CHAPTER XVII

THE SPIRIT OF THE COUNTRY

There is a sense in which the spirit of a country must show itself in any honest description of its life and character. The preceding chapters of this book have dealt with so many and varied aspects of Argentine life that the reader should have been able to take in from these something at least of the spirit of the country: perhaps as much as can be made manifest in any specialised treatment of the subject. Yet I feel the attempt should be made to disengage from the tangle of ideas and impressions created in the mind by close observation of the ways of a people some orderly estimate of its “spirit.”

I remember very well on our taking the river steamer from Montevideo for the night journey to Buenos Ayres, after transshipping from the ocean liner, that an Anglo-South-American, who had been a fellow voyager, said it would be amusing to watch the demeanour of the Argentines on board, as we should be able to distinguish them from the general mass by their swaggering walk, their bumptious manners, and sartorial affectations. And that evening, while the passengers were thronging aboard, it did seem as though he spoke truth, so many answered to his description; evidently all of them Argentines returning to Buenos Ayres at the close of the Montevidean season.

These fellows strutted about the saloon and paraded the deck of the steamer with a splendid air of proprietorship, while the grossly offensive manner of the stewards, who treated the passengers with a lofty contempt, and a calm indifference to their wants, gave one an extremely bad first impression of Argentine manners. Nevertheless this was no true sample. The traveller who allows such evidences as these to prejudice him against a whole people is hardly a trained observer. If a foreigner were to judge the British people by many of the specimens I have myself encountered abroad, he would draw an extremely unflattering picture of them as a nation. Swagger there is and to spare, among the Argentines, and boastfulness of their national progress is only to be expected in a young people whose international experience is still far from complete, but that these are essentials of the Argentine spirit, I would have no one believe.

Truer would it be to say that the spirit of the Argentine—that intangible something which permeates a whole people and marks them off from others—can best be discovered in walking about the streets, mingling with the throng, listening to the casual remarks of passers-by. You will notice, not once or twice, but scores of times in any day—that is, if you notice anything—the curious habit of men in conversation rubbing together the forefinger and thumb of the right hand. This is expressive of money. One of the curiosities of the Spanish language is the extraordinary amount of gesture which usually goes with it; people commonly, when referring to themselves, tap the breast to emphasise the personal pronoun; when speaking of having seen something, they will point to the eyes, or to the mouth, if they wish to convey some notion either of speech or silence. In the same way, the Argentine seldom mentions _plata_ (money) without this rubbing of the forefinger and thumb, suggestive remotely; suppose, of the counting out of coins. He who christened the Rio de la Plata made a happier hit than he could have suspected, for plata lies close to the heart of every citizen of Buenos Ayres, and you have never to listen many minutes to a casual conversation in the street without hearing mention of it. “He has given so many pesos per yard for the land.” “Fancy selling it for a thousand pesos and having bought it only eighteen months ago at three hundred and fifty!” “He has lots of money—_tiene mucha plata_.” “He is asking too much money.” “I have offered so many pesos.” These, and such phrases, one overhears at every turn, and might well suppose that the spirit of the country was exclusively associated with the getting of money.

Still would that be a wrong conclusion, just as I believe it would be unfair to the country as a whole to judge of it by the sham and shoddy of Buenos Ayres and its great cities, or by the primitive and low social conditions of the smaller towns. We must look elsewhere for that “spirit” of which we are in search. The Jockey Club will not help us. No, it will tend rather to confirm the impression of the peacocketing passengers on board the river steamer. Congreso itself will help but little. There we shall find the “grafter,” the place seeker, the dishonest politician, just as eminently successful as in the United States, and who would allow that the real spirit of the United States disengaged itself in Congress or from the political groups at Washington?

Again, a friend of mine, having important business with the municipality of a provincial town, had to call upon the _intendente_ with reference to the signing of certain documents, which formality was only possible after the mayor’s secretary had pocketed several hundred pounds of backsheesh, and the mayor himself had named his price for his signature. The intendente’s daughter, a young woman of seventeen years of age, singularly handsome, happened to be in the room at the beginning of the interview, and my friend may have looked upon her with some evidence of admiration, for when she left her father remarked to him:

“Fine little girl, my Manuelita, eh? She’ll make good meat for the beasts!”

On a later visit in connection with the same undertaking, the daughter was not present, but the accommodating mayor blandly asked my friend if he would care to see his little daughter, as he rather thought he admired her,—a fatherly suggestion which was respectfully declined.

This is typical of many instances I can give (the drift of which needs no indication), and still I do not wish to quote it or them as eminently characteristic of the spirit of the country.

No more do I wish to maintain that the secretary of the said mayor, a quite humble functionary with an official salary of $150 a month, who lives at the rate of nearly $15,000 a year and is understood to be growing wealthy (having a brother a judge, he can secure for any one a favourable verdict for a definite fee, even to acquittal for murder!) is a gentleman in whom the spirit of the country shines radiantly. Many such as he there are growing rich by foulest methods of corruption, polluting justice and public life by their every action, yet without losing the esteem of their fellow citizens.

Rather would I instance the children’s fondness for balloons, which one notices everywhere, as more in tune with the spirit of the country! Every day at certain hours a man will be seen bustling down Calle Florida with some hundreds of penny balloons inflated with gas, taking them to one of the large drapery establishments, where each customer may receive a balloon as a present. During the afternoon, mothers and nurses and children innumerable will be seen about the streets with their balloons. It is indeed _un país de niños_—a land of children! Yes, after reviewing all the various manifestations of the national spirit, down to its love of the morbid, its revelling in stories and scenes of crime, its lack of humour, I am persuaded that most representative is this childishness. Perhaps it is because the Argentines are children at heart that they are so lacking in the sense of humour. Children are notoriously humourless, though they may be the cause of infinite humour in others. The keen relish of life’s lighter side comes with advancing years. So with young nations. The Argentine is not old enough yet to have developed the sense of humour; it is still seriously young. But with this youth it also has that wonder sense which is the privilege of all youth, and just as the sand-built castles of the children by the sea shore are to them more wonderful than the Pyramids of Egypt, so are all things in his republic to the Argentine.

Most of the corruption which exists in public life is due to the participation of foreigners therein; Italians chiefly. That will pass. The nation is young and is gradually adjusting its perspective. The boastfulness of the younger generation, so irritating to the visitor who is prepared to admire all that is worthy of admiration in the Republic, is another fault of youth. It too will pass. The young Argentine who to-day talks of his country as a great empire of the future, dominating not only the Western hemisphere, but influencing profoundly the whole civilised world of the future, is still _bien jeune_. He will grow older, and his vision of the wonders that may be shall grow dimmer.

Remains the fact that eminent among the public men of the Argentine are many of supreme ability and integrity. Rather let us think of them than of the baser sort. They are the true patriots, and they also once were young. I have read many speeches and articles by such publicists as Dr. Luís María Drago, Dr. E. S. Zeballos, Dr. Quesada, Dr. Ramos-Mexía, and Dr. David Peña, (all doctors of law, the use of such degrees being universal) to mention a few only of the scores of names that one might muster, worthy to rank with the best expressions of modern statesmanship. With these leaders, and such as these, the Argentine is not only assured of material progress, but intellectually equipped for a future which will see the abolition of innumerable abuses that darken its public life to-day. The spirit of the country is the spirit of youth, and youth, as we know, has its faults. But there is “no fool like an old fool,” and the old nation that is wedded to its folly is of human institutions ever the most hopeless.

Such follies as we can detect in abundance in the Argentine are either the immediate follies of youth, or corrupting influences imported from Europe. For my part, I am persuaded that the people as a whole constitute a nation in earnest. With their heart set on progress, small wonder if its material forms should first engage them, but there is no lack of forces making for better things, and if at the moment too many of the younger generation of Argentine writers seem to have fallen under the spell of the French decadent school, that, too, will prove no more than a passing phase. There is a far finer appreciation of literature, an infinitely more important body of national literature, in the Argentine than in Australia or in Canada. And there is a certain veneration for old things and ancient culture, not usually consonant with the spirit of youth. Even the United States have not yet entirely emerged from that condition of youthful disrespect inseparable from great material progress in a young country. In the Argentine one finds a very remarkable degree of admiration for the fine old things of Spanish civilisation. Spain was a harsh mother to her, yet she is remembered as the mother, and her harshness as that of _la madre pátria_. Her glorious literature has the profoundest admiration of the Argentine. Still, the Argentine is never blind to the failings of Spain and the conditions of his national life having tended to put a finer edge on his wits than those of the Spaniard can boast, he is always ready to assert his independence. A good instance of this is furnished by an anecdote of a well-known Buenos Ayres _abogado_ who was present at a lecture by the eminent Spanish novelist, Señor Blasco Ibáñez, when the latter declared, in alluding to the Spanish colonisation of South America and the West Indies, that Spain, after having given to the world sixteen children, was now exhausted. The acute Argentine lawyer retorted:

“That may be so, but England has had more children than Spain; among them the United States, India, and Australia; and after each new birth she has gone forward acquiring new strength, and greater force.”

The Republic may thus be said to look towards the motherland for her culture, but to the Anglo-Saxons for social ideals. She has probably looked more than she has followed. She is essentially a child of Spain, still young, but entirely independent of her mother, with much character of her own and a willingness to emulate good examples. For “a land of children,” these are surely conditions that will make for greatness when it has grown up.