War in South America

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Oct 20, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 41.

War in South America.

The Cologne Zeitung, a prominent German paper, laments the indifference with which the United States views the situation now developing in South America. It goes on to tell us that the powers of South America are arming themselves with a purpose of engaging in a bloody conflict. Sources of discord are not only numerous, but grow more acute with the passage of each year. Two great South American powers are only waiting until their armies are sufficiently well drilled and disciplined to plunge into a struggle for the final disposition of a problem which has occupied their diplomats for years. Then, too, there is the Pacific question. The Argentine Republic chafes under the boundary rules and believes that she ought to have ports on the Pacific; and the German paper believes that this is likely to embroil Argentina and Chile, notwithstanding their great state of peace. Students of South American affairs, we are told, need not be told that Brazil and Argentina are both striving to place their respective armies upon a footing of preparedness which might well be the envy of a European power. Now it seems that Bolivia has called in German army officers to help her train her recruits.

If all this be true—and we know no reason to doubt it—it only emphasizes once again the predictions made by the prophet Joel 800 years before Christ, “Prepare war, wake up the mighty men.”