Moreover, federation is not always the result of purely commercial ties. Our century tends to synthetical action. As modern nations were formed by overcoming the old feudal anarchy, so metropolis and colonies are uniting in our days to form {350} formidable empires which merely commercial interests could not explain. What economic tie served as the basis of the South African Federation, a group of hostile races retaining a memory of autonomy? Did not North and South in the United States enter upon a terrible war of interests, and, in spite of this utilitarian antagonism, is not Lincoln, the founder of the Union, as great to-day as Washington, the founder of nationality? The enormous power of the North American nation is the result of this unity. If the patricians of the South had been victorious in the War of Secession, if they had succeeded in annihilating the Federal bond, then instead of the Republic which overawes Europe and aspires to Americanise the world there would be two powerless and inimical States; in the South an oligarchic nation served by slaves, and in the North a feeble assemblage of Puritan provinces, while the Far West would be incapable of resisting the Yellow Peril. But there are economic ties between the Latin nations, which may assist the preparation of respectable unions. Between Brazil and Chili, Peru and Chili, Bolivia, Chili, and Peru, or the Argentine, Paraguay, and Bolivia, there are actual currents of commercial exchange, of agricultural products from complementary zones, and therein a basis of union may be found. Latin America cannot continue to live divided, while her enemies are building up vast federations and enormous empires. Whether in the name of race or commercial interests, of common utility or true independence, the American democracies must form themselves into three or four powerful States. The Latin New World is alone in resisting the universal impulse toward the establishment of syndicates and federations, trusts and trades unions, associations and alliances--in short, of increasingly vast and increasingly powerful organisations. [1] _The United States as a World-Power_. [2] See A. Alvarez, _Le Droit international americain_ (Paris, 1910), in which the reader will find an interesting list of problems respecting frontiers, immigration, and means of communication, affecting Latin America in particular, which have on several occasions met with solutions which form the basis of a new law (pp. 271 _et seq_.). [3] Alvarez, _ibid._, p. 189 et seq. {351} CHAPTER II THE PROBLEM OF RACE The gravity of the problem--The three races, European, Indian, and Negro--Their characteristics--The mestizos and mulattos--The conditions of miscegenation according to M. Gustave Le Bon--Regression to the primitive type.