CHAPTER XXI

URUGUAY: SOME NOTES AND IMPRESSIONS

Little countries, like little people, have a knack of making themselves interesting. The simile might be further pursued—especially among the Republics of South America—in that the smaller they are, the more noisy and obstreperous shall we find their histories have been. But there is a certain dignity and much to admire in the little Republic of Uruguay, and its country is one of the most attractive.

After the impression of vastness left on the wanderer in the Argentine, Uruguay seemed a very small affair indeed; no more than an Argentine province. It was a corrective to this impression of littleness and consequent impotence to remember that even little Uruguay was larger than England and Wales, and not so much smaller than the whole of Great Britain. It covers 72,210 square miles, against the 88,729 of Great Britain. We know, however, that mere area does not matter greatly in national importance, compared with population, and the total population of Uruguay is only two-thirds that of the city of Philadelphia.

It may be a small country and a smaller people, but the spirit of great things flames in the breast of Uruguay. Here is how one of its authors, Señor Ambrosio L. Ramasso, in his well-known work _El Estadista_, begins his chapter on the warrior spirit of his race:

The production of the soil, exuberant; fresh food for nourishment, in abundance; a frugal people, sustaining themselves chiefly upon beef, flour, and _mate_; the land undulating and extremely fertile, the climate without excessive rigours, and the need for clothing moderate; the horse always at hand; hospitality unlimited, and the host who gives it generous; nature luxuriant, beautiful, full of tones and superb changes, inviting to admiration, and the enjoyment of that drowsiness and indolence which the benignity of the climate carries with it; the lack of the habit of work, due to the facility with which the physical necessities may be satisfied; the war that continues with the animals; all these factors had two decisive results in the making of the child of this country. On the one hand, they made him full of passion, with no manner of brake thereon; and on the other, they did not suppress the fighting instincts of his ancestors, but rather encouraged their growth. His chief tendency had to be inevitably towards war, either as the outcome of his natural heritage, or as an escape valve for activities not otherwise employed, or yet again by giving expansion to that passionate and vehement nature of the Latin race in a climate where vitality is such that all things tend to expand and overflow. A further condition which favoured the bellicose tendency in the Uruguayan was his excessive power of imagination; a faculty which then, as now, he had in richest measure....

And in this manner Señor Ramasso goes on for several pages, showing how nature had marked out the Uruguayan for a warrior and fighting as the master passion of his life. The history of the country is certainly sufficient proof of this spirit, and it still exists in high degree, though it would seem that the bad old days of the sword and the gun have now given place to an era of political strife, in which the tongue and the pen are the more favoured weapons.

Uruguay retains, in Europe, at least, an unenviable reputation as a hotbed of revolutions, and I am far from supposing that we have seen the last of these. But forces are at work which will make the upheavals of the future more decorous than those of the past. During our summer in Montevideo, all the elements of a first-class revolution were in existence, but they spent themselves in a wordy warfare among the newspapers, in public demonstrations and counter demonstrations; not a shot was fired, though the President’s suburban retreat at Piedras Blancas, a few miles from the city, was continually under strong military guard.

“You will still hear much talk of revolution among our young men at the cafés,” said Uruguay’s most famous philosopher and litterateur to me on one of the many occasions when we discussed the entertaining politics of his country. “That is one of their amusements, and will continue to be so for some time yet, but every new batch of emigrants that lands in the port of Montevideo helps to banish further the revolutionary era, and if we could but divert some portion of the great stream of emigration that rolls past our shores each year into the Argentine, nothing would be more effective in producing a peaceful and prosperous Uruguay.”

These were the words of Señor José Enrique Rodó—_el gran Rodó_, as he is affectionately termed throughout Latin-America—and therein we have the explanation of the bellicose history of this charming little country. Uruguay was left too much to itself, its people so long content to let the natural fruitfulness of their land supply their simple needs, that the only outlet for their energies was to quarrel among themselves, and thus grew up the two political camps, the _Blancos_ and the _Colorados_, concerning which I do not recall any approximately accurate description in the writings of any foreign author on Uruguayan politics. Even so skilled an observer, so admirable a student of political conditions, as Viscount Bryce, late British Ambassador to the United States, fell into absurd misstatements of facts in what he wrote of Uruguayan affairs in his “South America: Observations and Impressions.” As I have not had an opportunity of reading Lord Bryce’s well-known work, and personally know it only through numerous extracts translated into the native journals of the Argentine, Uruguay, and Chili, it would be ungracious of me to say anything in criticism of it, beyond the passages thus coming to my notice. Certainly his explanation of the two parties into which Uruguay is divided is no better than the nonsense one hears talked among casual visitors on whom some local resident has been performing the operation known as “pulling his leg.” Translating from one of several articles on the work in question, which appeared in _La Tribuna Popular_ of Montevideo, Lord Bryce is made to write to this effect:

The children of Uruguay are born little Blancos or little Colorados. It is the political heritage of the early days of Independence. Scarcely any ever desert their colours. In a White district it is dangerous to wear a red necktie, just as it is in _Yolanda_ (? _Irlanda_—Ireland) to show an English badge.

This is described by the editor as “a very pretty paragraph,” and here is another which he quotes as “a curious paragraph that might be regarded as an example of Mr. Bryce’s Yankee humour” (for he is under the impression that the literary Viscount is a “Yankee Constitutionalist”):

General Oribe mounted on one occasion a spirited white horse. On seeing this, all his sympathisers followed his example by mounting themselves on beautiful white steeds. Hence came the name of the White Party. General Rivera, the irreconcilable enemy of Oribe, mounted himself in turn on a superb horse of a reddish colour, in contrast to his terrible rival. The Riveraists then sought for coloured steeds, and mounted on these followed their chief. Henceforward the Red Party disputed successfully for power with the White Party.

This, of course, is mere moonshine. It may possibly have originated in one of these fertile Uruguayan imaginations of which we have heard, but it lacks historical truth. I have already indicated that Blancos and Colorados (the latter word, by the way, does not mean “coloured,” but signifies “red,” or “ruddy”) may live together in perfect amity. So incorrect is the statement that every child is born a Blanco or a Colorado, that there are numerous families in the country divided in politics, and in my own short experience I have met instances of brothers who adhered to different parties. I recall in particular two brothers who, in a perfectly friendly discussion, admitted that they took no real interest in the politics of the country and were largely indifferent to the course of affairs, so long as Uruguay continued to prosper, but who, before the evening had gone, were disputing so hotly the respective merits of the two parties that they almost came to blows, the one being clearly a pronounced Blanco and the other an equally tenacious Colorado.

Another very curious misstatement of fact is cited from Lord Bryce’s book by the _Tribuna_, which observes that the paragraph is a revelation of “the rich imagination of its author.” Our eminent publicist is alleged to have written to this effect with reference to revolutions in Uruguay:

When a revolutionary movement is about to break out in Uruguay, the organisers make an appointment to meet, mounted, at a certain place and on a day agreed upon beforehand. The Government always knows well in advance of this, and is able to possess itself of all the horses in the country, keeping those in a safe place so that they may not fall into the power of the revolutionaries. The latter, therefore, remain perforce on foot. The horse is the soul of Uruguayan revolutionists. It is the heroic tradition of the glorious epoch of the gauchos. Without horses the rebels are lost.

The amusement of the Uruguayan editor over these paragraphs and many others equally distant from the truth was entirely justified, and I have quoted them here (roughly retranslating them) out of no desire to belittle the work of one of our ablest writers, for whom I have the greatest admiration, but merely to show how erroneous one’s impressions may be as the result of a too brief visit, and lack of opportunity to study at leisure the condition of a country, as well as its historical past, as these have been expressed in the language of the country. Such misconceptions are familiar to us, and to be expected in the writings of irresponsible lady globe-trotters, but not in the sober and authoritative pages of one who has given us such a classic as “The American Commonwealth.”

It is no easy matter to furnish a satisfactory explanation of the two political parties of Uruguay, and when I find so competent an authority as Mr. C. E. Akers, in his “History of South America,” affirming that there are really no distinctions between them, that each professes the same ideals of government and seeks merely to wrest political power from the other, I attempt an explanation only with trepidation. Not that I purpose a detailed account of their origins and evolution, for that would involve an extremely long disquisition, and would scarcely hold the attention of an American reader, but that any attempt to distinguish between them in a few words is attended with difficulty and apt to be misleading.

The root difference of the two parties can best be described as Nationalist versus Progressist. Broadly, the White Party is the Nationalist Party, and the Colorado the Progressist. The colours distinguish the Spanish Colonial origin of the one party from the democratic origin of the other. That is to say, the Blancos have always tended towards exclusiveness and the assertion of the superiority of the white race, whereas the Colorados, originally sneered at by the Blancos as savages (_salvages_), on account of their more liberal ideas, which embraced the aborigine and the emigrant alike, have always stood for the wider conception of democracy. At certain times in their history, the Colorados have even accepted the title of “savages” as a compliment to their liberalism; to their maintenance of the primal rights of man. Thus, and not otherwise, have the colours of the two parties a real significance, and the red of the Colorados is also a cry back to the French Revolution, the influence of which on South American democracy has been profound. I have already mentioned in my passing reference to the home of Garibaldi in Montevideo, that that great champion of liberty commanded a Brazilian regiment in support of General Rivera when General Oribe was laying siege to Montevideo, and that the city was defended principally by French, Italians, and Brazilians against the onsets of the Blancos, until Oribe was eventually defeated completely by the Argentine general, Urquiza. This historical fact is entirely in support of what I have written, and will help to elucidate the party origins. In these later years, although the politics of the country are still split up between Reds and Whites, it has become more common to refer to the latter as Nationalists, they themselves having adopted that title. Hence appears a distinct and appreciable difference between the two political camps.

As might be supposed from what I have very roughly indicated as to the respective origins of the two parties, the Blancos are strongest in the provinces, and draw most of their support from the agricultural and stock-raising classes, while the Colorados preponderate in the capital and the larger towns, where modern ideas of democracy find a more fertile soil. The policy of the Blancos is exclusiveness—“Uruguay for the Uruguayans” might be its battle-cry, but, paradoxically, not for the original Uruguayans—while the Colorados are for encouraging immigration in every way, for the building up of a large and active population, without the slightest regard to racial origins, believing that once radicated in the country, the whole would weld itself into a complex nationality, just as we see in the making in Argentina.

It may be fortunate for Uruguay that the Colorados have been in power for many years, and are likely to dominate its politics for many years more. Yet not altogether fortunate, as the supremacy of one party over another is good for neither, and leads to all sorts of governmental abuses, although it seems to me that Red supremacy is better for Uruguay than White. The population is much too small for so fruitful a country, and to discourage the foreigner from becoming a citizen of the Republic, as the policy of the Blancos would tend in their devotion to narrow Nationalist ideals, might retard the clock of progress for generations. The crying need of Uruguay is population, and not even the Colorados as a party display sufficient energy in encouraging immigration, though individual leaders grow eloquent on the subject and talk at great length about what might be done, without being able to move the mass swiftly enough along the path of progress.

I would not have you think that the Red Party has a monopoly of the truer patriots. There are too many of its leaders whose sole ambition is to get their hands into the public treasury, and in this they succeed all too well. Politics from the profession of most men with ability beyond the common, and place-seeking is the order of the day. The Socialist movement, which has recently gathered great strength in the Argentine, is still in its infancy in Uruguay and was represented at the time of my stay there, if I remember aright, by only one member of the House of Deputies, Señor Frugoni, who fought incessantly against everything in the shape of public expenditure which was not calculated directly to benefit the workers, and who was one of the four deputies that opposed in July, 1913, the increase of the payment of the national representatives by $12 per day. Jobbery and bribery are rampant in the administration; the Government is regarded by the ruck of politicians as their milch cow, and though all public offices are remunerated modestly enough, there are numerous ways and means of greatly augmenting official salaries. The smallness of the population and the intimacy which exists between all the members of the better classes naturally lay the officials open to every form of personal temptation, and I never heard that “Deliver us from temptation” was a popular prayer among them.

It would be an easy matter to give numerous examples of the abuses that exist, but one will suffice. A burning question for many years in Montevideo had been the paving of the principal streets with asphalt in place of the stone sets, or _adoquines_, with which they had been laid for generations, and which, as I have already mentioned, made traffic over them extremely noisy and unpleasant. The contract for this work attracted much competition from abroad, and one European firm was even encouraged to bring over workmen, material, and machinery for the treatment of one short street as a sample of their work. The said work appeared to me in every sense satisfactory, and as the firm is a large international organisation, capable of handling a contract of any dimension, having paved the streets of many a city, it was natural to suppose that it would be chosen to carry out the street improvements of the Uruguayan capital. But no, a local ex-hotel-keeper was favoured with this important contract! The manner in which he organised it was a splendid lesson in the art of how not to do it. The principal avenida was torn up, traffic dislocated for weeks, yet no asphalt was laid, because the enterprising contractor had omitted to secure the asphalt before removing the cobbles. Certain streets were barred to traffic for months on end, mountains of dug-out earth were beaten hard under the feet of pedestrians, who had to climb over them on their way to and from their houses, so that when eventually they were removed, they were so solid that the workmen had to break them up with pick-axes. Everywhere one was met with barricades of stones and earth; confusion reigned supreme.

The greatest scandal of all is that laid at the door of President Batlle y Ordoñez, and may yet assume the importance of an international dispute. During the presidency of his predecessor, an international syndicate, in which I believe both French and English shareholders invested several millions of money, was granted a concession to carry out a huge enterprise, which would so vastly enhance the appearance of the town and add to its wealth that, once effected, not even Rio de Janeiro could be cited as a finer example of a modernised city. At the present time, the poorest part of Montevideo is that lying along the southern margin of the promontory, eastward towards the suburb of Ramírez. It has a rocky fore-shore, and the water there is comparatively shallow, so that it would be possible to reclaim a considerable amount of land along this side of the town, and build a magnificent marine drive, extending all the way from the oldest part of the city to the suburb mentioned, and thence linking up with the fine promenade at Pocitos. Many maps of the city are now in circulation with this improvement shown as though it actually existed, the great highway by the waterside being marked as “Rambla Sud América.”

All the preliminary work of surveying and getting ready for the actual construction of the sea wall, and the reclamation from the water of an immense new area for the extension of the city, was carried out by the foreign company, under its duly authorised concession, its recompense being determined by the lease for a certain number of years of the land reclaimed. Then President Batlle came into power and calmly “squashed” the whole affair. This high-handed action of his was based upon the belief that it would be possible for the government to carry out the improvement and enjoy to the full the increased revenue which would immediately result from the new land made available for building, as well as the enhanced value of all the property along the southern shore. The undertaking is, of course, hopelessly beyond the compass of native enterprise, and the action of the President may be ascribed to that vivid imagination of which we have already heard as part of the mental make-up of the Uruguayan. He by no means carried with him the sympathies of his party in this matter, and many of the newspapers of Montevideo would grow as indignant over the scandal of the Rambla Sud as the enterprising European promoters of the scheme themselves.

Mention of this subject serves to raise the question of a very grave defect in the constitution of the Republic. It is a strange anomaly that in a country which prides itself upon its democratic spirit, its President should be endowed with powers that are little short of dictatorial. This is its legacy from the old days of military predominance, when the Presidency went to the military officer who could secure command of the army, just as surely as the Praetorian Guard used to make and unmake the Cæsars of Rome. As a party, the Colorados are in favour of reform, and would like to see a diminution of the power which the constitution places in the hands of the President, but Señor Batlle y Ordoñez, who not so many years ago was a struggling journalist, and still as editor of _El Dia_ combines journalism with the business of President, took the initiative in a new constitutional “reform” in 1912, which speedily resulted in his becoming the most unpopular man in the country. His earlier career had been that of a loud and strenuous Democrat and his first presidency gave fairly general satisfaction, but when he returned for a second time to the seat of power, his actions soon ceased to be those of an essential Democrat.

Still he maintained a measure of public sympathy for the able manner in which he handled national affairs—as the constitution, with all its faults, works well, provided the President uses it only for the good of the country—but the imperious spirit which he developed, and his harsh treatment of political opponents, speedily changed the attitude of the people, and when he launched his extraordinary scheme for reforming the constitution, he found himself almost alone, with the overwhelming majority of senators and deputies opposed to him. Being a man of virility, he refused to trim his sails, and went straight ahead with the reckless campaign, denouncing old colleagues who had fallen away from him in terms of unmeasured abuse in his daily paper, and refusing to give any of them the personal satisfaction of a duel, that being incompatible with his office of President. A sort of comic opera situation thus developed, the President as journalist lashing about him at his own sweet will in his editorial columns, but refusing to meet the victims of his wrath at the point of the sword or pistol in hand, as many of them invited him to do!

The reading of some of Señor Batlle’s articles in favour of his proposed reform might have left any one unfamiliar with the real import of the movement with the impression that he was that rarest of mortals among statesmen ancient or modern: the man who finds himself endowed with powers so dangerous, if exercised without discretion, that he wishes to curtail these for the protection of his fellow countrymen and to free himself from the temptation of abusing them. Day after day he used to hold forth in the editorial column of _El Dia_, on the dire possibilities that might succeed to a country that placed itself under the almost autocratic control of one man, on “the instability of unipersonal power,” and “the anti-democratic character of absolutism.” To the onlooker all this was vastly amusing, and to the intelligent mass of Uruguayans the intention of the proposed reform was as transparent as glass. Señor Batlle urged that an _ejecutivo colegiado_, to consist, I think, of seven members, like the Swiss Federal Council, should be elected to co-operate with the President in the government of the country, and that from this executive body each new President might be chosen. In this way, he contended, it would be possible to limit the authority of any President by placing the executive power in the hands of a group. Of course, it was obvious to all thinking people that what he was after was merely to secure, before the end of his four years of office, the election of seven of his personal friends to form this new executive, so that when he had to withdraw from the Presidency he could still, from his home in Piedras Blancas, work the puppets, and the chief of the puppets would be his successor. He laid much stress in his newspaper advocacy of the _ejecutive colegiado_ on example of Switzerland, which he was fond of quoting as the ideal of a democratic state, but in no respect was there the slightest resemblance between the Swiss method of government and that proposed by him. The Swiss Federal Council is elected by the Federal Assembly, and consists of citizens who hold no other public offices and are engaged in no business or profession. But the seven (or it may have been nine) who were to share the responsibility of the Uruguayan President and thus intensify by seven or nine times the dangerous character of the presidential power, were to be neither representative of the people nor of the Colorado Party, but merely representative of President Batlle.

A more preposterous suggestion could not have been made by the temporary ruler of a sane people, and the surprise was that the President could even muster his stage army of standard bearers and demonstrationists who used to parade the town in favour of the “reform,” while he himself was afraid to venture from his suburban retreat to the Government House,—where he ought to have been in residence,—more than once every two or three months and at unlikely hours. They used to have a healthy habit in Montevideo of shooting a President who abused his power, and Señor Batlle was so familiar with the past history of his interesting little country that among the numerous articles published by him in _El Dia_ to illustrate the instability of the present constitution was one giving a list of all the Presidents from Rivera onward, with notes of the disturbances which occurred during their terms of office, how so many of them had to fly for their lives, how some were killed, and few indeed completed their term without witnessing insurrection and sanguinary disturbances. During his own previous term of office, the revolution of 1904 occurred, and he had a narrow escape from death by the explosion of a mine. In the succeeding four years of Señor Claudio Williman’s presidency, two revolutions occurred, one of these assuming serious proportions. Hence President Batlle did not unduly flaunt his personality in public places during our summer in Montevideo, in marked contrast, I was told, to the manner of his previous presidency, when he went about freely everywhere and was probably the most popular man in the Republic.

The most interesting episode in his strange campaign against popular sentiment was the publication in his own journal of several paragraphs in black type headed _Permanente_, which roused the ire of every person of good taste throughout the Republic, and welded for once the whole press, Blanco and Colorado, into one. As this incident throws a vivid little sidelight on the politics of the country, I venture to translate the paragraphs in question, which were reprinted daily in the Presidential journal, and have probably only ceased to appear since the death of the aged politician at whom they were aimed:

PERMANENT.

It is an undeniable fact, and well-known that Dr. José Pedro Ramírez in 1873 purchased the vote of the Deputy Isaac de Tezanos for the sum of 40,000 pesos, in favour of the candidature for the Presidency of the Republic of his father-in-law, Dr. Don José María Muñoz.

It seems very probable that the same occurred with regard to the votes of the deputies Hermógenes Formoso and Vicente Garzón.

From publications in _El Siglo_ of that period, it would seem that at the same time as he was thus purchasing these, Dr. José Pedro Ramírez was accusing the Gomensor faction of having offered nearly three times as much for the votes of the same deputies—which he well knew to be a calumny, since he himself had purchased them for much less.

The result of these infamies was the military mutiny of 1875, and five lustres of misfortunes for the country.

All this notwithstanding, the Nationalist Party, the Constitutionalists that still remain, and a few disaffected Colorados are rendering homage to Dr. Ramírez, whom they proclaim as the first, or one of the first citizens of the Republic.

Those who so act are corrupting public morals and robbing themselves of authority and prestige.

This extraordinary presidential-journalistic attack on an aged politician, then so feeble and near his end that he died a few months later, was occasioned chiefly because the journal _El Siglo_, one of the most influential of the Colorado newspapers, with which Dr. Ramírez, as a young man, was connected, and with which certain of his relatives are now associated, had, in common with the entire press of the country, strongly opposed the President’s suggested reform. For nearly forty years the country had chosen to forget that Dr. Ramírez had so acted in 1873, and he himself at that time publicly made confession of what he had done, and withdrew from his journalistic post as an act of penance, although assuredly he had in no wise sinned against the spirit of that time. The spectacle of the President of the Republic using the columns of his own private journal thus to attack the aged publicist who, in the forty years following this admitted transgression, had done much to merit the good opinion and win the homage of his fellow-countrymen, ranged every journalist of any prestige against President Batlle and brought, as I well remember, streams of telegrams from distant parts of South America, from eminent statesmen and the leading newspapers, sympathising with the victim of the President’s attack.

What may be the ultimate outcome of those strange events of the summer of 1913, I do not know, but perhaps I have said sufficient about the politics of the country to show that there is room for improvement. At the same time, to do justice to Señor Batlle y Ordóñez, I recognise in him a really strong man, and regret that his second term of office should have been so marred by ill-considered and anti-democratic suggestions of constitutional change. He had previously won a reputation for political honesty which, even among his bitterest enemies, I never heard called in question, and much that he did, even during his second stormy administration, was entirely for the good of the country. I remember that at the height of his battle with the Chambers and the public, he promulgated a new law for the protection of animals, accompanied by a presidential message worthy to be printed in letters of gold by the R.S.P.C.A. and circulated throughout all Latin-America. He even went so far as to prohibit boxing matches, as _el box_, a growing passion in the Argentine, was beginning to acquire popularity in Uruguay. Had his energies been more wisely directed and his undoubted strength of character applied to the furtherance of certain much-needed public improvements and to the real widening of the democratic basis of the Constitution, he might have made his second administration a landmark in Uruguayan progress.

Progress is inevitable, and if it has been retarded in Uruguay by the frequent revolutionary disturbances, it has been none the less real. As a matter of fact, we are apt to overestimate the importance of these revolutions. Before the dawn of the modern commercial era, which has so greatly developed the capital city, revolutions were doubtless vastly disturbing and made the life of the community somewhat burdensome. But it is surprising to note how large a proportion of the population have survived these supposedly sanguinary affairs. You will see far more elderly people in Montevideo than in Buenos Ayres, where men of over fifty-five are rarities in the streets. The fact is that Uruguayan revolutions have degenerated into something very much akin to the duel in France, and they are usually fought where there is likely to be the least danger to property, as Whites and Reds alike have come to appreciate the advantages of modern domestic comfort, and the more beautiful villas there are erected in the suburbs and surroundings of Montevideo, the less likely are revolutions to occur. Most of those of recent date have been really very little more serious than the old election rioting that used to accompany political changes in our own country.

One effect of revolution, however, has been to produce a remarkable shortage of horse flesh throughout the Republic. On the outbreak of an insurrection, the Government used to “commandeer” horses everywhere, and would clean an estancia of all its useful animals, handing over to the owner so much worthless paper, which he was supposed to be able some day to redeem for the loss of his horses. Not only so, but his _peones_ would be pressed in like manner into the Government service, armed with rifles and sent out to fight the revolutionaries. After periodic losses in this manner, the estanciero adopted the policy of breeding and maintaining just as few horses as he could possibly do with. Result: in Uruguay, a country where horses should abound, the cavalry are insufficiently mounted, a very considerable proportion of the Government troops being without mounts. This fact, by the way, is the best comment that can be passed upon Viscount Bryce’s paragraph quoted in the earlier part of this chapter.

We have heard about the warrior spirit of the Uruguayan, but, strangely enough, it does not manifest itself in a warrior nation. There is no system of military service in the Republic, such as that of the Argentine. Nay, until very recently the army was looked down upon by the better-class families as a profession for their sons, and was no more than the happy hunting-ground of all sorts of adventurers, the rank and file being chiefly niggers, Indians, and half-breeds, while many of the officers were themselves either of negro or Indian blood. Even to-day, when men of good family are looking to the army for a career and military training is being organised on European lines, the army is still composed in large part of undesirables and is used entirely as a Government machine. Both political parties have hesitated at compulsory service for fear of each other. The Colorados have carefully nursed the army during their long spell of power as so many paid fighting men to back up their party at such times as the Blancos take arms against it. Here again, it will be seen there is room for improvement in Uruguayan affairs.

I had not intended in these notes to be led into any lengthy discussion of Uruguayan politics, as that is a subject which tempts one into such labyrinthine byways that it is best left alone, and yet it is difficult to say anything about the country in general into which political considerations do not enter. I should have preferred to have enlarged rather on the literary side of the people, which engaged me even more than the politics and the warlike spirit—which, by the way, used to seem to me curiously out of place when I passed the extremely modest little building, about the size of a suburban police station, that does duty for the Uruguayan War Office. But I find it difficult to touch with any satisfaction on all the subjects that occur to me as worthy of note.

The literary activity is certainly remarkable when we bear in mind the extremely limited public to which Uruguayan authors can appeal. Two very stout volumes of a critical survey of Uruguayan literature were published at the end of 1912, and these were but the advance guard of others to follow, the work being designed to occupy several bulky tomes. The roll of Uruguayan authors in poetry and prose is truly a formidable one, though I doubt if more than two names would be known in the United States, and these of living authors whose reputations, but not their works, may be familiar to a small circle of American critics. Juan Zorilla de San Martín is the great poet of the country, and José Enrique Rodó its leading philosophic writer. Both are famous throughout Latin-America and Spain, and both very remarkable men, who have had to look to politics as well as to literature in their struggle for a living.

Señor Rodó, who is one of the deputies for Montevideo, is recognised as a master of Spanish style, a great critic of literature, and a philosopher in whom there are many points of contact with Lord Morley, as they belong to the same liberal school of thought. Withal, he is one of the last of the Bohemians, so far as that implies absolute disregard for sartorial display and the unbusinesslike ordering of his daily life. You will meet him at all strange hours of the night wandering about the streets, lonely and contemplative, and if you glance at his shirt cuff when shaking hands you will find it soiled and scribbled over with many pencilled notes. He has all the old-world courtesy of the Spaniard, with the wider outlook of the American mind, and, above all, a profound admiration for English character and Anglo-Saxon civilisation. His opinion is sought on great public questions and on matters of literature from all parts of South America, and I have often thought it strange that this rather shabbily dressed and retiring gentleman whom I used to meet wandering lonely in the dusk up side streets, and with whom I would stop and gossip for five or ten minutes on my way home, was the object of admiration of literary circles wherever Spanish-American men of letters gathered together—_el gran Rodó_!

Señor Zorilla de San Martín is of a different type, shorter in stature and more pronouncedly Spanish in appearance, with the darting fire and restlessness of the imaginative Oriental rather than the careless repose of his philosophic contemporary. He is essentially a poet, though his signature appears on all the bank notes of Uruguay, by virtue of some official post he used to hold. He has also represented his country at the Court of Spain, and been honoured in many ways by the nation which is justly proud of his poetic achievement, for in _Tabaré_, his epic of early Spanish life in Uruguay, he has produced one of the modern Castillian classics. I found him a perfervid Shakespearean, also a keen admirer of Carlyle, whose portrait holds the place of honour in his study, although he confessed that it was a struggle to follow the sage of Chelsea in the original, and he most frequently read him in French translations. Neither of these eminent Uruguayans, by the way, though owning indebtedness to our English literature, had acquired a speaking knowledge of our language, French appealing to them, as it does to the great majority of the educated Latin-Americans, more readily than English.

One thing that struck me not only in the literature of the country and in the manifestations of its political thinkers, but in all the evidences of its daily life, was how slightly indeed has the tremendous modern development of the Argentine affected Uruguay. Just as the great current of emigration passes its shores and does no more than dash a little spray, in the form of a few stray emigrants, into Uruguay, so the progress of the Argentine has affected hardly at all the life of Uruguay. It is a distinct and highly individualised entity. Though essentially Spanish in character, and originally part of the vice-royalty of Spain, Uruguay had to secure its independence, not from the motherland, but from Brazil, of which it was a province up to August 25, 1825. There is much talk among Argentine statesmen of the chauvinist variety, of annexing it to the greater republic, but geographically it is not meant to be Argentine territory, the River Plate on the south and the Uruguay on the west being natural boundaries, while the Brazilian frontier is artificial. Less likely is it ever again to pass under the control of Brazil, and it really serves a useful political purpose as something of a buffer state between the two great republics of the Southern continent.

The most notable Argentine influence to be detected in Montevideo is the passion for highly polished boots! I have often been amused to notice workmen on their way from their tasks carefully dusting their boots with their handkerchiefs to keep themselves “in the movement.” Like all little countries, it is intensely proud of itself, tenacious of its independence, and conscious of a certain superiority to both of its great neighbours in the higher standard of intellectualism which it has developed. Talk of Argentine annexation to an Uruguayan, and you will speedily see that warrior spirit of which we have already heard a good deal.

In the preceding chapter, certain distinctions between the social life of the two republics have been mentioned, but not the prevalence of the old Andalusian custom of love-making. This is one of the features of Montevidean life that give a quaint touch to the street scenes, as every evening the lovers may be observed standing on the pavement outside the barred windows, talking to the girls within. This, I fancy, is similar to the Mexican custom known as “playing bear,” and very strange it looks to the wanderer from other shores. If a young man falls in love with a Montevidean damsel, he must find some means of being introduced to her father and gaining permission to pay court to his daughter, for which purpose two nights of the week will be set apart, when he is at liberty to visit her in the presence of her family, and this, mark you, takes place before the lovers will have exchanged a spoken word. The sweetheart is not supposed to meet the young lady at any other time except on those appointed evenings, not even in the street is he expected to stop and talk to her, and he can only take her to the theatre duly chaperoned by a sister or other relative. The courtship, too, is only permitted on the distinct understanding that the young man intends to propose marriage to the young lady, anything approaching the casual American courtships being rigorously ruled out. Then comes the ceremony known as _el cambio de argollas_, or change of rings, to which, much as we should invite a large wedding party, all the friends of the sweethearts are bidden; presents are given, and the engaged couple present each other with a ring. When the marriage time draws near, the lover must himself make all arrangements for the house, endeavouring to interpret as best he can the taste of his future wife, who takes no part in these preliminaries, until another ceremonial occasion, known as _la visita de vistas_, when, accompanied by some friends and her future husband, she goes to see the home he has prepared for her. These customs, chiefly of Spanish origin, are more observed in Uruguay than on the other side of the River Plate, and help, among many others, to emphasise the differences that exist between the two peoples.

It is well-known, of course, that Uruguayan credit in Europe has not stood as high of recent years as the splendid possibilities of the country ought to warrant, due to the fact that a great deal of the money borrowed in the past for public improvements has found its way into the wrong pockets, and also in some degree to the high-handed action of President Batlle in regard to the affair of the Rambla Sud. In 1913, the treasury had fallen so low that it was not able to pay all the Civil Servants their salaries, but a new loan has just been floated at the time these lines are being written, which will enable the Government to pay its way for some time to come, and it is to be hoped that the spirit of international friendship and co-operation which has worked to such splendid issues in the Argentine, and is really part of the Colorado policy in Uruguay, may so develop that this highly favoured little country shall turn its attention in a more businesslike and earnest way to the development of its great natural resources.

One of the curses of Uruguay is the prevalence of consumption, to combat which an admirably managed association is in existence, and a great annual collection is made on _el Dia de los Tuberculosos_, September 1st. The extraordinary energy with which this movement has been taken up, the immense sums of money realised by the collections throughout the Republic, and the admirable way in which the whole thing is organised by the Uruguayan Anti-consumption League, were proofs to me of the genuine spirit of public service that does exist in the country, and evidences of what that spirit may yet achieve.