Georges Clemenceau

“ Every one here understands French, reading and speaking it like the speaker himself, and showing by their gestures that no shade of meaning was lost on them. What better could one wish? By the grace of winged words the mind of France has flown across the ocean, and we may rejoice in the fact and found great hopes for the future on it. It is therefore with the greatest pleasure that I offer my heartfelt gratitude to this admirable audience for their constant kindliness and for the encouragement that I found in their remarkable idealism and determination. ”

“ He makes a picturesque enough figure in the monotonous expanse of earth and sky, where rancho or tree, beast or man, stand out in high relief against a background of glaring light. Without sign or syllable, his eyes fixed on the empty horizon, the man passes through the silence of infinite solitude, rising like a ghost from the nothingness of the horizon at one point [Pg 209] to sink again into nothingness at another. When riding in a troop, they talk together in low tones. There are none of those outbursts of fun that you might expect in a land of sunshine. ”

“ Thus, beside the small aristocracy formed of the last vestiges of the original Spanish colony, I had the pleasure and honour of finding a large public of European culture and wide intelligence, eager to hear what any European might have to say about an idea whose course he was honestly seeking to trace, whether bearing on the political and social experiences of Europe or on the more or less rational experiments of which their own land is the theatre. Their unbiassed criticism and independent opinions are all one could hope to find in an audience one is trying to influence. ”

“ I have shown you the Pampas alive with the swarms of their new civilisation. We are far enough from the romantic descriptions so dear to story-tellers. We all know now that the redskin of North America bears no resemblance to the portraits painted of him by Chateaubriand or Fenimore Cooper. The Pampas, in full process of evolution, are getting more human and losing their distinctive features. They were once as bare, to quote the joke of a poet, now a member of the Académie Française, "as the speech of an academician"; man has undertaken to raise up orchards, groves, and even forests. ”

“ In following such a train of thought, how can we help pausing for an instant to consider the Pan-American Congress which so fitly closed the splendid exhibition of the Argentine centenary? With the sole exception of Bolivia, every republic of South America sent a representative to the palace of the Congress to discuss their common interests—an imposing assembly, which in the dignity of its debates can bear comparison with any Upper Chamber of the Continent of Europe. ”

“ Come out here, young men in shiny threadbare sleeves who make your way homewards nightly to the close dens around the Sacré Cœur; come and see these black coffee-planters—men, women, and children—living close to Nature on the outskirts of civilisation, and compare your own wretched quarters furnished by Dufayel on the "hire" system, that has cost you such anxious moments, with the blissful nudity of these cabins, and tell me where you see the worst form of slavery, here amongst the newly emancipated Africans or at home under your own roofs. ”

“ As I want to be wholly sincere here, I must admit that the French take this Argentine contagion with remarkable facility. I should grievously wrong our own excellent colony, however, if I did less than justice to its ardent patriotism. It is only when tried that love grows and grows purer. In absence the fatherland seems the dearer in proportion as it is connected with the recollection of sufferings that left us stripped of all but honour.
The public work of the French colony speaks loudly for it. ”

“ The steady walk of the guns is only checked by the rope getting caught occasionally on some tuft of grass, or by an encounter, not at all rare, with the carcass of horse or ox in process of decomposition. Having left on his own initiative, he at least escapes from man's ferocity. You pass without even having to hold your nose, so thoroughly does the strong, purifying air of the Pampas carry away in its boundless currents every germ that cannot be returned to the soil to perform the eternal labour of fertilisation. ”

“ In the crackling of the burning palms, in the whirling clouds of blinding smoke furrowed with a sinister glow, boughs and branches lay heaped up on the ground in immense flaming piles, through which the charred stumps of boles, brought low by fire, crashed noisily to earth, where their corpses lay and slowly smouldered to ashes on the morrow's coffee plantation in accordance with the law of Nature, which builds fresh forms of life out of the decomposed elements of death. ”

“ A single telegram suffices to give uniformity to the toilettes of all the women in the world, and if those to be seen in Señora Azeredo's salons were less extravagant than some Parisian examples, Rio struck me as being quite as eager as Paris in its pursuit of beauty's adornments. Shall I mention that Brazilian women have large black eyes, which seem to ask a thousand questions, usually pale complexions, sometimes of a golden bronze tint, that they are vivacious in speech and take a delight in conversational tourneys? ”

“ But for no inducement would they leave their dressing-rooms until the sun has gone down to the horizon. When you have once seen the heart of the forest wilderness, where the same luxuriant life in manifold manifestations is to be seen at your feet and in the high tree and hilltops, where profusely flowering creepers wind themselves around every twig and bough, placing these forest kings in tender bondage, you will not blame the monkeys for being content to remain in their sumptuous domain. I was shown fruit half eaten, the refuse of a monkeys' restaurant. ”

“ The tree is no longer a tree: it is a Laocoön twisted in a fury of rage beneath the onslaught of an ocean of lives whose torrents recognise no barriers. Whichever way one looks, hairy monsters are agonising in despairing contortions, victims of a drama of dumb violence; and the spectacle conveys a keen realisation of the eternal struggle for life that is going on all around us, from the summits of these verdant heights to the subterranean depths whence issues this living force. ”

“ There is only one point that it is only just to repeat: it is that the women of Uruguay are very beautiful. More or less so than the Argentinos? In the Pan-American Congress the ladies of Buenos Ayres gave the palm to a celebrated beauty of Montevideo, in an outburst of hospitable chivalry. I would not have the bad taste to say a word either way. The two banks of La Plata appear to me equally propitious for the development of feminine æsthetics, and for the foreigner who loves art the handsomest model is ever that which is before his eyes. ”

“ It remains none the less true that the economic growth of Uruguay is in no whit inferior to that of the Argentine in these last few years, and the promise of the future justifies the highest hopes. It is possible that on either side of the estuary the heat of political and social verbiage is not always in accordance with cold reality. This is a criticism that might be made of any land, and I could apply it easily to those I know best.
When all defects and excellences are taken into account, I should say the Uruguayan is distinguished from the Argentino by his impulsive idealism. ”

“ Perhaps in January—that is, in the height of the summer—these explorers had like us the excuse of a fog, for tropical vegetation is only possible when there are alternations of rain and sunshine such as the climate of Rio abundantly supplies. It is the rarest of phenomena to see the horizon perfectly clear. The distance is invariably wreathed with a light haze which softens the violence of the colours. ”

“ I say nothing of the great flocks of sheep because there were none in the districts which I visited. When you talk of a herd of ten thousand cows, you make some impression on even a big farmer of the Charolais. Well, I can assure you that out in the Pampas ten thousand head of cattle is a small affair. You see a dark shadow that rises on the horizon that might be either a village or a group of haycocks, until the vague shifting of the mass suggests to your mind the idea of some form of life. ”

“ The greatest affection prevails and the greatest devotion to the parent roof-tree. Not that the Argentine woman would appear to be a particularly admirable mother according to our standard; for, on the contrary, it is said that her children are turned out into the world with very bad manners. How, then, are we to explain the contradictory fact that such children become the most courteous of men? Perhaps a certain wildness in youth should be regarded as the noisy, but salutary, apprenticeship to liberty.
All that can be seen of the public morals is most favourable. ”

“ When you have seen tree-trunks that were many centuries in growth falling bit by bit into the maw of a factory furnace, without any attempt being made to replace them, when you have been saddened by the spectacle of the marvellous Brazilian forests blazing in every direction to make room for coffee plantations that will presently spring up amongst the charred trunks, you realise keenly that there is no more urgent need in these great countries than a complete organisation of forestry. ”

“ They are fearful-looking blacks, with grinning masks, clothed in coal-dust, who swarm like monkeys up the shrouds and fall on deck with the laugh of cannibals. We are assured that our lives are not in danger, and, in fact, they are no sooner amongst us than, attacked with sudden shyness, they offer in a low voice and in a language in which French and English are strangely mixed, an assortment of cocoanuts, bananas, and bags made of melon seeds, to which they seem to attach great importance. ”

“ A well-founded fear of the scourge drove all those who could afford it out of Rio, and at their head were the Emperor—later the President of the Republic, the Ministers, and diplomatists, with their families. Thus Petropolis, an hour's journey from Rio, became in some sort a fashionable watering-place, whose charming villas stand in a forest of tropical gardens. It is a delightful spot for all who can turn their back on the business of the outside world, which seems, indeed, far enough away. ”

“ And I rejoiced to see that abuses common, more or less, in all old countries, and whose remedy lies only in private endeavour, have in this new community of the Argentine provoked the same keen intelligence and determination as others which I noted. Under whatever form of government, the worth of a country lies in its men—that is, in its sum total of disinterested activity. A race that can show the development of intelligence [Pg 266] and character that have so struck me in the course of this journey can afford to await with tranquil courage the solutions of the future. ”

“ As it only becomes valuable through human labour, everything depends upon man's activity. In the depth of his soul, at once ingenuous and complex, are inscribed all the mysteries of the past, all the secrets of the future.
[Pg viii]
Admitting that American civilisation is of recent origin, it must be said that the American peoples, far from suffering from growing pains, as we are fond of imagining, are really old races transplanted. Like us, they bend under the weight of a heavy history of glory and human suffering; they are imbued with all our traditions, good or bad ”

“ Sometimes on the top of a hill there would be seen one of the old plantations surrounded by walls built to imprison the slaves, or coffee-gardens, now abandoned because the soil was worn out for want of dressing, or long stretches of pale green denoting young rice crops, watercourses dashing over rocks and gliding through brushwood—the last resort of the birds,—vestiges of calcined forests where the new growth of vegetation eager to reach the sun was ever cut back and repressed ”

“ The majority of workers are not free of an afternoon, and the "upper classes," even the most cultured—in Europe, at least,—are too distrustful of democratic movements in general to waste an hour on a subject that worries them. Happily, the history of American peoples has never been embittered by race hatred engendered by centuries of oppression, and revolts of which it is to be hoped that we have now seen the end. In the North, as in the South, a formula frightens nobody. ”

“ At home this would appear strange, since we do not impose the spectacle of our private intimacies upon the public. Yet may not this very air of detachment upon which we insist lead, both in public and in private, to some of the tragedies of life? Is it wrong for a married couple to love each other? And when two hearts are united in this way how can a feeling so powerful fail at times to betray itself by some outward manifestation? Let us take heed lest, in laughing at others, we denounce ourselves. ”

“ A French hotel, all white, and redolent of the modern watering-place, where there awaits us a table decorated with orchids. But behold a tramway that runs to the end of the beach! In these [Pg 321] countries to be in a tramcar is to be in the open air. So we follow the wide curve of silvery sand, bordered with villas whose gardens are enchanting with flowers and unexpected plants, whilst on the rocks of the small wooded islets, a cable's length from the shore, high waves are breaking stormily to melt softly away at our feet. The first impression is one of vigorous vegetation. ”

“ South American Latinity has allowed itself to be left far behind by the great Anglo-Saxon Republic of the North, just as European Latinity has suffered its fiercest attacks from those who were designated the "Barbarians" by ancient Rome. Yet how great would be the darkness if the light of Latinity, as it survives even in its enemies, were suddenly to go out! If man could always measure the obstacle, he would frequently lack courage for the leap. ”

“ Ever onward, the motor-car pursues its headlong way at a speed one longs to check. Often we stop to prolong the pleasure of a moment, but if one did not take care one might stop for ever. The pen is powerless to convey what, perhaps, the brush might reveal—the joy of life that swells to bursting the sap of every twig and leaf, every flower and fruit, from the humblest blade of grass to the loftiest extremity of the tallest trees, and renders so impressively active every organ of the vegetable world. ”