Roman Catholic Church is generally found in league with what are now remnants or successors of the old Spanish oligarchies. In about half the republics this alliance is in control but is hotly contested, and decade by decade, with the advance of education and other liberal policies, it is forced to yield ground. Politi- cal expediency, class interest and inherited religious sentiment are still powerful in holding many to outward form and obedience after vital faith and love have de- parted or indeed where they never existed. Moreover, with the loyalty of the women generally unshaken, Roman Catholicism remains the axis on which turns the elite social order in most of the countries. These domestic and related bonds retain many ,in polite conformity. Underneath the entire structure of religion, however, beating against the foundations are tides of disapproval ranging in degree from lack of confidence, through in- difference, to the most violent repudiation of the validity of Christianity in all its forms and manifestations. "There are four groups to he home in mind, varying numerically in proportion to each other in the several RELIGIOUS 95 countries. No group is absent from any one. These are : (i) a violent anticlerical party, many of whom carry their opposition to religion of every form; (2) the more or less well-reasoned atheists and skeptics who look in- dulgently upon religion as harmless for women and for the lower classes, but who are themselves indifferent to its claims upon them personally; (3) the dissatisfied, if not disillusioned, and groping companies of souls who soon pass on to cynicism and hardness of heart; (4) those whose period of doubt and breaking away is ahead of them as they are overtaken by free education. Al- ready large defections have proceeded beyond the scholar class, and the turning to various cults has begun. The undermining of belief proceeding on a national scale in every division of the field is patent to all observers." 3. Because Commissioned to Carry the Gospel to Unevangelized Populations. "Large numbers of the native Indians and Negro ex-slave descendants in given sections of Latin America are pagan, in some areas with- out any contact whatever with Christianity, and in many others with too little to affect appreciably either their religious conceptions, their character, or their low eco- nomic state. They constitute a field of pure missionary endeavor as apostolically conceived, which no body of Christians can ignore who accept responsibility for the world's evangelization. Scarcely less appealing are the spiritual needs of even more numerous bodies of peoples who are without any commensurate means for entrance upon Christian discipleship, instruction, and growth." 4. In Consideration of the Contributions of Spiritual Freedom to Individual and National Character. "The progressive rapprochements of many of the great Chris- 96 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS tjan communions are teaching this generation that isola- tion and aloofness are inimical to spiritual f ruitfulness ; and also that each body has some God-given contribution to make in the discovery and appropriation by all of the Christian message and ideal in their fullness. By as much as faithful adherents of the Roman Catholic Church, obedient to her sense of mission, establish her institutions and minister side by side with those of other communions on the continent of Europe, in the British Isles, in North America and elsewhere, so millions of Christians of the other communions conceive that they may not withhold from Latin America, or from any other part of the world, those aspects of Christian truth and life which have been revealed to them as among the supreme bless- ings of the faith. Without undertaking to exhaust the category, these are named as obligations heavily laid upon evangelical Christians in behalf of the whole world: the establishment of intellectual freedom; the opening, circulation and study of the Scriptures; the recognition of the right and value of democracy in ecclesiastical government. . . . ''Liberty of conscience and opinion, moreover, is the mother of toleration and mutual respect, without the sacrifice of conviction or of principle. There can be differences and even opposition without bitterness. Evangelical Christianity, though not yet without bigots, has sufficiently learned the lessons of history, many of them painful, to throw the preponderance of its strength into the scale for freedom of intellect and conscience. It seeks this boon for Latin America in good faith, be- lieving that the acceptance and observance of the princi- ple by all communions in those lands would serve there RELIGIOUS 97 as elsewhere the cause of true rehgion and the related interests of humanity far better than do the voice of authority and the machinery of suppression." Latin- American Testimony. "Latin Americans, liter- ate and unlearned alike, are practically cut off from this moral and spiritual fountain. The earnest educator, statesman, and others in public and private life condemn, deplore, and exhort in the presence of a situation felt to be deplorable. In El Sur, of Arequipa (Peru), November 14, 1914, in an article headed 'Ruin,' the writer says : 'That which cannot be cured, and which fore- shadows death is moral failure. And this is the evil of this country. . . . We breathe a fetid atmosphere and are not sickened. The life of the country is poisoned, and the country needs a life purification. In the state in which we are, the passing of the years does not change men, it only accentuates the evil. A purging and a strug- gle are absolutely necessary.' The vice-rector of La Plata University, Argentina, in his opening address of the college year, called upon the university to recognize its obligation to develop character in the young men who pass through its halls. Tt is with great sadness that I witness the steady decrease in the number of unselfish, idealistic, genuine men ; how engulfing the tide of selfish- ness, of rebellion, of indiscipline and of insatiable ambi- tion; impunity so commonly supplants justice that I fear for the spiritual future of the land of my children, unless we make haste to remedy the great evil, which is disre- gard for the noble, and the great and unmeasured lust for material riches.' "This man who knows what he wants, but knows not how to get it, closed with the characteristically pessimistic 98 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS note of almost all South Americans of high ideals. He quoted from Fogazzaro's The Saint, as follows: 'There are men who believe they disbelieve in God and who, when sickness and death approach, say, "Such is the law of life; such is nature, such is the order of the uni- verse. Let us bow the head, accept without a murmur, and go on complying with our duty." ' 'Gentlemen,' said the rector to his faculty, 'such men let us form not only in the University of La Plata, but in the great, com- plex university of Argentina.' It is pathetic that such men know not the way. It is a call in the dark — ^but is an increasing loud call, an increasing earnest call, a call that honestly wishes light. God hears that call and will not be long in answering unless men who know the way out are culpably slothful." Spiritual Famine. "These are the unfailing signs of spiritual famine to be observed universally wherever there is neglect of the Bible. Let there be a generous distribution and a wide use of the Scriptures from Mexico to the Straits of Magellan, and a corresponding rise in individual and collective conscience and volitional power will be registered in a generation. Immanuel Kant wrote : 'The existence of the Bible as a book for the people is the greatest benefit which the human race has ever ex- perienced.' Millions of evangelical Christians nourished on the Bible know this to be true. They will be false to themselves and will fail in a solemn trust if they do not in humility and faithfulness declare and reveal the inexhaustible sources to whomsoever these remain undiscovered. . . . "Latin Americans, too, will waken to new and vigorous religious life when both the rights and obligations of free RELIGIOUS 99 disciples of Jesus are offered them. They are charged with indifference to the interests of rehgion. Is this surprising? When have their convictions concerning religion been respected, or their opinions sought? They are said to be undependable in voluntary Christian serv- ice. No school of experience has been in existence to call forth and to develop responsibility in the individual. The Inquisition was not calculated to stimulate inde- pendence and initiative. Even capable recruits for the national clergy have all but ceased to come forward save in countries like Chile, where ultramontanism was re- sisted with considerable success. Generations forced to stagnating conformity cannot be expected to flower with spontaneity into self-reliant and progressive Christians. The journey is a long one from blindly obeying human spiritual authority to full citizenship in a Christian democracy. Halting steps and even helplessness are certain to mark the early stages, but once accomplished on the part of substantial numbers, a new transforming order of society will appear in the life of these nations, conscious and rejoicing in their call, 'Not to be minis- tered unto but to minister.' " 5. For the Interchange of Spirit, Principle and'^ Meth- ods in the Solution of Social Problems. ''The un- selfish, patriotic men and women of Europe and of both Americas, in public and in private capacities, are hard pressed by similar tasks of social amelioration and of moral regeneration confronting them. The enlightened peoples of the world are sharing with one another acquired knowledge, experience, leadership, and financial assistance in the advancement of health, education, character, and other fruits of Christian civilization. Such 100 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS interchange should increasingly characterize the relations between Latin America and the Anglo-Saxon-Teutonic nations. Human suffering, ignorance, greed, and lust are not limited to national or provincial boundaries. 'What an Italian surgeon or a German scientist discovers to-day is applied to-morrow in the world's hospitals and laboratories. When a Brazilian aeronaut contributes to the conquest of the air or an Argentine statesman adds a new doctrine to the international code, civilization ac- knowledges itself debtor. The time has come for free trade in moral resources. This is a plea for an inter- national consciousness to assert itself against Phariseeism when a sister nation's character is reviewed and against injured pride when the light is turned on at home.' " There is a field for such cooperation in education, especially the education of the masses of the people. **The field for cooperation in health, hygiene, and sanita- tion is equally extensive. It is difficult to see how educa- tion on these matters of life and death and even medical relief can humanely be withheld from large populations where the facilities to prevent and cure disease are alike inadequate and often absent altogether. . . . "The call to advance preventive medicine by education, example, and influence is urgent. It is hardly conceiv- able that intelligent service on the part of foreign Chris- tians would not be welcomed by every official and citizen interested in the promotion of playgrounds, better hous- ing, sanitation, and in antituberculosis and kindred move- ments. If barriers now exist, a better understanding, approach, and working basis should be contemplated." Social Hygiene. "Societies to combat intemperance, social vice, Indian exploitation, and other deeply-seated RELIGIOUS loi evils are scarcely more than projected. . . . With respect to sex education and antivice regulations Latin America has yet to travel nearly the entire distance to be abreast of contemporary Christian sentiment, social science, and enlightened procedure. Full credit is here given to the first steps taken forward, the more signifi- cant because so isolated and therefore courageous. . . . Here and there medical men are being heard and are appearing in print and supporting the continent life as consistent with health and virility. For generations the youth have been instructed to the contrary, as indeed most of them are still. The double standard of morality for men and women is generally accepted by both sexes. The great municipalities still put their faith in segrega- tion, police licenses, medical inspection, and the other futile measures against the evils of prostitution now being repudiated and abandoned on the Continent, in Great Britain and elsewhere as both unchristian and contribu- tory to the harm and misery it is desired to remove. . . . Along this whole battle line all informed lovers and champions of the human race must of¥er united resis- tance without cavil or false pride. The aggregate wis- dom and power of all are none too strong to cope suc- cessfully with the league of destructive forces grouped about the social evil. Its international character calls for the closest cooperation between the leaders in moral reform in Latin America, Europe, and the United States. "To the social problems enumerated above may be added such others as child labor, the oppression and neglect of the poor, inequitable taxation, class govern- ment, the evils of monopolies, special privileges, and un- fair labor conditions. All these problems must be faced I02 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS courageously in the light of Christian principles. But so far in Latin America the Roman Church has con- tributed little or no practical help toward their solution. Nevertheless, there are to be found here and there earnest men, of liberal tendencies, who, for patriotic and humani- tarian reasons, are striving for the betterment of their country. They are the friends of education, and realize that character is the true basis of national strength. Does not the welcome that such men are prepared to ex- tend to the forces which develop character, constitute a golden opportunity for the evangelical church in Latin America ?"i A Representative Voice. One of the most striking addresses at the Panama Congress was made by a mem- ber of the Roman Catholic Church, Judge Emilio del Toro of Porto Rico. His testimony and appeal were both illustrative and representative. After speaking of the influence of religious liberty and of the open Bible in the United States, Judge del Toro went on: ''Latin America is coming out into the life of civiliza- tion with a different lot. The seeds of Christianity sown since the times of the colonizers have produced their fruits, and wherever there has been the most liberty there its mission has become the noblest in practise. On the boundaries between Chile and Argentine, two of those American nations of Spanish origin which have attained the highest civilization, the Christ of the Andes, with his open arms a symbol of peace and love, shows to the world how Christians settle their disputes. Besides, the religious life of the Spanish-American countries has been ^Report of Commission I to the Panama Congress^ 22-49. RELIGIOUS 103 characterized by the almost absolute predominance of the Catholic Church ; and in my judgment the same benef- icent influence which Catholicism has exercised in the development of its civilization would have been greater had it been obliged to contend face to face from the earliest times with a vigorous Protestant movement. "Until a few years ago, the Catholic Church was, in my native island, Porto Rico, the state religion. Among the public expenditures those for worship were con- spicuous. The influence of the clergy extended every- where. And what was the result, after four centuries of abundant opportunities? A people for the most part indifferent or unbelieving. "There took place a change of regime. The church was separated from the state. A struggle began under the protection of the free institutions of North America, established in the island; Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Baptists, Episcopalians began their work. Faint-hearted Catholic priests, accustomed to the enjoy- ment of special privileges, descried the ruin of their church. But it was not so. The spirit of the North entered into her and men accustomed to a life of freedom gave her a new impetus. And to-day, separated from the state, sustained by herself, she is realizing a nobler and more Christian mission than in the time when her power was absolute. "Those who love the progress of the nations, those who study history dispassionately, those who have faith in the improvement of mankind, cannot but see with deep sympathy that the reformation is spreading, that free investigation opens broader horizons to the human spirit, that Christianity, preached and interpreted by 104 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS all, disseminates its beneficent influence and raises the level of society. *Torto Rico is a case in point and is conclusive evidence to me of the results which will be obtained in all of Latin America from initiating and sustaining a vigorous and altruistic Protestant movement. Not only will reli- gious feeling grow; not only will Christianity win con- verts; not only will more prayer be offered in spirit and in truth by many men; not only will it redound in good to the Catholic Church itself, but the influence of Christianity in the life of the Spanish- American democ- racies will be greatly multiplied. There is something which lives in us which is part of our very being, and it is the heritage received from our ancestors. And wherever the reformation goes, wherever the Protestant minister accomplishes his mission, there it will go, there that heritage of so many generations of peoples of the North who strove for the freedom of many will act and react. In his relations with the comniunity, in his judg- ments on public affairs, in the direction of his own insti- tutions, in his administration of charity, in his schools and hospitals, in his ideas of the uplift of the masses and of the dignity of labor, in his spirit of tolerance, the minister, if he is a legitimate representative of Christian civiUzation, will be an inspiration to the people."^ II. An Open Door The Latin-American nations have opened the doors wide for all sincere, friendly, and sympathetic assistance. There was a time when they were closed, when religious ^The Panama Star and Herald, Feb. 17, 1916. RELIGIOUS 105 liberty was denied, but one by one the various republics, even where they still support the Roman Catholic Church as the state church, have admitted or even welcomed and invited the forces of the evangelical churches. Religious Toleration. "Full recognition of re- ligious liberty is now accorded either by the fundamental law or through its liberal interpretation by all the repub- lics of the western hemisphere. The last to grant this is Peru. The fourth article of the constitution of Peru reads: 'The religion of the state is the Roman Catholic Apostolic ; the state protects it, and does not permit the public exercise of any other.' A bill to remove the last clause passed both houses of Congress of 1913. To be effective it required the approval of the legislature of 1914. This was secured in the Senate, but failed to reach a vote in the Chamber of Deputies under heavy political, social, and even domestic pressure, until November, 191 5, when the measure was hurriedly called up and passed by an overwhelming majority. The president permitted it to become law by expiration of time. The law has not permitted the erection of buildings or ownership of property for purposes of worship unrecognized by the state. Permission to build the Anglo-American church in Lima was obtained only under pressure by the minis- ters of Great Britain, Germany, and the United States, it being stipulated that the building must convey no out- ward appearance of a church. Nevertheless, men of liberal tendencies have held important positions under the government, which, at least on one occasion, was willing to indemnify evangelical workers for losses suf- fered. Both presidents and cabinet ministers have sus- tained colporteurs in the right to sell Bibles. io6 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS "In the other countries practical religious freedom is in effect. Uniform testimony is born to the fidelity with which the higher officials of the governments administer the guaranties of religious freedom. Local authorities in the more remote and less advanced regions are some- times found lending themselves and their officers to overt persecution and even to violence. In other areas the clergy privately are more powerful than the local government and are able to incite illegal opposition and to protect offenders until the higher jurisdictions are reached. Weapons of social ostracism, business boycott, and political discrimination are still widely employed against non-conforming believers. Unhappily, few, if any peoples have not in their past history yielded to such unchristian, undemocratic passions and misguided zeal. Many are not yet guiltless. The extent of the abandon- ment of these practises marks the displacing of fanaticism and ignorance by the graces of true disciples of Jesus." Religious Equality Still Lacking. "Religious lib- erty, however, must not here be confused or identified with religious equality. On this latter aspect of the case there is much more to be recorded. In several countries non-Catholics are under certain disabilities. Support of the church establishment is imposed upon all taxpayers alike save in Mexico, Bolivia, and Cuba, where separa- tion from the state has taken place. In Colombia, chil- dren may not attend the public schools who absent them- selves from the services of the church. The ecclesiastical court is above the civil courts, and any party to a non- Roman Catholic marriage can at any time get it annulled and be remarried in that church. Control of hospitals by nuns in Ecuador is a decided limitation of the liberty RELIGIOUS 107 of needy persons. These are frequently put out of the hospital on their refusal to receive the ministrations of the priest. Chileans and Peruvians report similar meas- ures of compulsory confession." ^ The freedom already accorded must be used, that the people may enter into a yet larger freedom. III. In What Manner and Spirit Should This Call Be Met ? Commission II, of the Panama Congress, on Method and Message, dealt with this question. The introduction of its report illustrated the spirit which it advocated in answer : The Universality of Religion. "The commission has assumed that in the sphere of fundamental religious values — the spiritual, intellectual, and social needs whose satisfaction has to do with man's right relations to God and to his fellow-man, and with the highest welfare of nations — Latin America does not differ from North America, or from any other land whether nominally Christian or non-Christian, however apparent may be the diversities in national temperament, historical experience, present status, and external forms of the respective civili- zations. Beside this recognition of the identity in all lands of fundamental religious needs growing out of common humanity and brotherhood, the Commission would urge the validity of the corresponding Christian conviction that the gospel of Christ is universally identi- cal in its essential truths and in its power to meet the deepest needs of the soul. The gospel for Latin Amer- ^Report of Commission I to the Panama Congress, 54, 55. io8 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS ica, as for all the world, is a message of life — sufficient, abundant, inexhaustible. Furthermore, the commission conceives that the right and only function, as well as the unescapable obligation, of the evangelical churches in Latin America, as elsewhere, is faithfully to proclaim, to interpret and to practise the Christian gospel in its purity and fullness, in order to secure its voluntary acceptance by those who have not received it and to seek the application of its principles and the communica- tion of its spirit to individual, social, and national life." The Religious Question Paramount. "The timeli- ness of the theme of this commission is sufficiently indi- cated by mention of the wide-spread solicitude concern- ing the religious life of Latin America, which, in the last few years, has emerged in many parts of the Chris- tian world, a solicitude to which the strongest expression has been given by religious leaders, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, who are in immediate contact with the special problems existent in the republics. Scarcely less keen — despite much indifference to religious matters on the part of the educated classes — has been the interest evinced by eminent patriots, statesmen, and scholars, especially in South America, who, while without a posi- tive religious message themselves, are nevertheless con- cerned as to the content and quality of the inner life of their people, and as to the religious goal to which the masses are tending. . . . "The religious question notonly confronts the Latin- American peoples to-day, emerging as a vital issue from the experiences of the past ; it is discerned also as an all- important element in the future national prosperity. As religion is the soul of history, the character of the com- RELIGIOUS 109 iiig development of Latin civilization depends in supreme degree upon the quality of its moral and spiritual life. Only upon a sound religious basis can the Latin charac- ter and the Latin culture rise to their full possibilities and fulfil their potential mission in the western hemi- sphere. "At the present time when South America stands on tiptoe, facing a new industrial era and preparing to expand in vast commercial enterprises, when all the re- publics are responding to the enlarging impulses of Pan- Americanism ; when Mexico is struggling through revolution to a larger and purer freedom; when Central America and the Antilles are feeling the thrill of a livelier destiny by the opening of the Panama . Canal ; when that great avenue of the seas, which, while it cuts the narrow bond that joined the two continents, thereby unites them by the more enduring ties of mutual exchange in com- modities and ideals, of international sympathy and friend- ship, of common purpose and of the common mission of Christian democracy — at such a time no question could be more important than this : In order that the churches may adjust themselves to the new day and be an up- lifting and guiding force in spiritual things, what shall be the message and the method of their ministry?" Factors Influencing Evangelical Methods. The Report sets forth the "relevant facts in Latin- American civilization" which must be in view in considering the method of help. It singles out (i) racial complexity, (2) the Latin spirit, (3) the religious inheritance, (4) politi- cal isolation, and (5) democratic idealism. Of the religious inheritance it is said: "Abundant evidence establishes the fact that the vast statistical mem- no THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS bership of the census reports is largely nominal and I superficial. That there are immense and growing defec- tions from the Roman Church, not only in inward con- viction and sympathy, but in outward allegiance and I conformity, is patent beyond contradiction in every Latin- American land. Multitudes, having become alienated from the Roman Church, are contemptuous or antago- nistic toward all religion; still vaster multitudes have drifted into utter indifference regarding the teachings of Roman Catholicism, while yielding prudential compliance with its forms and customs. "Scientific candor based on indisputable testimony from both Roman Catholic and Protestant sources com- pels the statement that in the Roman Church, Latin America has inherited an institution which, though still influential, is rapidly declining in power. With notable exceptions its priesthood is discredited by the thinking classes. Its moral life is weak and its spiritual witness faint. At the present time it is giving the people neither the Bible, nor the gospel, nor the intellectual guidance, nor the moral dynamic, nor the social uplift which they need. It is weighted with medievalism and other non- Christian accretions."! Divorce of Religion from Practise. Lord Bryce has set forth temperately the judgment which he formed after years of acquaintance with Latin America and his personal visit: "Another fact strikes the traveler with surprise. Both the intellectual life and the ethical stand- ards of conduct of these countries seem to be entirely divorced from religion. The women are almost uni- ^Report of Commission II to the Panama Congress, 7-9, 17, 18. RELIGIOUS III versally 'practising' Catholics, and so are the peasantry, though the Christianity of the Indians bears only a dis- tant resemblance to that of Europe. But men of the upper or educated class appear wholly indifferent to theology and to Christian worship. It has no interest for them. They are seldom actively hostile to Chris- tianity, much less are they offensive when they speak of it, but they think it does not concern them, and may be left to women and peasants. The Catholic re- vival or reaction of the first half of the nineteenth cen- tury did not touch Spanish America, which is still under the influence of the anti-Catholic current of the later eighteenth. The Roman Church in Spain and Portugal was then, and indeed is now, far below the level at which it stands in France, Germany, and Italy. Its worship was more formal, its pressure on the laity far heavier, its clergy less exemplary in their lives. In Spanish America the obscurantism was at least as great and the other faults probably greater. There was not much persecu- tion, partly, no doubt, because there was hardly any heterodoxy, and the victims of the Inquisition were com- paratively few. But the ministers of religion had ceased not only to rouse the soul, but to supply a pattern for conduct. There were always some admirable men to be found among them, some prelates models of piety and virtue, some friars devoted missionaries and humanely zealous in their efforts to protect the Indians. Still the church as a whole had lost its hold on the conscience and thought of the best spirits, and that hold it has never regained. In saying this I am comparing Catholic South America not with the Protestant countries of Europe, but with such Roman Catholic countries as France, Rhenish 112 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS Prussia, and Bavaria, in all of which the Roman Church is a power in the world of thought and morals. In east- ern Europe the Orthodox Church has similarly shriveled up and ceased to be an intellectual force, but there it has at least retained the affection of the upper class, and is honored for its fidelity during centuries of Mussulman oppression. In the more advanced parts of South Amer- ica it seems to be regarded merely as a harmless Old World affair which belongs to a past order of things just as much as does the rule of Spain, but which may, so long as it does not interfere with politics, be treated with the respect which its antiquity commands. In both cases the undue stress laid upon the dogmatic. side of theology and the formal or external side of worship has resulted in the loss of spiritual influence. In all the Spanish coun- tries, the church had trodden down the laity and taken freedom and responsibility from them more than befell anywhere else in Christendom, making devotion consist in absolute submission. Thus when at last her sway vanished, her moral influence vanished with it. This absence of a religious foundation for thought and con- duct is a grave misfortune for Latin America."^ And Sr. Calderon sums up his own judgment in the words : "From Mexico to Chile the religion is the same; the intolerance of alien cults is the same ; so are the clerical- ism, the anti-clericalism, the fanaticism, and the super- ficial free thought; the influence of the clergy in the state, upon women, and the schools; the lack of true religious feeling under the appearance of general belief. "^ '^South America: Observation and Impressions, 582, 583. ^ Latin America: Its Rise and Progress, 337. RELIGIOUS 113 IV. The Christian Responsibility In the light of all the facts it is declared, and surely with justice, that the evangelical churches have a funda- mental obligation to extend their help to Latin America and that evangelical Christianity need not hesitate to declare that through the acceptance and application of the gospel of Christ, the highest hopes of the earnest leaders of Latin America can be fulfilled wherein they are right, and transcended wherein they are imperfect; and that the true welfare of the republics can be realized in the establishment of what Jesus meant by the kingdom of God. What, then, should be the burden and application of the Christian message for Latin America to-day? The Christian Message. "First of all these democ- racies have a right to hear, and it is the church's solemn duty to proclaim the primary gospel of Christ, the evan- gelical message of the New Testament, the essentials of Christianity, primitive and pure, the clear notes of a redeeming evangel, unencumbered either by the ecclesi- astical accretions of Roman Catholicism or by ultra- sectarian forms and dogmas of Protestantism, and the confident assertion that the true Christian church is the home and should be the propelling force of true democ- racy. . . . "The leaders of the Latin- American revolutions sought in certain forms of social idealism for the secret ' of political organization and commercial order in the new republics. They sought in vain. For no system of government needs religious ideals, the conception of the will of God concerning man, more than a democracy. 114 THE UNITY OF THE AMERICAS Liberty, equality, fraternity were religious principles, elements of the life of Christian churches, before they ever became potent war cries of revolution and ideals of society in general. Apart from their religious origin and inspiration, these three great ideals have neither truth or potency. It is the Christian gospel which first established them as working, organizing forces. From the Christian churches they passed over into the general consciousness of modern nations. But apart from the Christ, and his revelation of the Father's will and purpose concerning man, they have no reality. It is their passion for democracy which should lead the rulers and philoso- phers, the statesmen and lecturers of Latin America back to Christ. For his kingship is the only real source of that individual liberty, that mystic equality, that uni- versal fraternity, whose glory appears in the Christian life, whose ideals are striven after passionately by the evangelical churches, whose partial fruits are seen in the incomplete democracies of the modern world."^ Are not all those who perceive that these treasures are laid up for them in Christ, and that in Christ alone they can be found, and that men and nations alike are hopeless without them, bound to share what they know with other men? Whether these other men be within our own race and nation or without it is of no conse- quence, or whether they be of nations near by or far away,, of nations like our own, nominally Christian, or of non-Christian nations across the seas. Ever those who can help must help. And if any services in offering men the clear gift of Christ undimmed by institution or ^Report of Commission II to the Panama Congress, 22, 44, 45. RELIGIOUS 115 tradition can be given by us to Latin America, the duty is not more and not less because they are near and be- cause they bear kindred names. In Bishop Brent's biography of Bishop Satterlee is preserved a statement of Dr. Satterlee's at the time the Protestant Episcopal Church was considering its relations to Mexico, and Dr. Satterlee with others was urging that it was the Church's duty to go in and to give its aid. "The appeal," said he, ''is from our brothers who are struggling out of ignorance, superstition, and darkness into light, faith, and knowledge, and it seems to be a strange idea, that while we are in duty bound to carry the gospel to the heathen, we should not go to the help of our brethren in Mexico because they are our brethren. That which one would think would give them a double claim upon us is made the plea why we should recognize no claim at all." And Dr. Satterlee added the question which John so pene- tratingly asks, "Whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" Is that love in us? If it is, there can be but one issue. We shall seek, each man in the work of the body with which he is connected, to enlarge the agencies of the Christian churches for the preaching of the gospel of the New Testament in Latin America, and we shall repre- sent in all our own thoughts and attitudes toward Latin America, and demand that our nation represent in its declarations and in its deeds, the principles of that gospel. Mission Study Courses ** Any where, provided it be forward." — David Livingstone Prepared under the direction of the MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA Educational Committee: G. F. Sutherland, Chairman; A. E. Armstrong, J. I. Armstrong, Hugh L. Burleson, E. C. Cronk, W. E. Doughty, H. Paul Douglass, Arthur R. Gray, R. A. Hutchison, B. Carter Millikin, John M. Moore, John H. Poorman, James K. Quay, T. Bronson Ray. The aim of the Movement Is to publish a series of text- books covering the various home and foreign mission fields and problems and written by leading authorities. The following text-books having a sale of over 1,750,000 have been published: 1. The Price of Africa. Biographical. By S. Earl Taylor. 2. Into All the World. A general survey of missions. By Amos R. Wells. 3. Princely Men in the Heavenly Kingdom. Bio- graphical. By Harlan P. Beach. 4. Sunrise in the Sunrise Kingdpm. Revised Edition. A study of Japan. By John H. DeForest. 5. Heroes of the Cross in America. Home Missions. Biographical. By Don O. Shelton. ^ 6. Daybreak in the Dark Continent. Revised Edi- tion. A study of Africa. By Wilson S. Naylor. 7. The Christian Conquest of India. A study of India. By James M. Thoburn. 8. Aliens OR Americans ? A study of Immigration. By Howard B. Grose. MISSION STUDY COURSES 9. The Uplift of China. Revised Edition. A study of China. By Arthur H. Smith. 10. The Challenge of the City. A study of the City. By Josiah Strong. 11. The Why and How of Foreign Missions. A study of the relation of the home Church to the foreign mis- sionary enterprise. By Arthur J, Brown. 12. The Moslem World. A study of the Mohammedan world. By Samuel M. Zwemer. 13. The Frontier. A study of the New West. By Ward Piatt. 14. South America : Its Missionary Problems. A study of South America. By Thomas B. Neely. 15. The Upward Path : The Evolution of a Race. A study of the Negro. By Mary Helm. 16. Korea in Transition. A study of Korea. By James S. Gale. 17. Advance in the Antilles. A study of Cuba and Porto Rico. By Howard B. Grose. 18. The Decisive Hour of Christian Missions. A study of conditions throughout the non-Christian world. By John R. Mott. 19. India Awakening. A study of present conditions in India. By Sherwood Eddy. 20. The Church of the Open Country. A study of the problem of the Rural Church. By Warren H. Wilson. 21. The Call of the World. A survey of conditions at home and abroad of challenging interest to men. By W. E. Doughty. 22. The Emergency in China. A study of present-day conditions in China. By F. L. Hawks Pott. 23. Mexico To-day : Social, Political, and Religious Con- ditions. A study of present-day conditions in Mexico. By George B. Winton. 24. Immigrant Forces. A study of the immigrant in his home and American environment. By William P. Shriver. 25. The New Era in Asia. Contrast of early and present conditions in the Orient. By Sherwood Eddy. 26. The Social Aspects of Foreign Missions. A study of the social achievements of foreign missions. By W. H. P. Faunce. 27. The New Home Missions. A study of the social achievements and social program of home missions. By H. Paul Douglass. 28. The American Indian on the New Trail. A story of the Red Men of the United States and the Chris- tian gospel. By Thomas C. Moffett. MISSION STUDY COURSES 29. The Individual and the Social Gospel. A study of the individual in the local church and his relation to the social message of the gospel. By Shailer Mathews. 30. Rising Churches in Non-Christian Lands. A study of the native Church and its development in the foreign mission field. By Arthur J. Brown. 31. The Churches at Work. A statement of the work of the churches in the local community in the United States. By Charles L. White. S2. Efficiency Points. The Bible, Service, Giving, Prayer — four conditions of efficiency. By W. E. Doughty. 33. South American Neighbors. A study of South America, including the results of the Panama Conference. By Homer C. Stuntz. 34. The South To-Day. A study of the religious life of the Southern States. By John M. Moore. 35. The Unity of the Americas. A discussion of the relations of commerce, education, politics, and religion between the Americas. By Robert E. Speer. In addition to the above courses, the following have been published especially for use among younger persons : 1. Uganda's White Man of Work. The story of Alexander M. Mackay of Africa. By Sophia Lyon Fahs. 2. Servants of the King. A series of eleven sketches of famous home and foreign missionaries. By Robert E. Speer. 3. Under Marching Orders. The story of Mary Porter Gamewell of China. By Ethel Daniels Hubbard. 4. Winning the Oregon Country. The story of Marcus Whitman and Jason Lee in the Oregon country. By John T. Paris. 5. The Black Bearded Barbarian. The story of George Leslie Mackay of Formosa. By Marian Keith. 6. Livingstone the Pathfinder. The story of David Livingstone. By Basil Mathews. 7. Ann of Ava. The story of Ann Hasseltine Judson of Burma. By Ethel Daniels Hubbard. 8. Comrades in Service. Eleven brief biographies of Christian workers. By Margaret E. Burton. 9. Makers of South America. Sketches of twelve epoch-making leaders in South American history. By Margarette Daniels. These books are published by mutual arrangement among the home and foreign mission boards, to whom all orders should be addressed. They are bound uniformly and are sold at 60 cents in cloth, and 40 cents in paper; prepaid. Nos. 21, .29, 32, and 35 are 25 cents in cloth, prepaid.