CHAPTER XIV

“THE BRITISH COLONY” AND ITS WAYS

All the different nationalities represented in the population of the Argentine are known as “colonies,” excepting the Spaniards and Italians, who are at once so numerous and so involved in the life of the country that it is scarcely possible to think of them merely as colonial groups. The Republic, with a total population of seven and a half-millions, contains vast numbers of Italians and Spaniards, but reliable returns as to the various nationalities included in the population are difficult to come by, if not impossible to secure. It is stated that there are upwards of 800,000 Spaniards in the country, while the Basques, both French and Spanish, are said to exceed a quarter of a million; the Germans number nearly 50,000, the total of German speaking persons, which includes Germans, Austrians, and Swiss, being upwards of 120,000. The British residents throughout the Republic probably do not total 40,000, but that is thought a fair estimate. As for Italians, their name is legion. In Buenos Ayres alone there are some 350,000 of them. But all figures must be regarded as approximate only, as the re-emigration movement is considerable. For example: in the year 1911 the total immigration into the Republic was 225,772, but the emigration from it amounted to 120,709, leaving an immigration balance of 105,063. Race statistics are easily obtained as to the incoming population, but of the settled residents and those who leave the country, there is a good deal that is speculative in all estimates, official and otherwise.

The Spaniards and Italians are split up into many subsections, such as the Basques, Asturians, Andalusians, Neapolitans, Tuscans, Lombards, Sicilians, and so forth. It would thus be correct to talk of “the Asturian colony,” but scarcely so of “the Spanish colony”; of the Neapolitan colony, but not of the Italian.

To a remarkable degree do these communities preserve their racial distinctions, as I have already explained, this applying more particularly to the cosmopolitan centres of population, such as Buenos Ayres, Rosario, La Plata, and Mendoza. In the smaller country towns, where the nationalities thin out, there are not the same inducements to maintain distinctions of race; thus, paradoxical though it may seem, the process of “Argentinising” the Gringo proceeds apace more rapidly in the Camp than in the larger towns, or even in Buenos Ayres, which might be thought the hottest part of the “melting pot.”

Naturally, the capital contains the major portion of the British colony, yet, not even the ubiquitous Italian, though always overwhelming the British in sheer numbers, finds his way to remoter parts, for everywhere throughout the vast territory of the Republic the British have penetrated, either as lonely overseers or “construction engineers,” in little groups as prosperous estancieros, or managers of divers concerns. In Rosario there is a very considerable colony of them, in Bahía Blanca, in Junin, Mendoza, Tucumán—wherever there are banks to be managed, railways to be maintained, machinery to be sold, there you will find the enterprising sons of Albion busy, and usually prosperous; though it must be confessed that the figure I have just used may not quite apply, as the most familiar names borne by these self-exiles from Britain are Scots and Irish.

In many respects, the Irish Argentine was one of my most interesting studies. As a journalist, it was something of a revelation to find two comparatively prosperous weekly newspapers, the _Southern Cross_ and the _Hiberno-Argentine Review_, both printed in English and very much alive, dedicated exclusively to the interests of the Irish Catholic families of the country. The Irishman is well-known for the part he has played in the development of South America. In that wonderful statesman and governor, Ambrosio O’Higgins, and his no less brilliant son Bernardo, the liberator and first President of Chili, did not Ould Ireland give to South America two of the noblest men of action whose lives illumine its history? In the Argentine also, the Hibernian has played no mean rôle in the development of the young nation. His influence in her counsels to-day is considerable. Prepared as one may be by previous reading to discover him prominent in its life, it is none the less strange to meet eminent men of business, in every fibre of their being fervid Argentines,—using the Argentine tongue with all the nuances of the native,—who speak our own language with the most pronounced Irish brogue.

Comparatively few of these Irish Argentines, moreover, have ever crossed the seas to the green isle of their ancestors. Almost without exception they are bitterly anti-English in sentiment. Originally sprung from the lower class Irish peasantry, to whom the miserable conditions of emigrant life in the Argentine, a generation or two back, were far less forbidding than to the average British emigrant, the dress-suit and silk-stockinged stage of luxury attained by the many who have gathered a bit of fortune from the generous soil, is to them a satisfaction that might not appeal so strongly to the classes which England and Scotland are pouring into Canada at the present time. His religion also fitting in with that of the country is another factor that has helped to make the Irishman at home in the Argentine.

Under the British Treaty with the Argentine, the children born in the country of British parents occupy a somewhat curious position as regards nationality. While their parents remain British subjects, unless—and this rarely indeed—they deliberately renounce their birthright to become nationalised Argentines, children born in the country are reckoned as Argentines and amenable to the laws of the Republic so long as they continue to live therein, but they become British subjects on entering British territory. Thus, the native son of British parents must conform to the law of military service, while the native-born daughter ranks with all other Argentine women in her disabilities as to the personal control of her property in the event of her marrying in that country. Yet, on going to London, that son and daughter cease, for the time being, to be Argentine subjects, so far as British law is concerned, and are there accepted as native-born Britishers.

Whether this curious international arrangement exists in connection with any other European countries, I know not; but suspect it does not, else the heroic efforts of many foreign women residents, and especially the French, to maintain the nationality of their children, would not be necessary. Seldom does a steamer leave Buenos Ayres for Europe without carrying several lonely women who have left their husbands, perhaps in some remote corner of the Pampa, in order that the child to be born may see the light under the flag of its parents’ country. M. Huret mentions the case of a French lady who, in addition to a long and toilsome journey from the interior, undertook the trip to Europe and back on two occasions within three years thus to preserve the French nationality of her children. With English mothers the chief, indeed the only reason for following this course is to save any son of theirs from the burden of military service. And many a poor lady who has made the trip has been disappointed to be told the child was a girl!

Argentine statesmen are most insistent on the maintenance of the conditions that go with Argentine citizenship, and to such a point that the famous Bartolomé Mitre, one of the greatest men the nation has produced, declared that, rather than withdraw the condition, that he who becomes a citizen of the Republic must renounce his allegiance to his native land, he would “set fire to his country from all sides.” Officialism is alert and open-eyed in its watch and ward over the native-born sons of foreigners who seek to evade their military obligations. So far as I could gather, there was but little disposition to do so on the part of most of the young citizens sprung from Gringo parents; rather are they apt to look down upon the country of their fathers, and to swell with pride at being privileged to serve the Argentine.

Exceptions to this rule will most usually be found among the sons of resident Britishers, though many of them, and especially the Irish, willingly do their duty by the Republic. I remember overhearing the mother of one of these young Irish _porteños_ scolding him because he insisted on speaking Spanish, even among his own people, where English (with a thick brogue) was the language of the family circle. He had served his term in the Republican army, and gloried in reciting its illustrious achievements, before which the efforts of the poor blunderers who muddled through with such footling officers as Napoleon and Wellington paled into insignificance. What were the British Grenadiers to the _Granaderos de San Martín_? What indeed! But the Englishmen and Scotsmen who, by accident of birth, rank as Argentine citizens, and have done their military service, are comparatively few in proportion to the whole. I have met native-born Argentines not a few who were far less enamoured of the country and its ways, and more sanely appreciative of old England than many British residents who had better reason to entertain these sentiments.

A certain lofty contempt for the Englishman at home is to be noted in the attitude of the “British Colony” to things British. “I have no use for the untravelled Englishman,” said an Argentine-born Englishman to me. This gentleman’s parents had evidently been so essentially English that their son, now a man of about fifty, had grown up and attained to prosperity without being able to speak more than “Gringo Spanish.” He had no use for the untravelled Englishman, and yet I shall venture to say that many a Lancashire or Yorkshire man who has travelled no farther than London will have as broad an outlook as the English porteño who has never been outside of the Argentine. This very gentleman, one of the most charming and agreeable of the British residents with whom I came into touch, had himself visited England for the first time two years before I met him, and confessed that the old land, with its unlimited facilities for the larger enjoyment of social life, made a deep impression on him, even to the point of awakening the desire to go “home” and avail himself of his British birthright for the rest of his days.

Judge ye, therefore, to what extent he was entitled to sneer at the untravelled Englishman! So far as enlarging one’s horizon or enriching the mind is concerned, a month on the Continent of Europe, amid historic scenes and in touch with the grand, great things of the past, will do more than many years of Buenos Ayres. Thus I was at first inclined to stiffen against my porteño friend and resent his suggestion, but I had misunderstood him, and we were really in entire harmony, he and I. His point was that the Englishman who arrives in Buenos Ayres direct from England, and has never before travelled throughout his own country or even troubled about that Continental tour is apt to prove a social bore to his fellow-countrymen in Buenos Ayres. I concur most heartily, for this is the very type of Englishman who discusses in the loudest voice and with the most unreasoning bigotry the incomparable advantages of the Argentine over the benighted little island he has left. Nor must it be supposed that the seven thousand miles from the Thames to the River Plate do anything appreciably to reduce the untravelled state of this Englishman. There is not a great deal to see, and what there is slips past the average voyager without notice, so that he reaches his journey’s end in the same splendid state of untravelled ignorance that he left his native town in England.

In any consideration of the British colony, we ought to have established in our minds what exactly are its constituents. A very large number of its members are associated with the management of the railways. Even readers who are only indifferently informed on South American subjects are probably aware that the British are the great railway makers of the world, and that the thousands of miles of lines which interlace the far-flung towns of the Argentine are monuments of British enterprise, while some £150,000,000 of good English money has gone to their making. In this alone the Britishers have proved themselves the greatest benefactors of the country, although it has not been entirely a work of philanthropy. The railways, then, being chiefly British concerns, show a natural preference for British employees, and thousands of young Britons are serving on them to-day in all sorts of capacities, but chiefly as clerks, accountants, draughtsmen, engineers, and department managers.

Time was when the young railway employee in England who secured a post in the Argentine went direct from a thistly pasturage to a field of clover; was able to keep his horse and ruffle it with the best. That was before the standardising of the currency, when a paper peso would occasionally be as good as gold, and usually a great deal better than it has been since the establishment of the _caja de conversión_. To-day they speak of those times as of a Golden Age that has vanished, and now the lot of the minor railway employee is by no means an enviable one. It is true that he will probably receive a salary twice or two and a half times greater than he got at home, but, as I have already made clear, the net result of such a salary will be that financially his Argentine condition, if not worse than his British, will be but little better. He will handle more money, and he will get a great deal less for what he spends. Meanwhile, he has signed his two or three years’ agreement, and must struggle on, however inadequately he is financed for the fight. Falling readily into the ways of his better situated countrymen, he endeavours to vie with them, and in the process is lucky indeed if he avoids running into debt. From this class, to which naturally there are many exceptions among the higher placed officials—many of whom are men of outstanding ability, handsomely paid and more liberally treated than they would be in similar positions in Great Britain or North America—we have not the best of material for the building of the British colony.

The British banks and financial agencies, so numerous throughout the Republic, are very largely staffed from home, though there is also a large native element in every office, as it is not to be supposed that the operations of these banks are confined to a British clientéle. Far from that; I should imagine that the large majority of depositors with such as the London and River Plate Bank were foreigners. Certainly, to judge by my occasional visits to that busiest of banks, there were always fewer Britishers among those waiting on the outside of the counters than there were English-speaking accountants and cashiers on the inside. In addition to the heads of departments who were, I think, without exception, Britishers, the staff contained many English-speaking porteños, but working away at the books, and not in touch with the public, one could note many essentially British faces. This is typical of most of these banks operating in South America, some perhaps employing more of their fellow countrymen than others. If anything, the Anglo-South-American Bank seemed to me to find employment for even more Englishmen than the average in its various branches in the Argentine and along the Pacific Coast.

The young men drafted out from England for employment in these banks are, I imagine, of a somewhat better social status and also better paid than the ruck of the railways employees. In contrast with the conditions of service and remuneration at home, the bank clerk in the Argentine certainly does seem to better his position somewhat, or, more correctly, he attains advancement earlier than he would at home. He is, on the other hand, doomed to a long and probably permanent exile, as there seems little disposition on the part of the home offices to find openings in London for any of their employees once they have become accustomed to the work and life of South America. This is probably one of the reasons why the British banking community throughout the country appears to be very settled in its character, the constant shifting, so unsatisfactory a feature of the clerical staffs of the railways, not being a characteristic of the financial fraternity. Then, the business of the banker, bringing him into direct touch with the public, imposes upon all those anxious to progress therein, the necessity of acquiring the language of the country, whereas the railway clerk, beyond a string of technical words used in his bookkeeping, may never find any need for it, and rarely indeed does an Englishman (and here I must bracket the American with him) make any attempt to learn the language unless under pressure of circumstances. This is another of the reasons for the superiority of the banking clerk over the railway clerk, as it will be found that the intelligent Englishman who has acquired a good command of the language, with whatever object in view, always holds a position superior to his fellow countryman who has not done so, or he is at least likely to outstrip him in the long run.

A third element in the making of the British colony are the “Cable boys.” The various cable companies are all served by very young men, who among Britishers abroad probably bear away the bell for their unlimited power of “swanking.” It is altogether delightful to pass an hour or two in the company of some of these breezy youths. They leave you with the impression that the whole modern civilisation has been moulded by men of their kidney. They talk about their work with a zest that no mere banker, engineer, journalist, or architect could possibly impart to his humbler calling. They call it “The Service,” and to hear a group of them discussing the personalities of their great men in charge of branch offices at fabulous salaries of £5 to £6 a week, is most refreshing to the wearied man of affairs.

Often have I watched and frequently had intercourse with these glorious youths, of whose romantic existence I had only the haziest notions until I went a-travelling in South America, and they always contrived to make me feel something of a worm for not having dedicated such abilities as I possess to “The Service.” Yet there is a pathetic side to them and their work. The Cable Service and Wireless Telegraphy are two potent snares for the youth of our time. It really requires a very modest supply of grey matter in the cranium to discharge the duties of either, and a young man of twenty is as good a cable operator as he will be at forty, and probably better than he will be at fifty. Few are they who can hope to rise to the more responsible managerial positions. The bulk of them grow up into disillusioned, underpaid, and aimless men. It is a service for youths, in which they quickly attain proficiency, and what, for youth, is a substantial wage; but “soon ripe, soon rot.” So that whenever I came in touch with those swaggering “boys,” I used to see hovering behind them shadowy figures with grey, sad faces, and did not grudge them their swanking days.

Yet another of the constituents of the “colony” is furnished from the ranks of the commission agents and local representatives of our exporting firms. Many of the large manufacturing firms maintain their own offices and staffs under the management of able assistants who have been trained at home, while many more are content to be represented on a commission basis by agents, who are their own masters and handle the business of several firms whose interests do not clash. Among these will be found not a few of the most prosperous members of the British community, men of self-reliance, initiative, individuality. There are also to be considered in this connection, though the bond that binds them to the British colony is ever loosening, fellow countrymen who have permanently established themselves as local tradesmen, conducting every variety of business, such as chemist, draper, grocer, jeweller, bootseller, furniture dealer, bookseller, and so forth. In all parts of Buenos Ayres, and in a lesser degree in the larger towns of the country, the wanderer will note familiar British names over shop windows, often with the Christian name in Spanish, _Juan_ for John, _Diego_ for James, and so on. It is a fair assumption that when the English tradesman has taken to use the Spanish form, he intends to strike his roots deep into the new soil. His children will become more Argentine than British, and theirs British not at all.

But perhaps the most important, and I suspect the most substantial of the British community who have made their homes in this Land of Fortune are those of the estanciero class. It is true that the wealthiest of them cannot be compared on a mere money basis with the wealthier natives, who have seen their landed properties increase some hundred times in value in the last forty years, whereas most English estancieros had to buy their holdings after the upward movement began. Many of them carry on farming on what, compared with the average conditions in their native land, is a baronial scale, and as a rule they seem to be pleased with their lot and happy in the country of their adoption. They are frequent visitors to Buenos Ayres, and flock there, particularly at the time of the Agricultural Show, when their womenfolk vie with each other in the display of their latest hats and dresses. Included among the agricultural class are many highly paid managers, usually Englishmen of good education and organising ability, who conduct the intricate affairs of large estancias either for private owners or for public companies.

It is impossible, of course, to give in complete detail an analysis of the British colony, and all that I have attempted has been to suggest very roughly the classes that go to its composition. It will be seen that it is first and last a purely commercial community. In no sense is it a replica of society as one knows it in England. Every member of it is there to make money, and by the extent to which he is succeeding does he stand in the estimation of the community. It could not be otherwise. It is true there are British schools with British instructors, British churches—a pro-Cathedral among them—with clergymen, Nonconformist pastors, and Irish priests, societies for literary discussion, British clubs, charities, hospitals, missions to seamen, Salvation Army workers, and amateur theatrical societies; but the fact remains that it is in the very fibre of its being a business community, where commercial standing takes precedence of most other considerations.

At the same time, I found ample evidence in the British colony of a desire to approximate more nearly to the social observations of the homeland, to look more closely at the credentials of newcomers before taking them to its bosom. In the early days, Buenos Ayres was one of the many dumping places for wastrels, and the colonial freedom which accepted everybody at his face value produced an inevitable mixture of sorts, so that not rarely did Britishers of dubious antecedents manage to secure a wife among the daughters of some prosperous British resident. It is well-known that the daughters of these families even still have great difficulty in finding suitable husbands of their own class, and during our stay I confess I saw sufficient of the British community to have made me extremely careful, had I intended to settle in the town, in the choice of my friends. There is in all this nothing that reflects upon the worthier elements of the community; it is the inevitable outcome of peculiar conditions, and rather than finding much to censure, one may discover a great deal to commend in the life of these exiles. That it is provincial to a degree is scarcely surprising, and that it is productive of much genuine friendship, sympathy, mutual helpfulness, is due to the generous British nature on which it is based.

Its class distinctions are being emphasised, and not before time. At first blush one might be repelled by what seemed the pettiness of its interests, the little corroding jealousies, its snobbishness, but the last mentioned is at bottom a praiseworthy effort to raise the social level beyond that obtaining with the indiscriminate mixing of good and bad which characterised the earlier life of the community. The pettiness is inescapable. A country town in England would probably provide no more gossip and scandal than any British community several times its size in a foreign land.

A nursery governess comes out to Buenos Ayres and stays at the by-no-means-luxurious headquarters of the Y.W.C.A. until she finds a job. She will probably be back there frequently in the periods between her various posts, as she will have many changes before she is “suited.” Eventually she will meet some decent, lonely Englishman, managing an estancia a day or two’s journey away in the Camp. They will get married, and make a brave show of it at the Y.W.C.A., and next day the _Standard_ will publish a column describing the great event, with the list of presents spaced out in single lines. Need one be surprised if the nursery governess suddenly finds herself something of a snob? She will immediately “put on airs,” and on her visits to the capital with her husband she will ruffle it for a day or two in the smartest of new dresses and the biggest of hats, just to advertise the agreeable fact that they are “getting on.”

Marriage possibilities form the favourite gossip of the community, and the _Standard_ even publishes copies of invitations that have been sent out by the most ordinary members of the community, introducing them with the words “The following wedding invitations are now in circulation.” The most vital crisis in European affairs will receive less space than the wedding of John Jones and Mary Smith. The favourite paper of the community teems daily with the most trivial personalities, even the social movements of a railway clerk not being deemed unworthy of record. The lack of entertainment causes amateur theatricals to flourish, and the English papers will “spread themselves” on a three or four column criticism of the most ordinary amateurish production of, say, “The Count of Luxembourg,” while there will not be lacking foolish people to assert that the amateur production was in every respect finer than anything that could be seen in the principal London theatres. There are two or three of these dramatic societies with long rolls of membership, and the performances are given in the regular theatres some half-a-dozen times per annum, these functions being admirable occasions for the display of new toilettes on the part of the ladies of the audience, and an airing for the gentlemen’s swallow-tails.

I often thought it was evidence of the dearth of social entertainment that British residents were always eager for an opportunity to dine at any of the hotels, although they could have done as well, if not better, in their own homes, so far as food was concerned. An invitation to dinner at the hotel had evidently all the charm of an “event” for them. Those who maintained a widish circle of friends would also occasionally offer an “At Home” at the hotel most patronised by the English and the Americans. In short, one felt from the straits to which they seemed to be put for amusement and distraction, that there was a great social hunger in the community; but on reflection I could see that even those evidences of pettiness which somewhat grated on one fresh from the larger life of London, were more apparent than real, and the British residents in Buenos Ayres were solving fairly well the problem of existing as social beings in an unfavourable environment. It was the little round of the most ordinary social engagements, magnified into artificial importance, that helped to make their exile pleasant. I can even imagine myself falling into a condition out there that would make the report of the wedding of two local nobodies quite interesting reading.

The various literary societies were also productive of some intellectual intercourse, and although I attended none, thanks to the English dailies I was able to read many papers delivered at their meetings, reprinted at full length, which showed a fair average of literary attainment. On the other hand, the most contemptible rubbish that I have seen in print took the form of letters to the editor of the _Standard_ or the _Herald_, which gave admittance to good and bad indiscriminately. Ignorant diatribes against English politicians and home affairs from uneducated residents, who rejoiced to sneer at their motherland, too often found their way into type instead of into the waste basket, and could not but exercise a bad influence on other ignorant members of the community.

Nay, it was among the British colony that I found more ignorance and bigotry than I did amongst the natives, the Spaniards, the French, or the Germans. Some of the sanest criticisms of the country to which I listened were made by natives and Spaniards, and also by Italians. I found the Britishers seldom had a well-balanced opinion to deliver: they were either disgusted with everything and longing to be home, or delighted with everything and never wishing to return. Out of many I can recall to mind, I shall select two, both young men, and both typical asses, whom I may describe as pro-Argentines, although neither was naturalised, and both had only been about five years in the country.

The first I shall describe as Mr. Q——, a notorious bore, who must surely have earned a wide reputation for his habit of monopolising the talk in whatever company he finds himself. I first came into contact with him after listening patiently to a long harangue, addressed chiefly to a group of innocent ladies, on the amazing progress of the Argentine. Not a single statement that he made had a remote connection with fact. I sat by uncomplaining until he assured his admiring female group that Buenos Ayres in the last thirty years had not only become the third largest city in the world, but that in fifty years it would unquestionably have exceeded London in the matter of population. This was too much. I offered to bet the gentleman a thousand pesos to one that he was talking nonsense, and that Buenos Ayres, apart from being already notoriously disproportionate in population to the country as a whole, was not third, but thirteenth of the world’s large cities, in proof of which I was fortunately able to produce within ten minutes _Whitaker’s Almanac_ for 1912. I did not, however, receive my peso, as Mr. Q—— declined to accept _Whitaker_ as an authority, stating his information was based on statistics issued by the Argentine Government! Of course no such fool statistics have ever been issued, the third city of the world (Paris) containing twice the population of Buenos Ayres, though covering a much smaller area.

I had many other encounters with the same gentleman, who, having acquired some land which he was endeavouring to transfer to the public on the most philanthropic basis (to himself), had turned himself into a walking advertisement for the glorious Argentine, and never ceased to explain to visitors how completely played out was Great Britain, how rapidly she was sliding down the slippery slope to oblivion, while the Argentine was forging ahead on the path to world-empire! Please do not imagine I am exaggerating one tittle the declarations of this British driveller, who, by the way, hadn’t acquired a single sentence of Spanish in five years! He pictured Buenos Ayres as the future hub of the world’s civilisation, this purely agricultural country of the Argentine (featureless and ill adapted for any purpose other than the growing of luxurious crops and the rearing of vast herds of cattle), as a teeming land of wondrous industries, before which such things as England, America, France, and Germany have achieved would have to pale their ineffectual fires. No argument of sanity that could be advanced disturbed the calm serenity with which this self-constituted trumpeter of the Argentine reiterated stupidities that would have put the most perfervid patriot to the blush.

I have described Mr. Q—— at some little length, because, bore though he is, he is typical of a certain class of Englishman whom one encounters in the Argentine, and for whom Argentine and average Englishman alike have a wholesome contempt. He is one of those aggressive, self-assertive “Anglo-Argentines” who go home occasionally and blow about this new land of promise, to the ultimate disillusionment of such as give ear.

The other Englishman I have in mind, who also typifies a certain class, is less offensively anti-British than Mr. Q——, and his observations being based upon a little knowledge and a large inexperience, he is more amenable to reason than the Mr. Q’s, who are mere windbags, that seek to cloak their lack of success at home by magnifying their changed condition in the new land. Mr. F——, as I shall call the other, had a little knack from time to time of dropping such sage remarks as, “Where in the whole of London will you find such evidence of wealth as you do in a walk along the Avenida Alvear?”—“Where in London will you see so many beautiful dresses, such wealth in millinery, as at Palermo on a Sunday afternoon?”—“Talk about the business of London, what is it in comparison with the business of Buenos Ayres?”—“Were you not astounded at the magnificent buildings when you came to Buenos Ayres, all so bright and clean looking, after London?”—and so on _ad nauseam_.

We dubbed Mr. F—— “the silly ass observer.” For each of these examples of his acumen in the art of comparative observation breathes of ignorance and thoughtlessness. They are, indeed, almost too stupid to call for notice, but as Mr. F—— was personally a pleasant and amiable young Englishman, I was often at pains to explain matters to him, and always found that at the root of his odious comparisons lay the simple fact that he had lived in London with his eyes shut and his mind untouched by the grandeur that surrounded him. How many hundreds of thousands of young men are like Mr. F——! They look on the old familiar things of home with unseeing eyes, and when, perchance, in some new land they begin to take notice, they lack standards of comparison to guide them. When I explained to poor Mr. F——, who was honestly overwhelmed by the glory that is Buenos Ayres, that Threadneedle Street or Lombard Street in ye antique city of London, though they look as nothing to the eye that cannot see beyond their drab and smoky walls, might comfortably purchase the entire Argentine and all that in it is, from the torrid north to the foggy south, and have something over to be going on with; when I impressed him with the undoubted fact that most of the wealth which he saw around him had come into being thanks to British money, and that a very substantial portion of the profits being derived from the exploitation of the country went every year into London pockets, he began to see things in a new light. To compare the Avenida Alvear with Park Lane, merely shows that one has not observed Park Lane, or that he is not aware that the Avenida Alvear and the few streets thereabout which represent the Mayfair, Belgravia, and West End of London, are as an inch to an ell. Mr. F—— is very representative of the “cable boy” standard of intelligence, but in other respects a fine, clean English type, that one would value all the more as an element in the British Colony were it given to a little reflection before it aired its opinions on Argentine and the world in general, of which its experience has been notably slight.

Hardly at all does the emigrant class enter into the British Colony. British workpeople there are occasionally to be met throughout the Argentine, but the country as a whole is ill adapted for them. Any person who by word of mouth or writing spreads abroad the idea that artisans or those of the labouring class of Great Britain will find the Argentine an attractive field, may be doing a very mischievous thing. The conditions of life in which the Italian emigrants, the Spaniards, Poles, Russians, Syrians, and all the rest of them herd together in the cities or make shift to exist in rough shanties in the Camp are impossible to even the commonest class of English or Scots workpeople, if the language difficulty did not exist to make matters still worse for them.

But many British workpeople are there under conditions very different from those of the other emigrants. They are chiefly railway engineers, employed as foremen or as expert workers in the great workshops of the different railway companies, or as locomotive drivers. Their conditions of life, although I fail to see wherein they are greatly superior to those obtaining in their native land among their class, having regard to the different purchasing value of the wages earned, are at least made agreeable by association with fellow-workers of their own race, and the possibility of saving more money than they would be likely to do at home. For example, where a working man in England might be able to save £20 ($100) per year, he can at least contrive to save the same relative proportion from his wages in the Argentine, and as his wages will not be less than double, and perhaps two and a half times what they would have been in England, by the same ratio may his savings be increased. These workmen have also security of employment, and, in fine, must not be confounded with the emigrant class. They find grievances, none the less, and even went on strike in the year 1911.

Owing to the little communities in which they live being almost entirely British, they do not assimilate with the natives, and few of them, even after many years in the country, have picked up more than some odd words of the language. A friend of mine, who was rather shaky in his Spanish, was waylaid at a railway station in the interior and wished to have a train stopped at a point along the line where there was no station, to enable him to reach a certain _estancia_. He managed to explain this in Spanish to the station-master, but the latter was unable to interpret it to the engine-driver, who turned out to be English and did not know a word of what he called “their blooming lingo!” These sturdy and skilled artisans naturally do not count in the British Colony of Buenos Ayres, and most of them live in the railway centres of the provinces, and come only occasionally to the capital for a trip.

What must strike the British visitor in Buenos Ayres with a curious air of home is the railway bookstall at Retiro, Once, or at Constitución. The former looks as familiar as a London suburban bookstall, with all sorts of English periodicals, from the _Strand Magazine_ to _Comic Cuts_, bundles of “sixpenny” and “sevenpenny” novels, _The Times_, weekly edition, _Lloyds’ News_, and many another familiar title, though the prices charged are naturally two or three times those printed on the periodicals. These are evidence of the large English community residing in the various suburbs served from the stations named. The English bookshops in the heart of the city are also well-known centres, being entirely patronised by the “colony,” but the English grocers drive a large business with the native population, and employ many assistants who only speak Spanish. Still, British housewives have no need to acquire the language, as they may transact all their business in their native tongue, and it is no rare thing to meet a lady who in twenty years of Buenos Ayres has not even got to know the Spanish names of the common objects of the dinner table. In the provinces, however, most foreign lady residents have to acquire at least a smattering of the native lingo.

A further element in the “colony” may be described as the floating population of British visitors who make periodical journeys to the Argentine in pursuit of business. The stay-at-home has no faint notion of the extraordinary trafficking of his race in foreign parts. Veritable battalions of commercial travellers representing British houses visit the Argentine each year, staying from two to six months at a time, and the hotels are always sheltering Englishmen who seem to have nothing to do beyond taking their meals and playing billiards for weeks on end, but who are really waiting the signing-up of contracts. One gentleman I knew had put in nearly nine months of this strenuous work, and eventually left in despair. The contract for which he had been waiting so long was fixed up about three weeks afterwards, and went to a German firm whose representative had perhaps been more patient in waiting, or more liberal (or more discreet) in his bestowal of backsheesh.

Those visitors whose stays are short do not fare badly in the Argentine capital, and as a rule retain rather pleasant memories of the place, although not a few with whom I conversed really dreaded the necessity of having to return, as they found time hang so heavily on their hands. Then there comes occasionally one of the scribbling fraternity, who fixes a little round of engagements, hurries to see the sights of the place, and flits away again to entertain a public quite as well-informed as he or she may be by the little that he or she has seen in the few days’ stay. I spent some time with an American correspondent, who did not know a word either of French or Spanish, and yet had the fortitude to contribute a series of articles to one of the local papers, giving his valuable impressions of a country and a people into whose mind he was not able even to peep. His articles, of course, were written in English and translated into Spanish, and were published with great _fanfarronada_, although his literary reputation was unknown even to me, whose business it has been for many years to keep in touch with literary reputations on both sides of the Atlantic.

The regulation course for the “globe-trotter” who flits through the Argentine for a week or so, to write a book thereon, is to motor round the various public buildings, interview a few of the official heads, endeavouring, if possible, to have a talk with the President,—a comparatively easy matter in all South American Republics, the President being sort of _ex-officio_ Chief of Publicity,—engineer an invitation to a model _estancia_ to stay overnight, and an interview with a reporter from the _Standard_ to announce the gestation of the great work that will later see the light in London or New York. The usual practice of the more or less distinguished visitor is to deliver himself of the most fulsome flattery of all that he has seen, and to lay on the butter with a trowel. To this rule there are occasional exceptions, and I gather that the Princess of Pless, who paid Buenos Ayres a visit in August of 1913, when I was staying in Chili, was one of these exceptions. The Buenos Ayres correspondent of _La Union_ of Santiago sent to his paper an amusing little article on the Princess, which I think worthy of translating, as it will make an acceptable tailpiece to this chapter. He wrote:

She has gone! A wandering star, seeking a constellation wherein she may shine with due refulgence and without suffering eclipse from other stars of greater brilliance. She had a glimpse of the Argentine in her dreams as the ideal land of aristocracy by having read in the “British Cyclopædia” (_sic_) that in this country there are no titles of nobility other than those of the wash-tub.

Yesterday she stated in one of her farewell confidences: “I go away horribly disappointed! Not a sauvage (_sic_), not a tiger, not a Paraguayan crocodile!”

What a useless voyage! To confront the dangers of three thousand leagues of sea and twenty days of poor food and worse sleep to come to see savages, when these can be found in thousands within twenty-four hours of London! In this poor America there remain no other savages than those Europeans who exploit the miserable natives of Putumayo. The veritable Indians of the tales of Fenimore Cooper and of Gustave Aimard, the scalp hunters, the throat cutters, the mutilators of children, are to be found in the very heart of Europe, in the countries of “The Merry Widow.” There the Princess ought to have gone a-hunting for those sanguinary curiosities and to satisfy her appetite for exotics.

She came here nervously afraid of the prospect of being carried off by Calufucurá, and even resisted the temptation to visit the _estancia_ of Pereyra, fearing lest the Cacique Catriel should force her to prepare the pipe of counsel surrounded by his tribe, and she goes away disenchanted by not having seen an Indian even in the distance, and disgusted at having had to suffer the sugary gallantries of some of our dandies of the old school, little fortunate in the conquest of princesses.

But, above all, what mortified her most and most precipitated her departure, rendering her ill at ease during her stay in Buenos Ayres, is the fact that she did not rank here in the front file of beauty, nor shine above the rest in fashion, nor find herself in any sort a protagonist. She was no more than one among the mass of our women, and less than many of our distinguished ladies. Thus she has gone as she came, after having attempted to discover some labyrinthine forest never visited by man, without encountering more than cultivated soil and agricultural machines where she had hoped to see Indians discharging their poisoned arrows and brandishing their formidable tomahawks. And thus it is that she says in her despite “America has lost all her virginities, even the celebrated virginity of her forests!”

Yesterday the Princess embarked, and on seeing her aboard the _Arayaguaya_, using her walking-stick like a crutch, to disguise her mincing gait,—alone, with not even the companionship of a “snob,” who might have attempted to win her good-will, not even a lady of honour dazzled by her noble title,—there came to our mind, though altered by the circumstances, the lines of that farewell elegy on the remains of Sir John Moore:

“Not a drum was heard, not a triumphal note—As she arrived at the Dársena Norte—Not a soldier discharged his farwell schot—When the steamer left the Argentine shore!”

The intrinsic merits of this little sketch and the charm of the concluding effort in English, surely justify its reproduction! What on earth the Princess of Pless may have said to lead to this display of journalistic courtesy, I do not know, but I suspect that she must have ventured some words of frank criticism, and that is precisely what the common, untramelled Argentine does not want. He asks for butter, and he wants it thick, and if you can add a layer of sugar,—for he has a sweet tooth—so much the better. Most of the British Colony know this, and also know on which side their bread is buttered. Thus the English visitor who is indiscreet enough publicly to express a frank and honest opinion of anything that does not meet with his approval in Buenos Ayres or the Argentine, will scarcely expect to be grappled to its bosom by hooks of steel. I am persuaded, however, that the better-class of native Argentine opinion is quite capable of sustaining honest criticism and profiting thereby.