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CHAPTER XXIV. 



If Germany had a Free Hand in Latin 



America. 



Tropical Life, February, 191 7. 



In the London Financier of January 2, in Tropical Life 

 for December and January, and elsewliere in our own as 

 well as in other papers, we have called attention, as forcibly 

 as circumstances plus the Censor permitted, to what 

 Germany has done and what she means to do to retrieve 

 her fortunes by " peaceful penetration," since she has 

 failed utterly to do so by force of arms.^ 



In no part of the world is she carrying out this policy 

 more vigorously than in the two Americas. Leaving the 

 United States to look after themselves, we would warn our 

 own folks, as well as our friends throughout Latin America, 

 to keep their eyes open as to what is taking place south 

 of the United States territory. We believe that one of 

 our readers sent between twenty and thirty copies of the 

 Finaitcier with our article to leading men overseas known 

 to be interested in Souih American aflfairs in order to let 

 ihem see our views. Attention was specially called to the 

 following sentence : " During the entire course of this 

 War, and for some time before the outbreak of hostilities, 

 the Germans in Germany, but especially in the United 

 States, have been lighting as strenuously to secure a com- 

 mercial and financial grip on Latin America, especially 

 over the A. B.C. Republics (Argentina, Brazil and Chile), 

 as the one they strove for and expected to obtain from a 

 military and political standpoint in Europe. . . . True 

 to his character, the German loses no chance of getting 

 his blows home, whether he hits above or below the belt. 

 A hit is a hit to him — that is all. Whether, therefore, he 

 comes in fair and square as a German, or under the cover 

 of the Monroe doctrine, as a hyphenated American, the 

 danger to us is not lessened but increased." 



Following this came the January issue of Current Opinion 

 of New York, which tells us, under the heading of " An 



• See also the remarks by Lord Denbigh, p. xxxii, on this War being 

 brought on by (lermany on account of the slowness or failure of her 

 scheme to penetrate peacefully wherever she wanted to go. 



