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.