PREFACE
Several lists of books relating to the southern countries of the Western Hemisphere have been published; but as they contain the titles of works of unequal value, and at the same time are entirely wanting in critical comment, they have failed to supply the urgent demand that exists for guidance in buying and reading. To meet this want the present little book, which disclaims all pretense to completeness in the bibliographical sense, was hastily compiled. Amid the pressure of work the compiler found it necessary to confine himself to listing only such books as could be readily come at in the libraries of the city of New York.
The method pursued in making up the list was as follows: first, to introduce the titles of widely heralded works, without regard to their merit, in order to discriminate between them; and, second, to bring forward less well known publications so as to draw attention to their excellencies. To have listed only such as could be commended would have failed to furnish that perspective which is essential to giving prominence to works of real merit.
If it should occur to any that some of the comments are slightly censorious, what follows is offered as an explanation and an excuse.
Human beings are prone to wander over the earth, and to print accounts of their feelings and thoughts regarding the lands they visit, and some even write books about countries they have never seen. If the only denizens of alien lands were beasts, birds and insects, writing books concerning them would involve little social responsibility. However, most of the lands now known to tourists, reporters, historians, scientists, sociologists, reformers and other travelers are inhabited by beings not remarkably unlike those who come to investigate them, particularly in pride and sensitiveness and a certain preference for their own point of view and manner of living and thinking. Moreover, the dwellers in these alien lands commonly have commercial, social and intellectual relations with the peoples represented by the visitors, and their attitude toward them is to a considerable degree determined by what the latter publish regarding the countries they visit.
In view of all this, it is impossible to overemphasize the seriousness of the responsibility that rests upon those who represent their country in other lands, or who give publicity to their thoughts concerning them. The obligation to consider the serious influence of books upon international relations seems not to have been generally recognized, however, else many of those who have betaken themselves to authorship would either have written differently or refrained altogether from writing. Yet authors will not be denied; even publishers are unwary; and the general public has not ceased to be gullible. As a result of this failure to recognize responsibility, a vast quantity of blunderingly conceived, hastily composed and faultily written literature regarding foreign nations has been turned out by inexperienced, ill informed and strongly biased writers of all the more important countries.
The Code provides no penalty for a general ignorance of history, a slovenly style, national prejudice, intellectual provincialism, a lack of insight, and bad taste. As a result the Philistines roam the world unhindered, and criticism is the sole weapon with which to keep them in discipline. Until writers realize that only what is just and true in matter, and what is finished in form is worthy to be published, such unsparing criticism as that which characterizes this work must be continued.
A few words are necessary as to details. It will be observed that the spelling, and the style, to use this word in the sense in which printers employ it, are not uniform, that the names of countries and cities vary in the different titles and in the comments. This was inevitable. The orthography and style of the titles are different in the works from which they were taken. In scrupulously reproducing them it was necessary to admit many inconsistencies. The compiler is responsible for the orthography of the comments only, and in them he exhibits what he considers the correct form of the place names introduced.