_Os Sertões_ stands alone in the nation’s literature; we, in ours, have no book to parallel it in spirit, purport or accomplishment. Yet even today there are regions to which a similar method might be applied, for Verissimo’s words about Asia seem to cover the United States as well,--in less degree, of course, but for our purpose with equal patness. More, a close reading of the government’s application of force to a situation that might have yielded to less warlike methods,--or, at least, that might have been managed without the necessity of the final massacre--could teach something to all governmental departments that are brought into contact with alien or extra-social groups which must be incorporated into the national entity. _Os Sertões_ is the best answer to the young Brazilian regionalists who have made the book a rallying-point. Here is a volume--and a thick, compact volume it is--dealing in quasi-reportorial spirit with a brief incident in the most hidden recesses of the national interior; it was not written with belles-lettres in mind; it is strewn with terms and processes of thought that baffle the ordinary reader. Yet the man who composed it was a vibrant personality, and whether knowingly or unwittingly, he made the book a symbol,--a symbol of uncomprehending persecution, of human fanaticism, of religious origins, of man’s instinctive seeking after something higher. It is true that the persecution was in part necessary, that the aspect of fanaticism here revealed is most repugnant, that the spectacle of religious origins does not flatter our unctuous, supposedly civilized, superior souls. But it is true, likewise, that we must gaze into such depths as these to remind ourselves occasionally that we dwell in these inferiors. Such is the wisdom of Euclydes da Cunha, of Richard Cunninghame-Graham, of José Verissimo. FOOTNOTES: [1] _Resumo da Historia do Brazil._ Maria G. L. de Andrade. Edição Ampliada, 1920, Pages 277-278. [2] “This struggle for existence,” writes Cunninghame-Graham in _A Brazilian Mystic_ (pages 17-18) “amongst plants and animals presents its counterpart amongst mankind. The climate sees to it that only those most fitted to resist it arrive at manhood, and the rude life they subsequently lead has forged a race as hard as the Castilians, the Turks, the Scythians of old, or as the Mexicans.