Yet we must envisage some of
these if we are to be prepared for their effect upon us. We must be
ready for the impact of the resultant forces of these great dynamics. We
must be ready everywhere, but nowhere more than in our relations with
Latin America, in the zone of the Caribbean, and wherever the Monroe
Doctrine as still interpreted gives us a varying degree of
responsibility.
The war's first effect upon our Latin-American relations is to compel
through commercial and financial rapprochement a larger measure of
material interdependence, more contact, and, we may hope, a substitution
of knowledge for the former reciprocity of ignorance. All this makes for
better social and intellectual relations, good understanding and
friendship, and so for political relations much more substantial in the
case of many of the republics than the rather flimsy Pan-Americanism
celebrated in eloquent speeches and futile international conferences.
There is little in Pan-Americanism of that kind. The "raza Latina" of
eloquence is not itself homogeneous; still less so is the population of
the whole hemisphere. And with Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and
Santiago we have, of course, far less propinquity than we have with the
capitals of Europe.
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