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Plato Profile Directory 20
Page 06
The day will come when the port of Arica on the Pacific Ocean will be joined to Oruro, on the Antofagasta line, the well-known junction in Bolivia, and eventually to Santa Cruz. The present plan is to build a line from the already existing railway at Cochabamba to Porto Velarde on the Rio Grande (Rio Mamore), then to Santa Cruz. The Brazilians on their side will eventually connect Sao Paulo with Cuyaba and Corumba. It will then be possible to travel by rail right across the South American continent in its richest part.
In any Northern State as many as four hundred different kinds of the six-footed or true insects, in the winged or adult stage, may be taken in winter by any one who is so disposed, and knows where to search for them. Among the _Orthoptera_, the "grouse grasshoppers" live during the cold season beneath the loose bark of logs, or beneath the bottom rails of the old Virginia worm fences. From these retreats every warm, sunny day tempts them forth in numbers. On such occasions the earth seems to swarm with them, as they leap before the intruder, their hard bodies striking the dead leaves with a sound similar to that produced by falling hail. The common field cricket belongs also to the _Orthoptera_, and the young of various sizes winter under rails and logs, bidding defiance to Jack Frost from within a little burrow or pit beneath the protecting shelter.
The considerations which support such a policy on America's part are mainly these: First, that if America does not lend the assistance of her detachment from European quarrels to such an arrangement, Europe of herself may not prove capable of it. Second, that if Europe does not come to some such arrangement the resulting unrest, militarism, moral and material degeneration, for the reasons above indicated and for others to be indicated presently, will most unfavorably affect the development of America, and expose her to dangers internal and external much greater than those which she would incur by intervention. Third, that if America's influence is in the manner indicated made the deciding factor in the establishment of a new form of world society, she would virtually take the leadership of Western civilization, and her capital become the centre of the political organization of the new world State. While "world domination" by military means has always proved a dangerous diet for all nations that have eaten of it heretofore, the American form of that ambition would have this great difference from earlier forms--that it would be welcomed instead of being resisted by the dominated. America would have given a new meaning to the term and found a means of satisfying national pride, certainly more beneficial than that which comes of military glory.
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