Uruguay has a gold, silver and nickel coinage, but, as in Argentina, notes are the most common tokens, especially for amounts of $1 and upwards. As will have been understood, Uruguay has no Caja de Conversión, her currency being and always having been on a direct gold basis. COMMERCIAL CONDITIONS One of the immediately world-wide effects of the great War has been the practically total elimination of German trade competition, an elimination which may not unreasonably be calculated to last for some time to come. This therefore is the golden opportunity for other competitors to capture the large bulk of export trade which had gradually been absorbed and was in course of constantly increasing absorption in the countries under discussion by German firms. Many Consular Reports and publications of the “Bureau of American Republics” have respectively dealt with the consequent loss of trade to Great Britain and the comparatively slow advance in that respect made by the United States and these documents have insistently pointed out the whys and wherefores of German commercial success over their chief rivals. The writer cannot therefore lay claim to originality in the present observations, but does claim that his persistence in the reiteration of what he, and many greater than he, have continually urged on every possible occasion during the past decade has been and is in what appears to him to be the best interests of those most concerned. Of the two nations the British still has the better opportunity to extend its commerce in both Argentina and Uruguay. The reasons (apart from the actual kaleidoscopic financial and industrial situation) for this opinion are that the English (as all people hailing from the British Isles are commonly called in South America) have already acquired in both countries a firm reputation for straightforward dealing, founded on many years’ experience and untainted by any suspicion of underlying political motives, whereas the South American Republics generally harbour a latent but constant resentment of what they rightly or wrongly consider to be the tendency of the United States to assume a dominating influence over both Americas. In fact to construe the Monroe doctrine as meaning, to cite the catch-phrase which to the innermost South American mind embodies something very closely resembling an unpleasant truth, “America for the _North_ Americans.”