". . . Nor for His Country"

A distinguished Chilean who recently visited the U.S. and England wrote a New York friend about his country as he found it when he went back home:

"It is very difficult for me to tell you the first impression I had when I arrived here. Besides, it has partly dissolved already, as everything here dissolves a little. But I do know that the tremendous energy which contact with life had given me, the belief that there were many things which could be created or improved, the faith in people's good intentions toward making a better world which the Anglo-Saxons had communicated to me have wasted away, dissolved, day by day disappeared after contact with everything here: the people, the way of life, the climate, the food, the skepticism, the sun, the mountains. Nobody believes in anything. The crafty huaso [the Chilean cowboy] who distrusts everything and everybody is today the Chilean type.

The Market. "It is not that the people's distrust of the fighting nations' intentions has increased; it is much more than that. No political sector believes in the good intentions of any other, and worse still, they don't believe in their own. Nobody believes that tomorrow will be better than today, not for him, nor for his country, nor for the world.

"This brings with it a complete lack of incentive for action, for preparation, for desire; and the only thing which moves them all is a feverish eagerness to make quick money without great responsibility or work. The whole country is one great market in which all try to make immediate profits: the fruit dealer who gives you ten rotten peaches instead of twelve good ones; the speculator who buys needed products cheap, hoards them, makes them scarce, and sells them at high prices; the Comisariato [Board of Price Administration]--intended to lower prices--which works in league with the speculators. . . . And the prices go up and up, and the poor people suffer for it because they cannot dance to this rhythm.

"But they are saved from complete despair by that very resigned skepticism which through many generations has made them see that whatever the Government, aristocratic or popular-front, German or North American, their life will be the same. . . . They fight over futile things, and they outdo each other in trying to say the last and most hurting word, in increasing the confusion and mistrust.

The Dream. "It is really a problem to give to one's son faith in life, in men, strength to create, to improve. Not even the old pride in one's country can be defended with good reason. The best it has it owes to God and nature. Man just smirches it.

"And with all this, the Chilean has many good qualities, which don't operate. In the first place, he has a good critical sense: each one of them knows that what I am telling you is the truth, but they don't have the nerve to yell it out. The Chilean has a sense of his political responsibility, which makes Chile the country with the most public opinion in South America. But it acts only in the abstract. . . .

"The Chilean is naturally kind and unmercenary. The urge to earn money which moves him is--in the rich--largely a need to kill time and a lack of vision. In the poor it is the need to eat, to drink, and to rest and rest. . . .

"What this country needs is a terrific shaking-up, a war, a devil of an earthquake. But one can't wish that either. Life here is sweet, pleasant. The sky is blue; the mountains, the women are enchanting; the climate, the peace. . . .

"But after seeing the world and realizing that the rhythm out there is not the one we have here, that soon we shall be rudely awakened from this enchanted and idiotic dream, one feels like warning and alerting everybody so that the shock will not be too severe."

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