From the Argentine Republic 6000 young Englishmen came home to serve Britain on the fields of France. The young German would have found difficulty in getting home, even had he wished to do so; so for the most part he stayed in the River Plate. Other Germans have been released from military service and sent out as commercial travellers; for the German Government regards this too as National War Service. Thus today there are three German commercial men in the River Plate to one Englishman. The resources and confidence of the German traders are surprising. They have bought great quantities of wool in the River Plate--not so much indeed as is generally supposed; for German emissaries, in order to force up the price of wool to the Allies, have methodically made specious but fictitious offers of high prices to sheep-farmers all over the Argentine Republic. Yet, even so, German traders hold large quantities both of wool and of grain. These have been purchased partly for selling at enhanced prices on the spot, but principally with a view to after-war trade and the supply of raw materials to Germany. These purchases are proof of firm belief in the future. Moreover, both in Chile and in Argentina the interned German ships await their after-war cargoes for Europe. And when the Chilian or Argentine asks whether the German will be free to use these ships when peace comes, the Englishman cannot reply. The ships are there, proof of Germany's future power to trade.
And the Germans are active not only in trade. They have learnt from British example that the road to business in Latin America is the investment of capital. And, strange as it may seem, the German has peculiar opportunities of investment at the present time. Such limited trade as can be carried on yields great profits. There is difficulty about remitting funds to Germany; and in any case "victory war loans" and other investments in the Fatherland may seem less attractive than investments in those Latin-American lands which look forward to rapidly expanding prosperity after the war. Accordingly, the German merchant is not only buying raw materials; he is also taking a share in the movement of home manufactures which now offers peculiar opportunities to foreign enterprise. Moreover, German firms in Buenos Aires have invested largely in short loans to the Argentine Government. Besides these private investments, which, like all German activities, have their official side, loans have been repeatedly pressed on the Argentine Government, ostensibly by neutral financiers (first in the United States and afterwards in Spain) but in fact by Germany, evidently for immediate political as well as for ulterior economic objects. These offers have been declined. A German loan openly offered to Uruguay has also been refused.