For geographical reasons, and on account of its very inferiority, South America cannot dispense with the influence of the Anglo-Saxon North, with its exuberant wealth and its industries. South America has need of capital, of enterprising men, of bold explorers, and these the United States supply in abundance. The defence of the South should consist in avoiding the establishment of privileges or monopolies, whether in favour of North Americans or Europeans. It is essential to understand not only the foundations of North American greatness, but also the weaknesses of the Anglo-Saxon democracy, in order to escape from the dangers of excessive imitation. The Anglo-Saxons of America have created an admirable democracy upon a prodigious expanse of territory. A caravan of races has pitched its tents from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and has watered the desert with its impetuous blood. Dutch, French, Anglo-Saxons, and Germans, people of all sects, Quakers, Presbyterians, Catholics, Puritans, all have mingled their creeds in a single multiform nation. At the contact of new soil men have felt the pride of creation and of living. Initiative, self-assertion, self-reliance, audacity, love of adventure, all the forms of the victorious will are united in this Republic of energy. A triumphant optimism quickens the rhythm of life; an immense impulse of creation builds cities in the wilderness, and founds new {307} plutocracies amidst the whirlpool of the markets. Workshops, factories, banks; the obscure unrest of Wall Street; the architectural insolence of the skyscraper; the many-coloured, material West; all mingle perpetually in the wild, uncouth hymn which testifies the desperate battle of will and destiny, of generation against death. Poets have exalted the greatness of America. Hear Walt Whitman, the bard of this advancing democracy:-- "Long, too long, America.... For who except myself has yet conceived What your children _en masse_ really are? They will make the most splendid race the sun Ever shone upon," he cries, in his free rhythms. "O mother of a mighty race!" said Bryant, celebrating the glories of North America, and the fastidious Whittier would have the United States excel the Old World on its own ground: "And cast in some diviner mould Lest the new cycle shame the old."