THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, MARCH 8, 1909. THE ARMING OF SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3132, 8 March 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, MARCH 8, 1909. THE ARMING OF SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS.

The news that Argentina is spending £7,500.000 on armaments draws attention to the fact that Argentina, like other South American republics, is growing in population and wealth, and therefore in national ambitions, also. The republic has a population of nearly 6,000.000, and Buenos Ayres, the capita!, with 850,000 people, is the largest centre of the Latin race in the world, with the sole exception of Paris. With an enormous area of territory, a climate varied hut cool over the greater part of the country, an immense seaboard, and a far more virile and strenuous population—due partly to climate and partly to a vig- | orous immigration policy—than any other South American State, Argentina seems to be marked out by destiny for a loading part in the development of the South American continent. Yet this in itself seems at the first glance hardly sufficient to account for such a phenomenal spurt in armaments. Why should a country of less than 6,000,000 people invest £7,500,000 in ships and guns unless there is a reasonable tear that it is about to be attacked? As Argentina possesses more than 1,200,000 square miles of territory, and is compelled

to encourage immigration fay every possible means in order to fill up her waste place.i, it i 3 hardly likely that she is investing in armaments with a view to engaging in offensive operations for the purpose of territorial aggrandisement. The question, therefore, arijses: Against whom is she arming? And here at once the inquirer is met by two possibilities. Does the Government of Argentina fear an atcack by an oversea enemy, or is it preparing to hit back at a -kinsman and a next-door neighbour? There are lung-sighted watchers of distant international horizons who hold the opinion that the Latin races contain within themselves the seeds of early death, and that as Spain has declined from the lofty eminence that she occupied in the sixteenth century, so, too, the transatlantic peoples who have sprung from her loins will sink and finally pass away, leaving their territory to the enterprising and wellschooled Anglo-Saxon, to the vigorous and persevering Teuton, or even to the Slav with his fierce racial enthusiasm and the deep glow of his almost fanatical temperament. But many generations may live and die before that final catastrophe occurs to the Latin races, and in the meantime immigration has already supplied, and is still supplying, a notable infusion of new blood in Argentina, which ha* received during the last half century more than 2,000,000 immigrants from the different countries of Europe. If the new armaments are being acquired by Argentina to fight a next door neighbour, it is difficult to get away from the idea that Brazil, the colossus of South America, is the enemy that is feared. Between Uruguay and Paraguay the frontier of the Argentine Republic marches with that of Brazil, and in spite of the talk about Pan-Americanism, to which Mr Elihu Root was treated when he visited Rio and Buenos Ayres, it is well-known that there is no love lost between the two biggest States of the South American continent. If there is ever to be a confederation of the States of South America, either Brazil or Argentina must hold the hegemony, and as Brazil has already ordered three battleships, which are said to be more powerful than the Dreadnoughts, she is evidently perparing for a struggle with someone. While Argentina has this huge unwieldy neighbour on her north-east frontier she has Chile on her westenf frontier, shut off from her by the mighty barrier ot the Andes, but still near enough and ambitious enough to be troublesome. It is noteworthy that not a single year between 1840 and 1905 was free from war in one or other of the South American Republics, and there does not appear to be any ground for supposing that the new and expensive weapons which Anjentiia is now ' buying will be allowed tj rust in disuse for want oi a readily accessible ' enemv.