BOLIVAR THE LIBERATOR.*
THERE are few periods -of modern history on which the average Englishman of to-day is worse informed than the rise of the South American Republics ; and Mr. Loraine Petre, who is well known for his careful and original studies of the great Napoleonic campaigns, has done good service by telling at length and with much literary skill the story of the Venezuelan statesman and soldier who shares with Daniel O'Connell the title of "The Liberator." Ninety years ago the name of Simon Bolivar was a household word in two hemispheres, and he was depicted now as the Washington, now as the Napoleon, of South America. Yet he died in his forty-eighth year, a broken and a disappointed man, whose schemes and ambitions had come to hopeless wreck, and whose last moments were clouded by prophetic visions of the anarchy and revolution which lay before the land in whose cause his life had been spent. The centenary of his birth, which was celebrated in August, 1883, attracted no attention in Europe, and very little has been done since then to revive the memory of " the deeds he did, the fields he won, the freedom he restored." But Bolivar was a remarkable man ; with the exception of Porfirio Diaz, the most remarkable man whom Spanish America baa produced. It is no exaggeration to say that but for him the emancipation of half a continent would have been indefinitely postponed. Without any pretensions to military knowledge or strategical insight, he was victorious in the most desperate campaigns. He found the revolutionary move- ment at the lowest ebb; be brought it to complete success. In spite of glaring weaknesses of character, he won the worship of his countrymen and the love of associates who were in many respects his superiors. His dream of a great Republic embracing the Latin nations north of the Equator and federated with Argentina and Pern was doomed to failure. But alone among the revolutionary leaders he had a construc- tive policy, and with all his ambitions he was free from the slightest suspition of cupidity or corruption. He practically beggared himself in the service of his countrymen, and when Bolivia voted him a million pesos he spent them on the emancipation of the slaves in that Republic.
Mr. Petre is no blind hero-worshipper. He lays stress on the immense personal influence which Bolivar established overevery one with whom he came in contact, and on the indomitable
• Simon Bolivar "El Libertador" : a life of the Chief Leader in the Revolt against Spain in Verwsusla, New Granada, and Pena. By F. Loraine Petre. With a Photogravure Frontispiece and a Map. London: John Lane. LI2s. 6d. net.]
courage and hopefulness which he displayed in the most adverse circumstances. But he admits that his manners were often harsh and unpleasant and his language violent, and he can find no excuse for his treatment of Miranda_ The cruelties and massacres for which Bolivar was responsible can only be extenuated by the feroeiou's behaviour of the Royalist leaders against whom he was pitted, Boves and Morales, with their " Infernal Division" .-
" The declaration of war to the death was a piece of barbarism which, however much in accord with the spirit of both sides in this fierce war, can only reflect discredit on a man who at least had bad opportunities of knowing how war is conducted among civilised peoples. Though Bolivar showed symptoms, very soon after the declaration, of regret for it, he undoubtedly enforced it on many occasions with the utmost rigour. The whole spirit of the revolutionary armies favoured merciless massacres, and up to 1820 Bolivar did nothing to check it. The murder of the mis- sionaries in Guayana was unpunished, so wasOthe massacre of the exhausted prisoners on the road from Bogota to the Magdalena in 1815. His admirers produce in his defence certificates of his general humanity. If be was as humane by nature as they repre- sent him, the obvious reply is that he sacrificed his principles for what he considered to be expediency."
Bolivar was indeed confronted with a problem that was too
hard for him, and which it may fairly be said was beyond the wit of man to solve. Three centuries of Spanish rule, corrupt; tyrannical, and utterly selfish, had rendered South
America ripe for revolt ; and when the-opportunity came, on the collapse of the Monarchy before Napoleon, revolution was spontaneous and irresistible. But it found a people, or rather a group of peoples, utterly unfit for independence, at least in the form of a Republican Government. The subjects of the Spanish oversee dominions were congenitally incapable of
working those institutions on which the British North American colonists had built up their newly won libertiv.
Twenty years of bitter experience taught Miranda that his countrymen were fatally deficient in the qualities of leader- ship and in political and administrative capacity. " These countries," he said only a month before his death, " will inevitably pass into the bands of an uncurbed multitude, to pass later into those of petty tyrants of all colours and all races." The annals of South Ameriea for the last eighty years form a melancholy fulfilment of the prophecy ; and though the prospects of the future are gradually brightening, the traditions and the inherent weaknesses of the South American Republics must postpone for a long time to come the day when they will fill that place in the comity of nations to which their wealth and their undeveloped resources entitle them.
Mr. Petre has many stirring battle-pieces in his book, for the South Americans, whether of Spanish or Indian blood, are born fighters. Many of the campaigns he records, carried on in the face of almost insurmountable difficulties of Nattu•e and of climate, are worthy of a high place in the annals of war. It is interesting to learn that no less than six thousand British soldiers, many of them Wellington's veterans, were enlisted in Bolivar's armies, and that the "Battalion Albion" formed the most trustworthy unit which carried his flag from the Orinoko to the Andes. Mr. Petre's opening chapter, moreover, on the character of the Spanish rule which Bolivar helped to overthrow is a luminous summary of a subject which is little understood.
It is remarkable that, in spite of gross misgovernment, there was, apart from the official classes, a strong body of public opinion hostile to the revolution. " We are opposed by every rational being in the country," wrote Bolivar in a moment of irritation. And the Royalists of Chile and Peru were quite as
much in evidence as those of New York and South Carolina a quarter of a century earlier.
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