There is little in Pan-Americanism of that kind.  The “raza Latina” of eloquence is not itself homogeneous; still less so is the population of the whole hemisphere.  And with Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Santiago we have, of course, far less propinquity than we have with the capitals of Europe.  But what we really can do is to build up, especially with the nearer republics, real ties of common interest and good neighborhood, and with the distant ones ties of commerce and esteem.

The war may tend to cure certain rather self-centred countries of affecting the morbid view that the people of the United States are lying awake nights contriving to devour them, when, in fact, it would be hard to find in a crowded street in the United States one in a thousand of the passersby who knew more than the name, at most, of one of those very few countries referred to.

Europe’s preoccupation with the war temporarily deprives such a country and its few misguided prophets whose monomania is dread of that chimera, the “Colossus of the North,” of the pastime of nestling up to Europe in the hope of annoying us.  It postpones, too, the hope of the morbid ones that we shall come to war with a powerful enemy.  Now, perhaps, even these will appreciate the remark of a diplomatist of a certain weak country in contact with European powers, who once said:  “If we only had the United States for a neighbor!  What I can’t understand is that your neighbors do not realize their good luck.”  Turning from these exceptional phenomena, the very fact of the war leaves the United States in a general position of greater political prestige.

Whatever the upshot of the European tragedy, its political and psychological consequences are likely to be great.  If it result in new national divisions upon racial lines of more reality, who knows but that the awakened spirits of nationality will germinate fresh military ambitions?  Or will the horrors of the war force political reforms and the search for assurance in more democratic institutions against any repetition of those horrors?  And is popular government an assurance against useless war while men remain warlike even when not military?

Except from the successful countries or from those where disaster has brought such sobering change that men can return to work heartened with new hope, when the war is over there is likely to be a heavy emigration of disgusted people.  Possibly even victory will be so dear that men will emigrate from a country half prostrate in its triumph.  Many will come as the Puritans came, and as the bulk of our own excellent Germanic element came, and will cast in their lot with a new nation.  We shall get a good share, but doubtless some will go to the republics of the far South, and some to the highlands of the tropics and through the canal to the West Coast.  If so, this will tend gradually toward increased production and purchasing power, as well as toward a leavening of social, political, and economic conditions of life.