When, therefore, some of the less thoughtful journals of the United States turned their eyes towards South America at the outbreak of the European War and protested loudly that this country was not getting her “share” of commerce, it was rather as if the cuckoo complained that she was not getting her share of the robin’s nest. To accuse Europe of monopolizing Brazilian trade is like accusing water of monopolizing the river. Brazil, in fact, like the whole of the Americas, had no trade until Europe created it by calls for natural products, supply of transportation means, and loans of money for development work. Today the situation is changed. It was inevitably changing as North America herself became during the last fifty years herself a caller for raw products, and began to take great quantities of Brazilian coffee and rubber, drugs and hides. Her sales to Brazil, despite the drawback of the shipping triangle, have been increasing for some time along certain highly specialized lines, but sales and purchases are not sufficient to create a permanent link between countries, especially when conducted through the medium of a third person as freighter and banker. The European War brought about as no other awakening process perhaps could have done, a realization of the new duty of the United States to South America: it is part of her inheritance from Europe. It is the work that lies to her hand: if she will do it, there is no one better fitted at the present time; if she will not she loses an extraordinary chance for both service—and profit. She must not think only of buying and selling, and when she is occupied with this trading she must remember that to her as to South America, sales of North American goods are less important than purchases of South American raw materials. It would not matter very much to the United States if she did not sell anything to Brazil: the probability is that more money has been spent on making sales, so far, than the profits amount to. What does matter is that North American manufacturers should continue to be supplied in vast and increasing quantities with South American hides for the use of leather manufactories; with ivory nuts for the button industry; with the coffee that cannot be grown in northern climes; with rubber and fibres and tannin materials; and with the minerals that exist in the sands and rocks of South America in unexampled variety and which can be there produced at half the cost that North America is forced to pay for labour. Apart from trading there is a great need for more investment in Brazil, for more opening of great spaces, planting of fields, lumbering, road-building, mining, cattle-raising. There is space for twenty million people in the cool temperate zones alone, excluding tropical areas. Is the United States ready to take up the task which Brazil cannot perform alone, however seriously she attacks her problems? Is she prepared to devote to this work blood, brains and money?