Expand lliroti<flioiil Latin America 153 



manufacturers and merchants, and the (German) banks 

 in conjunction with their shippin<^ companies complete 

 a magnificent organization for promoting the export trade 

 of the Fatherland, so much so that it will always be a 

 difficult matter to gauge how much Germany's ability 

 to stand up against the Allies as she has done, has been 

 strengthened by the support, moral and financial, that the 

 German banks and commercial establishments in Latin 

 America have been able to give her. When will the 

 rising generation (and even our rulers) learn to appreciate 

 the importance of urging a large number of our younger 

 men to go abroad to push the financial and commercial 

 interests of our Empire in English-controlled banks and 

 merchants' ofifices in the same way as they so willingly go 

 to push its prestige and military glory on the field of 

 battle? Not only is Germany doing so in the matter 

 already described, but the U.S.A. also, as shown by the 

 Consular and other reports, are now waking up and 

 realizing the need there is for Uncle Sam to greatly " speed 

 up " his commercial activity in Latin America instead of 

 being, as his own cartoons showed him to have been, the 

 " Rip Van Winkle " among nations to appreciate the value 

 of the Latin American trade. 



Meanwhile the enormous wealth that the United States 

 are accumulating over this War, and the fact also that a 

 large proportion of her most pushing commercial men are 

 also Germans, or of German extraction and working on 

 the same relentless lines, make it therefore a double 

 necessity for the l^ritish to get more out in the world, and 

 be more widely represented over there by our kith and kin 

 in the future than we have been in the past. Now that 

 even banks and insurance offices have been invaded by 

 the girls, let them remain there and send the boys and 

 younger men abroad, where their presence will be of far 

 greater value to the nation than if they stayed at home. 

 In the old days the girls' labour was wasted, and several 

 sections of the labour unions seem to want it to be so 

 always, as if they are afraid of the competition of the 

 women. Such conduct is not only cowardly but most 

 unpatriotic, and will in the end do more to "dragoon" 

 labour of all classes in England on the lines along which it 

 is organized in Prussia than anything else. Such a course 

 must follow if we have a selfish, unorganized democracy 

 which cannot expect to prevail permanently against the 

 autocratic iron walls that the Teutonic race have brought 

 to such perfection ; and we take it that this country has no 



