I have no less pleasure in associating myself to-day with this book, by Señor Albert B. Martinez (sometime Under-Secretary of State, and at present Director-General of the Statistical Department of the city of Buenos Ayres), and M. Maurice Lewandowski, Sub-Director of the Comptoir National d’Escompte of Paris. Their competence is incontestable, and their work requires no recommendation, since it has won the sanction of success, being now in its third French edition, and having been “crowned” by the French Academy. But the object which is aimed at by _The Argentine in the Nineteenth Century_ is the same as that of the _Geographie de la République Argentine_, and the interest attaching to the book is the same. “In the competition of the new nations, created by emigration from Europe,” I said in 1890, “this Republic will be enjoying a privileged situation, because of its particular advantages: the nature of its climate——a climate of the temperate zone; the vast extent of its territory; the quality of its soil; the facility with which railways can be built; its situation on the Atlantic coast, facing Europe, and relatively near the Indian Ocean; the powerful tide of emigration setting in towards it, and the rapid peopling of the country, together with the wealth that results therefrom; the suitable character of its population, and the liberal spirit of its political institutions.... “The Argentine Republic, which occupies in the temperate zone of South America a position analogous to that held by the United States in the corresponding portion of North America, may well dream, if not of equal power, at least of a similar future.” This dream is in process of realisation: of this the proof will be found in the chain of evidence which our authors put forward. It is the present condition of affairs and, above all, the economic situation, which the authors of _The Argentine in the Twentieth Century_ have set out to represent. They have not given us a panegyric——“_nihil admirari_,” say they——but a practical book: one written by men of business and affairs, founded upon direct observation, and hard-and-fast figures, where statistics have provided them. * * * * * The Argentine is a young nation, which hitherto has busied itself rather in work and production for the amelioration of its present condition, and in the preparation of its morrow by creating capital, than in giving itself to the historical study of its past. Nevertheless, history is the web from which the spirit of a nation is woven. It is useful to recall the principal historical periods, and particularly the origins of the nation, for the better understanding of the present period.