KNOWING OUR NEIGHBORS
Whatever the cause or results, the fact stands that we are not well
acquainted with our nearest national neighbors. Like the modern
city-dweller, we know least about those who live nearest. The North
American knows more about the other side of the world than he does about
those who live on the same continent with him. Neither the North American
nor his southern neighbor has treated the other fairly.
Many of us have not yet discovered that there be any Latin-American. Some
one lives south of the line, of course, but that fact has made little
impression on our minds. In our mental geography the American world shades
off into a hazy and troubled region southward about which we have known
little and cared less. Our geographical studies have helped us but little.
It is possible to know every physical fact about a country without knowing
the hearts of the people.
It is an anomaly that we know less about our Latin neighbors than we do of
Europe or Asia. By historical ties and constant reminders of commerce and
immigration we are aware of our transatlantic cousins. We have discovered
the Far East and have some interest therein, even though it be the
interest pertaining to a museum or a menagerie. But until very recently
neither immigration, commerce, nor curiosity has stirred us to
acquaintance with our continental neighbors.
[Illustration: INDIAN BOY GOES TO SCHOOL]
This ignorance is part of our general antebellum attitude toward all the
world lying south and east. In fact, we never bothered much with anybody
outside of the United States. Over a century we lived on, secure in the
idea that we were immune from European militaristic contagion and
all-sufficient unto ourselves. The rest of the world might perchance sink
into the sea, but we would go on blissfully without it. Our "free
institutions" were self-sufficient and all-inclusive. And because we were
able to compose our own troubles and keep out of other peoples' quarrels,
more or less, we assumed that we were automatically superior to the rest
of the world, "of course."
We of the United States have been likened unto a householder living on a
plot of ground rich enough to support his family. Resolving not to become
entangled in neighborhood alliances, he constructed a hundred-foot wall
about his property and lived securely within. The right-hand neighbor
might be an anarchist and the man on the left a cannibal. If the man in
the rear were a polygamist and the dweller across the street had a habit
of using firearms indiscriminately it mattered nothing to the
householder--so long as the wall held. But it came to pass that an
earthquake destroyed that wall, and the said exclusive citizen suddenly
found himself out on the street with his neighbors. And behold, it
mattered much what sort of neighbors they were. There was nothing to do
but get acquainted and help make the neighborhood a decent place in which
to live.
Since the world war has battered down the wall with which we sought to
separate ourselves from other nations, we have nothing left but to
recognize and accept our place in the national neighborhood and do our
share to make it decent.
The Latin-American has been at a disadvantage in the character of the
continent in which he lives. South America is a land for promoters,
organizers of industry, hardy pioneers of production, engineers, planters,
and rugged explorers of commercial frontiers. The poetic and artistic
temperament of the Latin has suffered an unfair criticism because of the
ill adaptation of his temperament to his environment. Sunny Italy and
picturesque France and vine-clad Spain were more to his tastes and
abilities. That he has done as well as he has speaks much for his
adaptability to a situation better suited to a more executive type of
character. Give him a chance in his own best environment and he shows
capacity of high achievement.
[Illustration: WASHDAY IN COSTA RICA]
Probably the two most arrogant travelers have been the Englishman and the
American, but our British cousins have assumed their superiority with
silent contempt, while the newly rich America globe-trotters have vaunted
their ignorance from the piazzas of every tourist hotel and upon the
steamer decks of every sea. It is really not strange that we failed to
notice the very considerable and important populations of countries lying
at our doors.
The North Americans are not travelers. Few of us do go anywhere, and fewer
still know how to travel successfully. The poorest traveler in the world
is the society tourist who goes about trying to reproduce home conditions
in a foreign land. So far as possible he escapes the life and message of
the country in which he sojourns and returns with little else but tales of
social functions, a la American, and comparative accounts of expenses at
tourist hotels. From the first day out he isolates and fortifies himself
against the very things that travel alone can give. He brings home a few
trinkets made to sell, some cocksure criticisms of customs, people, and
missionaries, and a swelled head. But he has been abroad--save the mark!
Travel is a specific for provincialism, but it must be real travel and not
imitation home-swagger. Intelligent and sympathetic travel breaks up the
hardening strata of thought, pushes back the narrowing horizon, loosens
the set fibers of the soul, and is the surest cure yet known for mental
arterial sclerosis. The right kind of travel shifts the viewpoint,
readjusts life forces, and shakes up the provincialism of the man with the
"township horizon." And when the disturbed atoms of character reassemble
it is in a different mode and with a new cycle.
It is to be said that the South American has not taken much interest in
us. Since he has made out to get along without us, he cannot be very
important. The Oriental has shown some desire to move into our basement,
or at least the woodshed or the washhouse, and we have discovered him. The
European has shown his good taste by coming over and moving right in with
us, and in time we cannot distinguish him from ourselves. But the South
American has gone his way, and in the main has minded his own affairs, and
therefore cannot amount to much. If he were a social problem, we would
know him better. If he had a penchant for the police force or an itch for
office among us, we would cultivate his acquaintance, and perhaps invite
him to call.
During the past two decades the once despised Chinese have become popular
among us. Their utter difference from ourselves, their solid human
qualities, their marvelous vitality, their commercial solidarity, their
response to the stimuli of the modern world, their astonishing
versatility, their wonderful national history--these and a hundred other
things stir our imagination, and we have rather suddenly discovered that
we like the Chinese--especially at a distance.
We are well aware of Japan, not so much through any perceptions of our own
as through Japan's insistence upon attention. We can on short notice make
out a rather comprehensive list of Japanese characteristics, and, in
truth, we find Japan interesting. The marvelous energy of her people, her
high ambitions, her Oriental viewpoint, her great commercial and military
successes, her artistic setting, her marvelous skill of hand, and, not
least, her abundant interest in our own affairs--these and other items
make it quite the thing to be interested in Japan. But who cares anything
about a lot of dirty peons? They are not in good form.
But this interest in the Orient is more curiosity than it is race
sympathy. There is a great gulf fixed between the yellow man and the
white, and racially that gulf can never be bridged. The occasional
marriages between the East and West need no comment; they tell their own
story. Neither China nor Japan can ever become American in any racial
sense. When Chinese and Japanese come to America for any but educational
and temporary purposes, they set up Chinatown and little Japan wherever
they go. American character is a most complicated composite of many races,
but from Tokyo to Bombay there is no Oriental factor that will blend with
the mixture of races that makes up America.
Our Oriental interest is confined to the races that have impressed
themselves upon our imagination. The Philippines, in spite of our national
relation to the islands, do not seem to us very real nor very important.
They will soon be keeping house for themselves, and then we shall forget
them except as an interesting historical incident. And as for India, that
is British, and about all we know is that the Hindu wears a turban,
maintains a very undemocratic caste, exists in unaccountable numbers, is
subject to annoying and frequent famines, and on the whole is a rather
helpless lot, except as some bearded fakir entertains companies of badly
balanced American society women with hyperbolated essence of sublimated
nonsense.
[Illustration: RIVERSIDE PLANTATION]
But the Latin-American is blood of our blood, kin of our kind, and lives
on the same continental street, which is why we are so little interested
in him. He is neither quaint, curious, nor crazy. He is not good for
first-page headlines except when he breaks out in revolution or forgets
our Monroe Doctrine. There is no fixed gulf of difference between him and
us, and in the final fusing of American character he must contribute a
large part.
To ignore the Latin-American is to be convicted of historical ignorance.
From Dante to the great South American leaders and scholars of to-day the
Latin races have been neither sleeping nor idle. During the last five
hundred years more than one half of Western history has been made by Latin
races. It was a Latin who discovered America. Another first sailed around
the globe. Latin peoples explored, conquered, and settled both Western
continents, and gave a language which has become the permanent speech of
two thirds of the Western world. To call the roll of artists, painters,
sculptors, poets, dramatists, novelists, musicians, explorers,
missionaries, and scientists for the past five centuries is to prove that
a majority of the names mentioned in the world's illustrious hall of fame
are from Latin races. To mention Cure, Pasteur, and Marconi is to remind
us of the scientific progress of modern Latin minds, and to speak of
France and Italy as pioneers in democracy is to keep within the facts. It
was in Italy that Browning and Tennyson and George Eliot and a host of
other writers found inspiration and material to feed the fires of genius.
Whatever may be said of the modern degeneracy of the dominant religious
system of Latin-American countries, it is true that the sixteenth century
saw in Spain one of the most virile and comprehensive missionary movements
of all history. Never before nor since have missionary efforts been
projected on so vast a scale or by so powerful procedure. Monks and
priests went out and established the cross and the confessional through
the Western world and in the islands of the sea, and, whatever else we may
say, there can be no disparagement of the permanency of the results of
these conquests. The Latin world is still dominantly Roman in its
religious life, and shows very positive preferences for the religion of
the conquistadores. To give a language and a religion to two thirds of the
American continents is not the work of weaklings nor of degenerates.
This Latin neighbor of ours not only lives on the same street but he lives
in a bigger and better house than ours. To the "lick-all-creation" type of
Fourth-of-July American this is rank heresy, but facts have little regard
for fireworks. With twenty-eight per cent of the population of the
Americas, the Latin holds sixty-five per cent of the territory and fully
the same proportion of natural resources. His soil, his rivers, his
mountains, his harbors, his mines are as good as ours, and he has more of
them. In the western hemisphere he controls the longest rivers, the
highest mountains, the largest area of habitable land, the longest
seacoast, and the entire inexhaustible fertility of the tropics. His
untouched and uncharted natural resources are beyond computation. His
estate is second to none in the entire world, and he could spare enough
for the crowded millions of India or the swarming islands of Japan and
never miss it. All of this we would have discovered sooner but for the
world war, which focused all attention on the main issue and postponed the
direct results of the successful completion of the Panama Canal. With a
normal supply of shipping, the west coast alone of South America would
keep the Canal busy much of the time and affect American markets
profoundly.
[Illustration: JUNGLE PRODUCTS]
In material achievements our neighbor has not been idle, though some of
his attempts have resulted in failure or fiasco. He has built great and
beautiful cities, he has constructed long and difficult railroads over
tortuous mountain systems, he has developed huge industries and organized
big commercial enterprises. He has produced a civilization in keeping with
his character, artistic, homogeneous, progressive, and on a high
intellectual plane. His libraries, theaters, and public buildings are a
credit to his taste and skill, and his churches are massive and stately as
the rock-ribbed mountains that tie together the whole system from El Paso
to Patagonia.
We have heard more or less of a Pan-Americanism, but we have never taken
it seriously. As subject for diplomatic papers, magazine articles, and
after-dinner oratory the all-America idea has been a refuge of
word-venders. But so long as the bulk of South American trade was with
Europe our brand of fraternal talk was harmless--also helpless; and the
reason for our failure to do business with South America has not been
entirely the neglect of our shippers. The larger exports of South America
have all been to Europe, and with ships loaded both ways the American
exporter was hopelessly handicapped in his effort to secure favorable
freight rates. When American salesmen tried to compete with German and
French and Spanish exporters they always failed to secure freight rates
that gave them an even chance.
For years American manufacturers ignored the Orient and lagged far behind
European dealers in the same class of goods, to their own large loss. The
same neglect has produced the same result in South America. Germany
pursued a very different policy. Without trumpet or flag Germany sent her
agents to practically every Latin-American center and seaport, and there
the unostentatious German proceeded to control as much business as
possible, and generally get hold of the situation. Often he took unto
himself a wife of the country, but never for one day did he forget that he
was a representative of the Vaterland. His house, his furniture, his
methods, his ideas were one hundred per cent German. An American ship
doctor went ashore from a German liner in a small South American seaport
and stumbled upon the inevitable German man of business. He was invited
home to dinner and shown through the house with much pride by the
half-German children. One after the other, furniture, books, pictures,
clothing even were exhibited and with every article was repeated the
formula, "Es war in Deutschland gemacht." It was a great game, and it was
working along smoothly until things slipped in Europe, and now the end no
man can see. But there is going to be a great chance for American capital
and enterprise and business energy in the years when German energy will be
needed at home.
In one of the Central American republics an American, while present at a
social function, remarked casually to a friend that in his opinion the
cure for the political upheavals of that country would be in the polite
but firm intervention of the United States. A German business man,
overhearing the remark, hastily interposed, "Not at all, sir; that is what
Germany is in this country for." With a concerted and well-considered
policy of business extension in South American countries Germany deserved
the commercial advantages that she had gained in the twenty-five years
preceding the war period.
When questioned as to the remarkable success of the German commercial
propaganda, South American leaders rarely fail to mention the fact that
the German business man in Latin lands invariably speak the language of
the country. Catalogues are issued in Spanish or Portuguese, as local
conditions require. Measures, technical terms, and methods of handling
goods are all adapted to local usage, and the South American merchant is
considered and consulted in all the mechanism of exchange and handling of
goods. Contrasted with North American ignorance of conditions and ignoring
of language and custom, it is not strange that Europe has controlled the
trade of Latin-America.
In view of all that is involved of national development, international
entanglements, commercial expansion, and racial affinity, it would seem to
be about time that we become acquainted with our neighbors, or, rather, in
our neighborhood. If we are going to live on this great American highway,
it may be well to be on good terms with the rest of the folks.
Aside from commercial and linguistic considerations, there are four
reasons for our ignorance of the lands and people south of the United
States.
1. The American people are not well acquainted with any other people on
earth. Geographical isolation has had much to do with this, and racial
self-sufficiency has had still more effect upon our lack-of-thinking about
our neighbors. Had South and Central American countries been pouring
millions of immigrants into our cities, we would know something about
them, but the Latin has had no need to immigrate, since he has more room
in his own house than he could find in ours.
2. American travel abroad has been practically all to Europe, with an
increasing number who have seen something of the Far East. And it is
impossible to be anything but densely ignorant of any people whose faces
we have never seen, whose country we have never visited, whose history we
have ignored, and whose language we cannot understand. No real interest is
possible without knowledge, and the main trouble between the American and
his neighbors is plain ignorance.
3. The war with Spain in 1898 resulted in much indifferent prejudice on
our part against everything Spanish. Spain was not prepared for the blow
that fell upon her, and perhaps her colonial system deserved the
destruction that was administered, but we came out of the war with a more
or less good-natured contempt for anything and everything that savored of
Spain. We escaped with little or no spirit of hatred or lust of conquest,
but we marked down the Latin world at bargain prices--and then let Europe
walk away with the bargain. As a matter of fact, Spain has little to do
with the American situation. Spain herself in the past fifteen years has
made rapid strides forward, but in the average American mind anything
Spanish cannot be very efficient.
4. Our Monroe Doctrine has begotten a certain arrogance of attitude toward
all our southern neighbors. Our attention has been called southward only
when revolution or anarchy or European interference has compelled us to
take a hand for our own ultimate self-protection. It is only when our
neighbors have failed to keep the peace and have threatened to carry their
quarrels into our yard, or have been in danger of being beaten up by
European military police, that we have taken the trouble to notice them.
From this situation it was inevitable that an attitude of patronage should
arise, and patronage is not a basis of national cooperation or mutual
understanding.