Spain represents the outcome of some centuries devoted mainly to military activity. No one can say that she has been unmilitary or at all deficient in those qualities which we associate with soldiers and soldiering. Yet, if such qualities in any way make for national efficiency, for the conservation of national force, the history of Spain is absolutely inexplicable. In their late contest with America, Spaniards showed no lack of the distinctive military virtues. Spain’s inferiority—apart from deficiency of men and money—was precisely in those qualities which industrialism has bred in the unmilitary American. Authentic stories of wretched equipment, inadequate supplies, and bad leadership show to what depths of inefficiency the Spanish service, military and naval, had fallen. We are justified in believing that a much smaller nation than Spain, but one possessing a more industrial and less military training, would have done much better, both as regards resistance to America and the defence of her own colonies. The present position of Holland in Asia seems to prove this. The Dutch, whose traditions are industrial and nonmilitary for the most part, have shown greater power and efficiency as a nation than the Spanish, who are more numerous.
Here, as always, it is shown that, in considering national efficiency, even as expressed in military power, the economic problem cannot be divorced from the military, and that it is a fatal mistake to suppose that the power of a nation depends solely upon the power of its public bodies, or that it can be judged simply from the size of its army. A large army may, indeed, be a sign of a national—that is, military—weakness. Warfare in these days is a business like other activities, and no courage, no heroism, no “glorious past,” no “immortal traditions,” will atone for deficient rations and fraudulent administration. Good civilian qualities are the ones that will in the end win a nation’s battles. The Spaniard is the last one in the world to see this. He talks and dreams of Castilian bravery and Spanish honor, and is above shopkeeping details. … A writer on contemporary Spain remarks that any intelligent middle-class Spaniard will admit every charge of incompetence which can be brought against the conduct of public affairs. “Yes, we have a wretched Government. In any other country somebody would be shot.” This is the hopeless military creed: killing somebody is the only remedy.
Here we see a trace of that intellectual legacy which Spain has left to the New World, and which has stamped itself so indelibly on the history of Spanish America. On a later occasion in this connection I wrote as follows:
To appreciate the outcome of much soldiering, the condition in which persistent military training may leave a race, one should study Spanish America. Here we have a collection of some score of States, all very much alike in social and political makeup. Most of the South American States so resemble one another in language, laws, institutions, that to an outsider it would seem not to matter a straw under which particular six-months-old republic one should live; whether one be under the Government of the pronunciamento-created President of Colombia, or under that of the President of Venezuela, one’s condition would appear to be much the same. Apparently no particular country has anything which differentiates it from another, and, consequently, anything to protect against the other. Actually, the Governments might all change places and the people be none the wiser. Yet, so hypnotized, are these little States by the “necessity for self-protection,” by the glamour of armaments, that there is not one without a relatively elaborate and expensive military establishment to protect it from the rest.
No conditions seem so propitious for a practical confederation as those of Spanish America; with a few exceptions, the virtual unity of language, laws, general race-ideals, would seem to render protection of frontiers supererogatory. Yet the citizens give untold wealth, service, life, and suffering to be protected against a Government exactly like their own. All this waste of life and energy has gone on without it ever occurring to one of these States that it would be preferable to be annexed a thousand times over, so trifling would be the resulting change in their condition, than continue the everlasting and futile tribute of blood and treasure. Over some absolutely unimportant matter—like that of the Patagonian roads, which nearly brought Argentina and Chile to grips the other day—as much patriotic devotion will be expended as ever the Old Guard lavished in protecting the honor of the Tricolor. Battles will be fought which will make all the struggles in South Africa appear mean in comparison. Actions in which the dead are counted in thousands will excite no more comment in the world than that produced by a skirmish in Natal, in which a score of yeomen are captured and released.78
In the decade since the foregoing was written things have enormously improved in South America. Why? For the simple reason, as pointed out in Chapter V of the first part of this book, that Spanish America is being brought more and more into the economic movement of the world; and with the establishment of factories, in which large capital has been sunk, banks, businesses, etc., the whole attitude of mind of those interested in these ventures is changed. The Jingo, the military adventurer, the fomentor of trouble, are seen for what they are—not as patriots, but as representing exceedingly mischievous and maleficent forces.
This general truth has two facets: if long warfare
