America is thus an essential factor of the future of the Latin nations. The destiny of France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy would be different if the 80 millions of Latin Americans were to lose their racial traditions; if in a century or two America were to pass under the sceptre of the United States, or if the Germans and Anglo-Saxons were to attack and oppress the nucleus of civilisation formed by the Argentine, Uruguay, and Southern Brazil. Economically America would lose markets; intellectually, docile colonies; practically, centres of expansion. To-day Anglo-Saxons, Germans, Slavs, and Neo-Latins are balancing forces which may develop in harmony in the framework of Christian civilisation without wars of conquest and without ambitions of monopoly. The moral unity of South America would contribute to the realisation of such an ideal. A new Anglo-Saxon continent running from Alaska {399} to Cape Horn, built on the ruins of twenty Spanish republics, would be the presage of a final decadence. In the struggles of hundreds of years' duration between the Latin States and the barbarians, between Catholicism and Protestantism, between the French genius and the Teutonic spirit, between the Renaissance and the Reformation, the Latins would have lost the last battle. America is a laboratory of free peoples. Dr. Charles W. Eliott, rector of the great University of Harvard, has studied the contribution of the United States to modern civilisation. Arbitration as a universal principle, toleration, universal suffrage, material well-being, and political liberty seem to him to be the characteristics of North American culture. In the Latin South we encounter similar principles. Arbitration is the basis of international relations; tolerance from the religious point of view is in process of development. Political liberty is still more a matter of Constitutions than of custom; but the liberal political charters, adapted to the principles of modern civilisation, are the ideal of these republics. When the wilderness is peopled by new races, democracies will grow to maturity within this scaffolding, and universal suffrage, individual rights and tolerance will be realities. In Latin America, above all among the southern nations, one cannot conceive of the restoration of the old social order, or of despotism and religious inquisition. The new continent, whether Saxon or Latin, is democratic and liberal.