THE GERMAN OUTLOOK ON LATIN AMERICA
"South America is the special theatre and object of German commercial
industry." This emphatic declaration--reiterated in various forms by
other German authorities--is the theme treated by Professor Gast,
Director of the German South American Institute at Aix-la-Chapelle, in a
pamphlet entitled _Deutschland und Süd-Amerika_, which may be regarded
as a semi-official exposition of German objects and opportunities. The
pamphlet appeared in the latter part of 1915. The events which have
since occurred, however damaging they may be to German hopes, do not
affect the views expressed. Since this advice from a German authority to
Germans is a frank revelation of German views, it seems worth giving a
very brief abstract of the main points, which the writer elaborates at
great length, though he does not enter upon details of business method.
"The German Press," says Professor Gast, "has never published so much
about Latin America as during this war. This proves the importance of
German relations there and the need of clear ideas concerning them. An
economic competition, intense beyond all example, has sprung up
concerning Latin America. The chief feature is the 'Financial Offensive'
of the United States. The present grouping of competitors is accidental
and false. The natural conflict is between the United States on the one
side, and on the other side all industrial and exporting peoples,
including Japan. The United States, the most dangerous competitor, is
handicapped by the higher cost of production in North America and by the
want of that facility of adaptation to customers' needs in which Germany
excels. Yet the war has revealed the weakness of German reputation.
Everywhere the prevailing strain is antipathy to Germany. It is the duty
of Germans to put aside resentment and to strengthen their economic
position. For trade with the two Americas is the chief source of
prosperity for modern German commerce, particularly that of Hamburg. And
after the war this trans-Oceanic trade will be a matter of yet more
urgent national importance."
This general survey is followed by an examination of special
opportunities open to Germans. "Germany has not the many-sided relations
with Latin America possessed by the Latin peoples of Europe, nor the
politico-geographical advantages of the United States, nor the strong
capitalist position of Great Britain. She must make the most of what she
does possess. Her main asset is the German in South America. Every
German abroad means the investment of interest-bearing capital for
German cultural expansion. Two things are required of him, to win esteem
by good work and to place his personal influence at the disposal of
German national ends. The compact German communities in Brazil and in
Southern Chile should be supported and organised from home, but not
obtrusively, lest local feeling be aroused. They may perhaps serve
Germany best by a partial mingling with the native population, so as to
spread German culture and the taste for German goods. But, everywhere,
all individual Germans are Germanising agents. The German merchant
particularly is the missionary of cultural and political influence. So
also the German soldier, particularly the German officers employed as
instructors in Chile and Argentina. Most South American officers feel a
professional sympathy for Germany. Hence spring useful personal
friendships: to foster and enlarge these is an urgent duty. Germans
exercise other professions which facilitate the patriotic diffusion of
German culture. Such are physicians, who find peculiar opportunities in
their intimate relations with families in their homes; the clergy, both
Protestant and Roman Catholic; teachers, whose proved idealism is an
admirable equipment for the spread of German culture; scientific men,
journalists, surveyors, geologists, professors in training colleges. If
possible they should work in combination, as they do in the German
Scientific Club of Buenos Aires. Every one of them must use every
professional opportunity and every item of personal influence and
private friendship for the advantage of Germany.
"A knowledge of German culture must be spread by a systematic
educational movement. But this must be done tactfully. The German's
propensity to foreign studies will aid him. He must equip himself by
assimilating Latin culture, must use his knowledge of French culture,
must oppose French influence by encouraging Spanish culture. His object
is to catch souls; and, next to financial strength, the first necessity
is tact."
Two points stand out in this very candid statement. First, every German
abroad is an item in the national balance-sheet; he must earn interest.
The intimacy between the pastor and his flock, the physician's
intercourse with his patient, are set down on the credit side of the
national profit-and-loss account. Secondly, the most profitable method
is a liberal education. There is something whimsical in the combination
of inhuman material calculation with humanising influences, and one may
smile at the heavy solemnity of the suggestion that the German will find
it pay to acquire tact and to Latinise himself for outside intercourse.
But the suggestion should not be dismissed as absurd. Whatever can be
done by effort, study, and will-power the German will do. He is training
himself to be a more formidable competitor than ever in the economic
arena.
Indeed, the pamphlet is valuable, not only as a hint for the future, but
also as an avowal of methods which are already at work. One of these is
a deliberate system of politic and profitable marriages. German clerks
receive promotion only on condition that they marry native girls and
establish homes in the country. This policy has been so steadily pursued
that everywhere German business men have entered Latin-American families
and exercise a Teutonising influence. Through marriage also, accompanied
by skilled and profitable management, Germans acquire control of
property and of trading concerns. Again, owing to their reputation for
expert efficiency and scientific competence, Germans fill many posts of
influence and trust in universities, scientific institutions and
government departments. Argentina is an example. In the National
University Germans control the engineering and chemical sections, where
their pupils are trained to use German apparatus and methods. German
curators in the Geological Museum receive early information as to any
discoveries of minerals or oil. Germans employed as experts in the
public service learn details of any public works proposed by the
government or the municipalities. Reports on such schemes pass through
their hands and, since estimates are not carefully checked, they are
thus able to favour German trade at the expense of the Argentine
tax-payer.
In every city the German _Verein_ unites the German community, so that
Germans may avoid competition and may co-operate with one another and
with Germans in the Fatherland. The bank and the merchant work in close
combination and have at their disposal all the information gathered by
German employees in other banks and in business firms. The German has
been quick to anticipate others in occupying new ground: for example, in
the remote but vast and productive region of Eastern Bolivia, watered by
the three great navigable affluents of the Madeira, a region which is
just beginning to awake to the promise of a great future, the German
trader hitherto has scarcely had a competitor. Again, the German has won
predominance in the electrical and chemical industries by applying his
practical scientific aptitude to the supply of new wants. Lastly, the
German is distinguished by close attention to detail and adaptation to
local needs.
Yet Germans note and deplore "a constant strain of antipathy to Germany,
a wave of anti-German hate." The remedies suggested are: first, a more
efficient German service of news, and secondly, "a systematic cultural
activity, conducted with push and comprehensive inspiration."
What is being done in Germany to realise these methods? First may be
mentioned the various associations for extending German influence abroad
and binding to the Fatherland all Germans living abroad, whether in
South America or elsewhere. Such are the Pan-German League, the German
Navy League, the League for Germanism abroad, the League for German Art
abroad, the School League which gives support to German schools outside
Germany, the German rifle club, with its headquarters in Nuremberg, to
which rifle clubs abroad are affiliated, and, lastly, the Foreign
Museum, recently founded under the highest official patronage, which
arranges economic exhibitions in various German cities. Although these
associations were not founded particularly for Latin-American objects,
their present efforts are particularly bent in that direction, as the
Pan-German League lately declared. But, besides these comprehensive
agencies, Germany possesses three institutions specially devoted to
Latin-American purposes. One of these existed before the war, namely the
German South American Institute at Aix-la-Chapelle, to which the
Imperial and Prussian authorities have entrusted "the cultivation of
scientific and artistic relations with South and Central America on the
lines of a general cultural policy." Its objects are to draw together
German and South American students, to maintain a South American library
and information bureau, to encourage in Germany the study of South
American matters by prize essays, travelling scholarships and similar
methods, and to use every means of making German intellectual work known
to South Americans. The Institute publishes a Spanish monthly
illustrated periodical, _El Mensajero de Ultramar_, and also a
Portuguese version, _O Transatlántico_. These papers are well calculated
to uphold German culture across the Atlantic: they are admirably got up
and aim at presenting an attractive picture of German life and
institutions, dwelling particularly on the steady continuance of German
industry, artistic production and even sport during the war. The
Institute also publishes a German periodical, strictly business-like and
containing only technical illustrations, for the purpose of keeping
Germans informed on Latin-American affairs.
The Institute at Aix, although its ultimate object is mainly economic,
leaves business methods and matters of immediate economic concern to
other agencies. Before the war there flourished already in Germany a
League for Argentina and one for Brazil. In 1915 these two Associations
combined in order to form a German Economic League for South and Central
America. A prospectus was issued and a meeting was held in Berlin under
the presidency of Herr Dernburg, who spoke of the coming economic
struggle and pointed out that German trade, except in the electrical
industry, was not supported by large capital investments such as their
rivals possessed. The dependence of South America on other industrial
nations, owing to want of coal and iron, would facilitate German
investment, to supply this defect. Germans had failed to make friends
through not understanding the psychology of South Americans. German
strength and practical energy must avoid arrogant pedagogic ways and
must make their way through a tactful and sympathetic propaganda.
At this meeting the league was inaugurated with 120 members. Very soon
it numbered 1000. Among the associations which figure as members are the
German Industrialist League, the German Mercantile League, the Berlin
Chamber of Commerce, the South German Export League, the League for
Germanism abroad, the Society for German Art abroad. The three great
banks, known in Germany as the three D.'s, are members, so also the
great Shipping Companies; also newspaper and publishing firms; also many
of the great industrial syndicates. A notable feature in the work of the
league is the maintenance of a club in Berlin where business men and
other travellers from South America are welcomed. A great point is made
of this work of personal cultivation. The object is to make by
hospitable attentions a Germanophil convert of every Latin-American
visitor to Berlin and send him back across the Atlantic a missionary for
German culture and German business. But the principal aim of the league
is to unite all Germans who have any business interests in any part of
Latin America, so as to pool together their knowledge, their resources,
and their efforts. In this economic war the Germans move, as it were, in
mass formation. Branches of the league were speedily established in
every one of the twenty-one American republics, and these branches
co-operate actively with the parent society at home in the furtherance
of German influence and economic advantage.
A third institution, the Hamburg Ibero-American League, has been formed
in the metropolis of German Latin-American trade. Already before the
war, besides the usual trading organisations of a great port, Hamburg
possessed a Technical High School which is practically a university of
trade and industry; a Seminary for Romance languages and culture, which
maintains a South American library; and a singularly complete bureau of
information concerning all over-sea countries, which is known as the
Hamburg Colonial Institute.
But Hamburg still felt a want, which was supplied by the formation of
the Hamburg Ibero-American League. Its objects are: (1) in Spain and
Spanish America: to spread a knowledge of Germany's resources and to
cultivate friendly relations in government departments, semi-official
institutions and social, literary and scientific circles. To circulate
the illustrated weekly _El Heraldo de Hamburgo_, also pamphlets in
Spanish and Portuguese; to station confidential emissaries in
appropriate posts; to encourage interchange of visits and to inculcate
the advantages which Germany offers as a training-ground for every
calling. (2) In Hamburg: to prepare for intercourse after the war by
arranging lectures and by organising language courses in German, Spanish
and Portuguese, and particularly to establish a _Centro Ibero-Americano_
with club, reading room, and information bureau, a house fully equipped
for the hospitable reception of travellers from the Peninsula and from
South America. The league is to consist of twenty-two sections, one for
Spain, one for Portugal, one for each of the twenty Latin-American
republics, in order that all who have interests in any part of the
Ibero-American world may support one another.
A fourth association, the Germanic League for South America, has been
formed more recently for the purpose of uniting together persons of
German speech and origin in Latin America and preserving their Germanic
character, particularly by means of German schools. This institution has
a special significance just at the time when the Brazilian Government
has determined that all its citizens shall be Brazilians and nothing
else.
The three leagues which have their headquarters in Berlin, Hamburg and
Aix-la-Chapelle have been in active movement for some time, and there is
evidence from South America that they do their work in a thorough and
effective fashion and have won considerable success, particularly
through cultivating the friendship of South American visitors to
Germany.
But in estimating German designs, we must look beyond these German
leagues, which are merely an incidental part of German economic
organisation. That subject far transcends the present topic, but
embraces it so closely that the main outlines may be indicated. Most of
the German industries are consolidated into cartels or syndicates in
such a way as to eliminate competition, regulate prices and output,
distribute risks or losses, facilitate the export of surplus products,
and apportion business between the members of the cartel. The whole body
of industrialists is united in league; merchants or exporters are
similarly united; a small group of great banks, practically constituting
one power, manages the financial side of the national industry and
commerce with a singular mixture of daring and judgment, guided by a
wonderfully complete enquiry system, a veritable international secret
service; the great shipping companies, which coalesce more and more into
a single huge national concern, work in close co-operation with
organised industry and organised trade; railway transport is managed by
the state so as to dovetail into the same machine: and the whole forms
altogether a carefully constructed system of co-operation, cohesion and
united action. That organisation has not fallen into abeyance during the
present war. On the contrary, month by month it is being perfected,
rounded off. Lastly, Germany has appointed, as it were, an economic
headquarters staff, a small group of expert business men who for two
years past have been devoting themselves to the working out of means for
transferring Germany from a war basis to a peace basis with the least
possible disturbance and delay. This higher command has its hand upon
the levers of the whole machine, which, upon the conclusion of peace, is
at once to resume with redoubled energy its interrupted task, industrial
and commercial recovery, and particularly the economic conquest of Latin
America.
In order that we may know what Germany is doing, these German
organisations have been noted here. It would be impertinent, in both
senses of the word, to compare or to criticise British methods. The
problem of British reorganisation is being studied by experts and worked
out by those in authority, and it is constantly expounded in official
publications. But, without attempting to give individual opinions, one
may quote some of authority.
"Great nations do not imitate." We may learn much in detail from the
Germans; but Englishmen could not adopt the German system unless by
first turning themselves into Prussians. Our people would never submit
to Prussian methods of state control. Moreover all British experience
shows that in this country such control would be disastrous. Yet
competent authorities agree that immediate organisation is a necessity.
It cannot be beyond the wit of Englishmen to devise means whereby
British individual enterprise, common sense and self-reliance may work
through methods of systematic organisation, combination, united action.
From the friends of Britain everywhere comes the same warning. It is
most appropriate to conclude with one uttered by a South American of
unimpeachable authority, Don Pedro Cosio, former Uruguayan Finance
Minister, who recently represented the Republic of Uruguay in this
country. In a report to his government on the organisation of labour in
the United Kingdom he writes, "The nation which is the first to organise
its industry for the commercial campaign will be the one which will
occupy the forefront in foreign markets."