The objections based upon these obstacles to union is not quite convincing. Incompatibility of temper is a bar to marriage: it is no bar to a practical and thoroughly friendly business understanding supported by mutual respect and methods of give and take. The tendencies of the age favour large combinations, overstepping the bounds of nationality and sometimes cutting across the lines of kindred and tradition. The challenge of Central Europe has raised up such a combination in Western Europe, and may help to give birth to a fresh and large grouping of the Powers of the western hemisphere.
The question occurs whether, apart from reasons of practical convenience, any fundamental basis can be found for the union of communities so dissimilar in character and in action. These republics have this at least in common: they have all started life in "new lands"; they are all trans-Atlantic offshoots from European monarchies; they have all thrown off political dependence upon Europe; they have all adopted republican forms of government; and, to whatever extent some of them may avoid democratic or even republican methods, they have all rejected the hereditary principle in government. Moreover, before the present crisis they all cultivated, so far as possible, a certain political aloofness from Europe: and they all aim at pursuing a destiny distinct from and, in their belief, transcending that of Europe through the inexhaustible possibilities offered by a New World.
What success has attended the United States in her recent policy of approaching Latin America? Here we are on delicate ground, and whatever view be expressed is sure to meet with disagreement on the part of qualified judges. It is not easy to keep one's finger on the pulse of South American sentiment, nor can we expect to find unanimity. We can only watch indications and symptoms. In the past, on the whole, the attitude of the United States has been accepted in so far as it implied protection; but it has been warmly resented in so far as it seemed to imply any kind of protectorate. A certain arrogance in the public pretensions of the United States has been felt to be an offence and a menace; and this feeling has been intensified by the bearing of individual Americans. Yet a representative Chilian, Señor Vildósola, writing since the outbreak of the war, says, "The United States was not popular in Chile; her political attitude was rude and overbearing (_une politique brutale_); but in the past ten years this is changed. The Big Stick is relegated to the cellars of the White House. A certain refinement of forms has appeared in the Secretaryship of State, and a deeper knowledge of the peoples of the continent has induced the Government, press and people of the United States to treat Chile and her neighbours with a new respect and consideration." It may here be noted that Chile has lately entered into close economic relations with the United States, through the American acquisition of great mining properties in Chile and through the export of nitrate and copper to North America, largely carried in Chilian government transports.