ARGENTINA.* MR. TURNER has a grievous subject, and grievous is
the im- pression he contrives to leave upon his reader. We have read many unfavourable views of the Spanish South Americans, but never anything half so hopeless and depressing as
Argentina and the Argentines. If we are to believe Mr. Turner, Buenos Ayres is the centre of the most despicable travesty of Western civilisation that the world has ever seen. It is a city of barbarism covered with the thinnest and most useless layer of Parisian polish. The natives are corrupt windbags; the foreign emigrants, swindlers or dupes. The whole country is, in a word, a gigantic fraud,—a City like Martin Chuzzlewit's Eden, only multiplied ten-thousand-fold.
Though Mr. Turner no doubt exaggerates a good deal, there is a certain basis of truth for his assertions. The present con- dition of the Argentine Republic shows how low a country may be brought by speculation and land-jobbing. For the ten years previous to 1890, the whole energies of the country were devoted to the work of self-inflation. Stockjobbing, company- promotion, and the creation of bogus projects of every sort and
kind, were the only national industries. At last the end came, and the fictitious prosperity of Argentina ended in a flash of blood and fire,—the Revolution of 1890. The Latin races
have often shown a Contemptible levity in regard to what is either a sacred duty or the worst of crimes; but their willingness to look upon treason as a holiday affair—a thing for squibs and crackers, in spite of the crimson stain upon it—was never more conspicuously displayed. The revo- lution, though some thousand men perished, was an Act of a comic-opera. Everybody fired at everybody else in a good- humoured way, and the fleet, without any special ill-feeling, bombarded the town in general. Here is Mr. Turner's account of the matter :—
" The Revolution was stifled—not for want of a well-conceived plan, not for want of the elements of success, but because at the supreme moment the splendidly reared fabric collapsed like a house of cards, and fell into complete disorganisation. Everybody wanted to command, and nobody was willing to obey. Large numbers of civilians who flocked to the revolutionary standard were admitted to the barracks, armed, fed, and—left to amuse themselves ; for no one with any real authority was found to drill, organise, or head them. Arms were distributed indiscriminately to whomsover chose to ask for them. The enemy might have sent • Argentina and the Argentines : Notes and Impressions of a Fire Years' Sojourn in the Argentine Republic, 1886-90. By Thomas A. Turner. London: Swan Sonnenachein and Co. 189-2. and got away half the Remington in the barracks., and then turned them against the insurgents. For three days the latter dilly-dallied and shilly-shallied, wasting precious time, cooling the courage and trying the patience of soldier and civilian alike. Orders given by one chief to cut the telegraph and telephone wires, and tear up the rails, were countermanded by another ; and meantime the enemy was creeping up into the best positions, augmenting its forces, throwing up entrenchments, fortifying the Government House and the Plaza Victoria, forming cordons, and hemming in the strongest party. It seemed as if the whole affair was looked upon almost as a joke. ' At times it was difficult to remember that heavy slaughter was going on all around ; in many parts of the city people were chatting, joking, and laughing at their doors, whilst children were playing about the streets ap- parently without a care. The attitude of the foreign population was more serious ; they seemed to see the heavy responsibilities of the position, and to accurately forecast the result of the insur- rection.' Surrender was inevitable. The citizens were disbanded, told to go home, and vouchsafed no word of explanation beyond vague assurances that the cause had triumphed, that honourable terms of capitulation had been obtained, and that needless blood- shed would be avoided. But the revulsion of feeling amongst the populace was instantaneous and intense. It was with the utmost difficulty that the people could be restrained from turning round and revolting against the revolters, by whom they declared and believed that they had been sold. They dispersed quietly, however, some with derisive laughter, some with stern resolve written in their faces and ominous murmurs on their lips, and nearly all crying aloud, Estamos vendidos' (we are sold). A sergeant in command of a revolutionary piquet, which was ordered to surrender to the Government forces, turning towards a group of officers, exclaimed with bitterness, And for this they called us out —to surrender without a struggle ! Cowards ! Poltroons !' And so saying, he placed his rifle to his breast, and shot himself through the heart. Misguided man ! One could understand his shooting any one else—any of those cowards or poltroons, but not his own brave self ! AU too quickly the victory of the enemy was proclaimed ; the Revolution was suffocated; the great triple alliance had been vanquished; and yet there had practically been no struggle—the civilians had not been called upon to fight ! The police were again in the streets. Juarez and his ministers, who, with true Argentine courage, the moment the danger appeared, had fled from the city and hid themselves in a train a few miles out of town, on the Rosario RailWay, now hastened back, mingled with the crowd, strutted, embraced, wept, laughed, rejoiced, and con- gratulated each other, as though they had each and all had a share in gaining the victory. Meantime, however, while the people, who had been afraid to put their noses outside their doors for three days, were now pouring into the streets and thronging the Plazas Victoria and Parque, the squadron was firing upon the city ! Had the Government or the Revolutionists won the day P What was false and what was true amidst so much conflicting evidence ? Time alone supplied the answers."
Oddly enough, however, the extraordinary fiasco produced by the bungling of the men who desired the Revolution led to an event which, to a limited extent, was honourable to the .Argentines. What the bullets of the rebels and the shells of the fleet failed to do was accomplished by the mere weight of public opinion. Though the Union Civica twice disappeared in a burst of indignation and derision, the people were determined that Juarez Gelman and his Ministers should go. As so often happens among Southern races, the people found a happy phrase, and that phrase bawled a hundred times a day by every man, woman, and child in Buenos Ayres, literally blew the President from office. The words, " Ya se fed el burro," " The Donkey must go "—the " Donkey" was Celman's nickname— were on every one's lips, and with an instinctive appreciation of the imperative character of the demand, Gelman yielded. He had withstood or squared a revolt; he could not stand against or get round a popular cry. Mr. Turner's account of the transaction is bright and amusing
Not the Junta, not the Union Civica, not the triple alliance, but the outraged people won the real victory. There would have been rivers of blood running in the streets of Buenos Ayres had not the sacrifice been laid upon the altar of the new-born deity— Public Opinion. With that sacrifice the people were appeased. Their demands had been met. They had established their sovereignty. They would have new rulers—of what kind they paused not to inquire, nor cared, so long as those whom they hated had been overthrown. They had what they wanted for the moment; anybody might take the praise and the credit. They became delirious with joy of their victory. The streets, the houses, the squares, the public offices, the whole -city, nay, the whole country were in an uproar. The Junta raised its head and lifted its colours—it claimed the victory for its own ! It harangued the people from the balconies, from the windows, from the house- tops, from the doorsteps, from carts, from the roofs of tramcars, from wherever human foot could find a lodgment. The masses went mad with entusiasmo frenetico. They screamed, and shouted, and sang, and laughed, and danced, and embraced; everybody was past containing. The air was rent with their vivas and tumultuous cries. The weak voices of the orators scarcely penetrated beyond the window-sills. But the crowd knew what was said ; they were used to it. The catch-words passed on amongst them like wild- fire, each greeted with a tremendous viva. But far above all other cries, above the din and the roaring of the multitude, rose the cry, Ya se fue burro !'y It began with the dawn—it stopped not for the darkness of the night. Old men shrieked it, infants lisped it. Bands of youths, gangs of roughs, linked arm-in-arm, paraded the streets chanting the cry. In their hats they wore cards on which the words were boldly printed. Prints, banners, garments bore the same device. It was written in jets of gas, chalked on the walls, and stencilled on the pavements ; it met the eye in every ' private-and public place."
The festa, for which the Revolution was made an excuse, lasted six days and nights. Illuminations, balls, processions,
and meetings were carried on in one unending stream. Of the scenes in the streets Mr. Turner gives a very curious and very graphic account :—
"Traffic was paralysed in the central streets. The crowds filled. the tram-cars, and clambered on to their very roofs. Every car- riage that attempted to pass through the masses at night with lighted lamps was stopped, and the driver made to extinguish them. One gentleman put his head out of the carriage window, and addressed the good-humoured crowd in these words : Ya gee se he apagado el gran farol pare que sieve apagar los mios?' (` Seeing that the Big Lamp is extinguished, what purpose will it serve to extinguish my gig lamps ? ' By the Big Lamp was of course meant the fallen President, who was commonly depicted in comic cartoons as an ass with his head in a street lamp.) The speech was received with tremendous applause, and the carriage passed on in triumph with its lamps alight. Veritably the whole nation had gone mad. - Yet to the honour of the Argentines be it recorded that there was no drunkenness, no pocket-picking, no riotous disorder. What damage was done was done by the roughs from the Boca and the riverside. The great multitude was frantic with enthusiasm, nothing more. Good-tempered laughter, a little horse-play, chaffing, and harmless joking, were the must heinous sins of the best-behaved crowd I ever mingted with. Natives and foreigners, men, women, and children, old and young, rich and poor, white, -black, yellow, and brown, all enjoyed the play, as if it were some immense and popular carnival."
Those who witnessed this strange scene, and who were his- - torically minded, may have congratulated themselves upon
the fact that they were beholding, on a smaller scale, the working of the spirit which ruled Paris during many of the earlier events of the Revolution. The Englishman imagines that revolution and treason are serious affairs, and must be conducted with set teeth and grave face. Not so the men of the Latin races. To them, revolutions are like race-meetings, with a certain amount of danger added. This attitude is well exhibited by a story which an able observer and critic of Con- tinental politics during a former generation was fond of relating. The political critic in question was engaging an apartment in one of the chief streets of Paris. The landlady, wishing, like all landladies, to make the best of her rooms, led him to one of the principal windows, and as she swung back the Venetian blinds, remarked : " C'est par ici, Monsieur, que nous voyons passer nos revolutions." The good woman was no cynic, but spoke from her heart, and just as an English landlady who harps upon the splendid view of the sea from the two-pair front. An Englishman feels disgraced at the idea of recurrent revolution. Not so a Frenchman or a Spaniard.
Of the rest of Mr. Turner's book we cannot find space to speak, though it contains much interesting matter. Its chief defect is a certain acrimony and querulousness of style, doubtless justified by his personal experiences, but out of place in a book which professes to be a serious attempt to gauge the Argentine problem.
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