“We need to adopt to our conditions,” said the Brazilian war minister in 1899, “the principles and the perfections sanctioned by experience of the more advanced nations.” On the other side of the continent Chilean military and political leaders argued for the “necessity of reconstituting rapidly an army whose efficiency would be the guarantee of [our] security,” by adopting the “methods of warfare tested previously in the Franco-Prussian War.” Throughout the region at the time similar pleas and recommendations were being voiced. Several thousand miles to the north, General Emory Upton, the tireless reformer, summed up his study of the German military system by stating that “I have given in brief their organization, and then have enlarged on those features which, in my judgment, we ought to imitate.”

Different as these countries were, in both their internal and external conditions, there were some remarkable similarities in the observations of their leaders – as if they were reading from the same script. While the South American countries emulated, in varying degrees, Germany's Imperial Army, they maintained their close attachment to Britain's redoubtable Royal Navy as the model for their naval forces. Here was another similarity. Why? These countries were discriminating in whom to emulate in different areas of military capabilities. Once again their decision appeared to be based on the same uncompromising criteria.