George A. Miller

“ Any aggressive North American, especially if he be from the West, looks upon the splendid areas of land, the fine rivers, the dense forests, and the other untouched resources of this rich country with amazement, and begins to plan development projects and dream of organizing syndicates, but the native loses no sleep over such vain imaginings. If he dreams at all, it is of his food if he be poor, and of politics if he be rich. Development in the North American sense is a disgrace, and no job for a gentleman. ”

“ He who has never traveled through a tropical jungle on a trusty mule has missed something out of his life. He should go back and begin over again.
The jungle is much maligned and often misinterpreted. The jungle has a place in the agricultural life of the tropics, but it has also a place in the æsthetic and moral life of mankind. Here at last there is room, and the starved and stunted life may relax its struggle and strain and expand under the luxuriance and exuberance of a world where all the forces of life overflow and run riot in a thousand fantastic forms of energy and growth. ”

“ If rigorous climates produce vigorous men, how is it that some of the most terrible of men sailed the Caribbean sea and devastated the whole mid-American world, while the northern coasts of the Atlantic never saw a pirate's sail? The tropical zephyrs of the Bay of Panama never softened the tempers or dispositions of the bloodthirsty men who came near exterminating whole populations and left a trail of blood and terror behind them. ”

“ There is no easy way to learn a language. It takes work, hard work, and a lot of it to learn a second language. But it can be done, and to acquire a new medium of expression, even in middle life, is an experience not to be taken lightly. It is above all things interesting. It comes at last to this: the only way to speak, write, or read Spanish effectively is to learn it. Short cuts bring short results.
And the only road to a worthwhile understanding of the Latin-American is that of a sympathetic personal acquaintance and genuine friendship. ”

“ It is too bad that he did not find Old Panama before it was too late. Not only the ruins, but the vista of royal palms along the beach, with the little red-white-and-blue crabs scurrying about at high tide, unite to raise a sense of romance that starts the wheels of fancy revolving in one's brain. All one needs is a "long, low, rakish black craft in the offing,"—there it is now, the very thing, a big chinga, fifty feet long with four sails and twenty-five men on board, luffing and tacking about into the little bay just around the point. Pirates or fishermen—don't inquire too closely ”

“ Panama is a jitney town, and the honk of the never-silent horn punctuates the clang and dash of the trolleys and automobiles down a fifteen-foot street in a mad race to see which can get through first. Overhanging roofs nearly touch above blooming orchids and talking birds that scream across the narrow streets. Gloomy interiors and stumbling stairways lead up to spacious apartments and breezy balconies. Above are occasional roof-gardens. All the rooms have high ceilings, all the streets are paved, and all the kids wear clothes—sometimes. ”

“ The old town site was a hopeless jungle until the National Institute, under the leadership of Dr. Dexter, cleared away the brush and laid bare the traces of streets and buildings. To-day the place is in good condition and one may wander about at will and dream to his heart's content. It is no place for joy rides, and the roadhouse is a blot on the place, but there are people still who see nothing but a refreshment counter and worthless stone heaps. ”

“ Panama is not all jungle. To the westward stretch great savannas, between the mountains and the sea; miles and miles of smooth and level country open, fair and well watered, only waiting for the tickle of American cultivation to laugh a crop. It makes a real estate man's fingers itch; but that is another story. Where a little cultivation has been inadvertently perpetrated on the land, tall sugar cane, luscious fruits, and toothsome vegetables attest the quality of the soil and the climate. ”

“ There is not an item of news, a trace of historical knowledge or perspective, a gleam of scientific understanding, a moving picture show, or a lecture on any subject, or a musical program, nor any one of the thousand things that add interest and widen the horizon of life—none of these things ever enter the remotest areas of his consciousness. He lives in the flat, narrow confines of a life so small, so cramped, so possessed by superstition and terror and ill will that he is not many removes from the cattle with which he works. ”

“ In fact, we never bothered much with anybody outside of the United States. Over a century we lived on, secure in the idea that we were immune from European militaristic contagion and all-sufficient unto ourselves. The rest of the world might perchance sink into the sea, but we would go on blissfully without it. Our "free institutions" were self-sufficient and all-inclusive. And because we were able to compose our own troubles and keep out of other peoples' quarrels, more or less, we assumed that we were automatically superior to the rest of the world, "of course." ”

“ The few that live there are of the sort that would camp under the nose of the sphinx and never look up into his face. But the reader of this can well spend a half day amid the most fruitful prowling anywhere in Panama. He may gaze at the splendid tower till the broken walls about it rise again, and the old tiled roof once more covers the worshiping congregations within, and the drone of mass and the fragrance of incense again ascend before the high altar. And down the old street, with its one-story houses, once more wind the pack trains and muleteers and men and women and children. ”

“ Living without adequate means of recreation or possibilities of culture or wide information, life is nevertheless saved from deadly monotony by the exercise of the high gifts of controversy. When it comes to a straight, head-on wrangle the West Indian shines in a glory all his own. Not even a loquacious Oriental can surpass his powers of abuse and lordly contempt for his adversary. If words were bullets, the whole population would perish in twenty-four hours, innocent and guilty together. ”

“ If the far interior of Panama is to be judged by present industrial efficiency, the case is lost before the trial begins. General absence of everything that marks a high grade of living emphasizes the failure of the status quo. Incompetence, bad management, childishness cry aloud from rotting buildings, rusting machinery, neglected plantings, impassable "roads," and impossible officials. Streets knee-deep in mire, mud-floored houses, through which pigs wander at will, shiftlessness, dirt, insanitation are the register of the wet season in interior Panama. ”

“ The difference between the jungle and the dividend-paying plantation is one of organization, capital, administration, and toil. Add these to the jungle and you have the plantation. Take them away from the plantation and in a very short time the jungle is again supreme. Crowding around the corners, peeping over the edges, and creeping ever onward, the jungle pushes its jealous way behind the footprints of the men who essay to conquer its wild ways. But once defeated, the jungle becomes a slave bearing costly burdens for its master—man. ”

“ Where belief and conduct are prescribed and commercialism dominates the moral lives of men, it is easy to see that initiative is crippled at its source. Where a people is divested of responsibility for the final outcome and taught to pay the price and "believe or be damned," it is a rash spirit that will try to do more than dream dreams and write books and project utopias. Without the incentive of encouragement to produce practical results, no real efficiency has ever appeared among any people. There are accusations of moral duplicity among Latin-American peoples. ”

“ Many of us have not yet discovered that there be any Latin-American. Some one lives south of the line, of course, but that fact has made little impression on our minds. In our mental geography the American world shades off into a hazy and troubled region southward about which we have known little and cared less. Our geographical studies have helped us but little. It is possible to know every physical fact about a country without knowing the hearts of the people.
It is an anomaly that we know less about our Latin neighbors than we do of Europe or Asia. ”

“ The soft caress of the jungle breeze whispers no tales of the days when the trail could be traced by the bleaching bones that lined the right-of-way. The jungle is nature's great blotter for the sins, sorrows, and sufferings of an age now forgotten—but it all happened in Panama. ”

“ American travel abroad has been practically all to Europe, with an increasing number who have seen something of the Far East. And it is impossible to be anything but densely ignorant of any people whose faces we have never seen, whose country we have never visited, whose history we have ignored, and whose language we cannot understand. No real interest is possible without knowledge, and the main trouble between the American and his neighbors is plain ignorance. ”

“ The population of the next town is one or the other of these measures. The distance to the river, the crops, the number of children in the family, the tale of the years that is told—it is all one thing or the other. And the standard, in contrast with the artificial measures of a high civilization, is at least true to life. Either there is enough or there is not enough—that is about as close a distinction as the day's experience affords. For that matter, all the rest of us are on one side or the other of the same cleaving line of necessity. ”

“ Certain influences from this stream have affected Latin-American life. The nomenclature of South American politics is that of the United States, and many constitutions contain provision for every modern practice. But these model constitutions are like a beautiful and costly piano imported into a home where no one knows how to use it. It takes a democratic spirit to get democracy out of a democratic constitution. The best piano yields only discord, and the most advanced constitution does not prevent revolution if there be no musicians or statesmen to play and administer. ”

“ When a man has stinted and economized all his life on a New England hillside amid stones and stumps, the jungle takes the load off his soul and sets him free in a universe of new and untested dimensions. ”

“ The only power that seems able to stir new life in the old mausoleum is the advent of a vigorous Protestant work. In rage and bitterness the powers bestir themselves and begin to defame and persecute their disturbers, and in the end, they inevitably give some attention to reviving their own decaying program.
How can a man be well when he is one hundred dollars away from a doctor? With four doctors located among two hundred thousand people scattered over a radius of forty by a hundred miles, and all fees exorbitantly high, what is a poor man to do when illness overtakes his household? ”

“ To know our Latin-Americans as personal friends is to attain a new viewpoint on the whole Pan-American problem. We may not blind our eyes to their defects more than to our own—there are plenty of both; but understanding brings explanation of many things, and if we know all and understand fully, we may come to a different verdict. The southern man far surpasses us in certain traits of which we have taken small account and in which we are racially deficient. When given free opportunity, satisfactory response appears to the stimuli of democracy and initiative. ”