The South American struggle for self-government and free ideals has been a long, bloody, and heroic grapple with the reactionary and despotic forces brought over from mediaeval Europe. Men like San Martin and Bolivar deserve high honor for their work in breaking the bondage that held all life helpless. One by one the colonies threw off their political yokes and became republics, every one of them, in theory, modeled after the United States. The passion of the South American patriot has been home-rule, but, unfortunately, home-rule has not always meant self-government. That is quite a different matter. The overthrow of European despotisms was followed by innumerable internal revolutions. Panama had no monopoly on internal dissensions, and makes no claim that her fifty-three revolutions in fifty-seven years is the high-water mark of insurrections for South or Central America. In short, the mere overthrow of a despotic government does not assure stable political institutions nor efficient administration of public affairs. Good government by popular sovereignty is something far more fundamental than a matter of printed constitutions or shouting "Viva independencia!" in the plazas. Without moral responsibility and free consciences there can never be a successful democracy on earth. Free institutions and free consciences are winning out in South America, but it is in spite of the established church and not because of it. It is not politically a question of religion that we are discussing; it is a matter of organized, crafty, and unscrupulous opposition to every movement that makes for the development of democracy in South America. And since the establishment of a better understanding and closer fellowship between the two continents depends upon this very basis of free and morally responsible social and political leaders, the question is most vital. Everywhere there are a few intelligent, earnest men working away patiently and steadily at the problem of making South America democratic by making her people free to adopt with intelligence democratic institutions. One by one the nations have declared for freedom of worship and conscience, and, last of all, Peru, robbed and despoiled Peru of the conquest, priest-ridden and fanatical Peru, threw off the galling yoke of spiritual bondage and divorced church and state. It seems simple enough to read about it here, but at every step of the way the old church left unturned no stone of bigotry and intrigue and prejudice that could oppose the coming of the modern age to Peru.