LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
BRAZIL AND COMPENSATION TO GERMANY.
[To rex EDITOR OP TIM "SPECTATOR."] SIR,-It was with considerable displeasure, but not without some degree of amusement, that I read the letter of Mr. Seymour Ormsby-Gore published in your last issue. Another gentleman too, in the Pall Mall Gazette a few days ago, smitten with the German panic, proposed a similar expedient for drawing off from England the humour of the German peril. So it would seem that Mr. Ormsby-Gore has not even the merit of originality when he suggests the conquest of Brazil to provide an outlet for the external activities of the German Empire. Indeed the originality of Mr. Ormsby-Gore is to be found in the abysmal ignorance of the country with which he attempts to busy himself, and it is to inform him thereof that I write these few lines.
Brazil has 25,000,000 inhabitants governed in accordance with the principles of one of the most liberal constitutions in the world. As an example of the seriousness of her Govern- ment may be mentioned the honourable way in which she has always met her engagements with foreign countries, even during the periods of her most difficult financial troubles, when certain growing pains, from which nations as well as individuals suffer, weakened her powers of production and public revenues. As a proof of the confidence which the administration of Brazil inspires among English business men I will only state that there are more than 112 million pounds sterling of British capital invested in my country. Money is generally better informed than the dilettanti of international politics.
Mr. Ormsby-Gore, who with one stroke of the pen plants down so many German emigrants in Sao Paulo, where there is none, also imagines assassinations, disorders, and I know not what besides throughout the vast extent of the territories of the Brazilian people, who, being just as phlegmatic as we deem the English to be, do not worry themselves over-much about the perpetual risk to their precious lives. Probably the writer possesses a temperament which is easily perturbed, and, in consequence of some extravagant gesture of the Latin people, a race to which we are proud to belong, has straight- way conjured up tragedies and murders. Or perhaps, in order to form an opinion of the Brazilian Government, he has been reading some organ of the Opposition. We are not so susceptible, and, indeed, when we read in Rio de Janeiro the news of the strikes in this country, the account of the latest sittings in the House, and the threats of Ulster in the Unionist newspapers we largely discount these reports as emanating from interested parties.
Your correspondent advises England to allow Germany to take Brazil as nonchalantly as he might take a cup of our good coffee. Without wishing to ruffle the national susceptibilities of Mr. Ormsby-Gore, who apparently has not the same scruples when uselessly covering sheets of paper with his effusions, we Brazilians would remind him of the difficulties encountered by England, Italy, and Germany in Africa in circumstances incomparably more favourable to the invaders. But enough ! When will that time come in which amateurish writers will first study their subject before daring to write
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