from Havana to Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile. Two typical books on this theme are 'Bajo La Garrò' (Under the Claw') by the Cuban publicist, Eduardo Abril Amores, and El Porvenir de la América-Española' (The Future of Spanish-America') by Don Manuel Ugarte, the brilliant Argentino, whose works of warning are classics all over the Continent.

Last of all, and most potent of the factors of American conquest, comes the money-power of a colossus which now owns more than half the world's stock of monetary gold. Moreover, it must be remembered that it is this same money-power-commonly referred to as 'Wall Street'-which places a President in the White House. And to the astonishment of all, it was a partner in the great financial house of Morgan's-Mr Dwight Morrow-whom Mr Calvin Coolidge has just appointed as his Ambassador in Mexico, to endeavour to clear up the most complex of all America's foreign problems.

The new enterprise of U.S. capital in vast regions of the South is a portent of astonishing energy and purpose. At bleak heights in the Andes of Peru (17,000 feet) I found the great sum of $50,000,000 invested in a few age-old holes, from which a mixed ore of gold, silver, and copper is taken by the Cerro de Pasco Mining Corporation. The Guggenheim interests in Chile will soon exceed this. The United Fruit Company of Boston is paramount in the Central American States. Henry Ford is now to grow his own rubber in Brazil. In Colombia and Venezuela, American prospectors are out in all directions after crude oil, since the home shortage is now 150,000,000 barrels a year below requirements in a land where every four persons operate a motor-car.

"The present producing wells of the entire country,' says an official report, are not capable of yielding enough crude oil to meet our needs. We must therefore drill additional wells-not only to hold crude at its present level, but to bring it up to a safer level in relation to the phenomenal demands made upon the industry by to-day's and to-morrow's consumers.'

As showing the urgency in this oil shortage, I may mention that one home company has paid as much as $2,000,000 to the rich Indians of the Osage 'Nation' Vol. 250.-No. 495.

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(who have long since been herded in American reservations) for the right to drill in only 160 acres of the Burbank Field. It may cost 7000l. to drill a single well -which may turn out a failure. Royalties must also be paid upon the oil to these pensioned and civilised American Indians. Hence the need for prospecting in vast spaces of the virgin Continent to the South; and Mexico has proved so rich in oil that in 1917 her Government actually altered the National Constitution, lest the country be overwhelmed by the foreign quest for this liquid gold.' In 1903-the year of President Roosevelt's coup in Panama-the Mexican yield was 75,375 barrels. By 1922 it had reached 201,667,956 barrels. A single field-that of Amatlán-Zacamixtlehad a potential yield of no less than 3,856,637 barrels a day! On a lesser scale, it is the same on the desert coast of Northern Peru, where one very prosperous London concern has found dividends ranging from 75 to 250 per cent. for its shareholders.

The world's greatest stand of timber to-day unquestionably lies in the Amazon Basin-a region greater in area than a dozen European Nations. The wheat and meat of Argentina-whose railways alone employ 400,000,000l. of British capital-are too well known to need more than passing mention. Bolivia's mineral wealth is beyond all reckoning, although as yet it is barely scratched; the same applies equally to Peru-to whose heroic and enlightened President, Don Augusto Leguia, I never lose an opportunity of paying homage, after many months of close personal intercourse with him in Pizarro's old Palace in Lima. Colombia, on the two oceans, is two-thirds unexplored. Ecuador and land-locked Paraguay are yet but little known.

I have shown the pervasion of the United States in these virgin domains, of which enormous areas remain in the jungle silence that was theirs before Columbus was born. Let me add the testimony of the AngloSouth American Bank, a powerful and conservative concern with a capital of 10,000,000l., whose name commands respect from Mexico City down to Valparaiso. 'The development of Latin-America,' the Chairman points out, in the year preceding the War was due in preponderating measure to the huge investments of British

capital and to British enterprise, which forged links of sympathy of a lasting nature.'

I studied those 'links' on the spot, from the United Railways of Havana to the Peruvian Corporation's lines in the High Andes, and thence to the marvellous engineering of the Trans-Andine, that crosses the Continent from Valparaiso to Buenos Aires through peaks that reach 24,000 feet.

'During recent years, however'-the Chairman goes on to say—the very sharp competition met by British exporters has unquestionably been intensified by the readiness with which the Latin-American countries have been able to obtain Loan accommodation other than in London. For example, the total long-term borrowings in the United States on behalf of South American authorities amounted in 1926 to over 60,000,000l. and in 1927 to date (October) to a further 50,000,000l.-excluding the Brazilian Stabilisation Loan just concluded-against comparatively small figures in London. And coincident with this, the United States has secured, at the expense of this country, a considerable proportion of the export trade to Latin-America. The significance of these facts is obvious, since Trade veers almost inevitably towards the source of Loans. . . .

To these weighty words let me add, that a proposal was made to the Argentine Government of a sort of 'unofficial' Loan of $100,000,000 offered by a group of New York bankers for the purpose of making roads in that huge land-upon which roads in due course the tractors and cars of Mr Henry Ford and his colleagues would no doubt have been placed! But all such Loans have up to now been subject to the approval of the Washington State Department.

So go the Imperial processes of 'sovereignty' in the Western World, which Cleveland's Foreign Minister impressed so sharply upon Lord Salisbury in the Venezuela crisis of 1895. Its defensive corollary is seen in the claim to create, maintain. and operate a Navy second to none,' which is now the policy of the American Admiralty--contrary to the views of their famous seahistorian, Mahan, and even to those of the wielder of the Big Stick,' President Roosevelt himself.

At Geneva Great Britain submitted proposals to conform with Coolidge's desire for 'economy'; these would

have saved the British tax-payer 50,000,000l., plus 1,000,000l. on every new cruiser to be constructed. But our ideas were not 'acceptable' to the American Delegation. We urged reduction in the size of capital ships and air-craft cruisers; here even discussion was declined. Washington held out for the 10,000-ton cruiser with 8-inch guns rather than the smaller cruiser of 7500 tons and 6-inch guns. It was the same with flotilla-leaders, destroyers, and submarines. America was all for 'bigness,' and still greater guns. 'We look in vain,' Lord Balfour declared at Whittinghame, 'for the reasons which have induced the American Government to find objections where to us there seemed to be none.' But the facts are emergent, and they must be faced.

Now, what exactly is this 'Latin-America' over which the United States claim peculiar rights of 'sovereignty,' whilst giving countenance by a paper paradox to the 'free and unfettered sovereignty' of all the Republics? Excluding the three Caribbean States, we come at once to that wonderful Mexico whose riches, with those of Peru, made Spain a world-power in her Golden Century.' One is struck at once with the diversity and immensity of this land of 767,168 square miles.

Next come the Central American nations, and then South America proper. Here is a New World, indeed, of which a single Republic (Brazil) exceeds all Europe in area, from the Liffey to the Bosporus, and from Lapland under the midnight sun down to Gibraltar which looks over to Africa's beaches. As a guest of the Federal Government it took me twenty-one days to go by water from Rio de Janeiro to the jungle city of Manãos, a thousand miles up the Amazon. Argentina is as large as Indian Empire. Peru is nearly three and a half times the size of pre-war Germany; Venezuela and Bolivia nearly as great. Yet the inhabitants of all these enormous spaces barely equal those of Germany to-day!

Whatever American statesmen may say in public, it is notorious that they rate the civilisation of our Southern brethren' as pretty low. They share the opinion of Caleb Cushing, their Minister to Spain in 1876. Cushing was asked by the State Department to throw some light on the psyche of Cuba-so long the 'Ireland' of Spain-in view of his knowledge and

experience of Iberian mentality. What was the root cause of that ceaseless turmoil in Cuba? It is,' the American Minister replied, 'because the Governors are incapable of conducting, and the governed equally incapable of receiving, Good Government. They are all Spaniards alike-as General Prim has so often saidwhether you call them Peninsulars or Cubans!'

Even the huge sub-Continent of Brazil justifies Mr Cushing's indictment down to our own day. What is to be said of an impecunious Government that could spend 3,000,000l. upon a 'Census,' in a land which contains the largest area of totally unexplored territory left upon this earth? Brazil's currency crumbled until the milreis had fallen from 16d. to 5d., entailing serious embarrassments to trade at home and abroad. A British Financial Commission, under Mr Edward Montagu, was invited to go out and advise. Its advice was such as might have been given to a schoolboy over the disposal of his pocket-money, so elementary and 'A.B.C.-ish' were the recommendations offered to prevent recurring Budget deficits, that were made good for the time with further loans. Over an immense bureaucracy too, and the need for a Federal check upon the 'doings' of these twenty very dis-United States.

Thus the scandals in Amazonas (a Province of 732,439 square miles!) a few years ago were ample warrant for the warnings of the Montagu Commission. A new Governor (and his family) so looted the jungle State, that public officials were actually starving in the streets, until an intervening Moses appeared from Rio in the person of Dr Alfredo Sá, the Federal Interventor, to clear up an incredible mess, and put an embargo on the fat bank accounts of that ingenious Governor's sons, who had filled the State Government and their own pockets at one and the same time.

The plain truth is, that the ruling classes of these empty lands have little or no contact with, or real interest in, their own submerged masses. Slavery is still rampant in Republics that I need not name. Disease takes a terrible toll. I must needs agree with RearAdmiral Chadwick, U.S.N., who thinks the most crying need of these forgotten human masses is 'educational, moral, and hygienic uplift.' The Rockefeller Institute