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Show How To Make A Greater Spain ONE Arturo Perez Martin, a Costa Rican, writes excitedly to the 'Expana Maderna" of the possibilities of Greater Spain, and thinks the Spanish people can restore their old-time prestige and power in the new world and advance ad-vance old Spain to her old enviable position in Europe, thiough the emigration and expansion of her sons in the new world. He wants Spanish politic'ans to visit Latin America and study conditions condi-tions and then organize emigration to the new world. Hi3 thought Is a1! right, but we fear his plan to carry it out would, If tried, fail. Spain has a large surplus population, and this is felt more and more as the need of keeping large armies ar-mies and multitudes of officials in her colonies, has been removed. We think her young men and their wives should by thousands seek foreign lands, and naturally they should go where the language and traditions are all Spanish. But the race has greatly changed on this side and emigrants emi-grants from Spain to Latin America would, going singly, and unfamiliar with western ways, be liable li-able to much suffering, disappointment and sorrow. But if they would go in colonies, all that would be changed. The first thing a colony wants is land. Abundance of that can be obtained cheaply in any of the South American states. If, say, a thousand could go together, acquire the needed land, establish their own school and church and begin at once to cultivate the land, and to carry on a'l the wants of their little community, gradually gradu-ally lealizing that the whole land is open to them, in which they might do, undisturbed, any legitimate legiti-mate thing, in a little while they would catch the inspiiation of the change from the old to the new world, and with one hundred such colonies settled where they could produce what the world is willing to pay for, the change that they could bring about in twenty-five years would be a transformation trans-formation for them, and reflected back, the parent country would be illuminated. There would be a greater Spain, but it would be on this side of the Atlantic, even as the United States is a greater England and Germany, and a vastly greater Ireland. |
