between the Rio Grande and the Canal Zone. The present Mexico is a terrible problem. At the end of four years of revolution, it seems as far from peace and a settled government as at the beginning. Mexico is our intimate neighbor, having a common boundary of 1810 miles from the Gulf to the Pacific. The business of Mexico is interwoven with that of the United States through railroads and concessions. At the same time, Mexico contains a large number of aliens from Europe who under ordinary circumstances would look to their own governments for protection. For three years the United States fended off those governments by giving them to understand that the reconstruction of Mexico was an American question. Following out this policy, the United States declined to recognize President Huerta on the ground stated by President Wilson: "We can have no sympathy with those who seek to seize the power of government to advance their own personal interests or ambition." The special interest of the United States was clearly admitted by the British Premier, Mr. Asquith, in a public statement November 10, 1913: "There have been rumors that after the United States had adopted a line of their own in regard to Mexico, we took a line calculated deliberately to thwart America. There is not a vestige of foundation for such a rumor.' " By common consent, therefore, the United States was left free to straighten out the Mexican crisis if possible; and she tried both mediation and intervention. Mediation, or as it was commonly called, "watchful waiting", failed because the factions in Mexico did not wish to mediate, but to annihilate their enemies. The prohibition of the export of arms to Mexico, issued in March, 1912, by President Taft was withdrawn by President Wilson as "a departure from the accepted practices of neutrality." A lack of respect for the American flag led to a joint resolution of Congress, April 22, 1914: "That the President is justified in the employment of the armed forces of the United States to enforce his demand for unequivocal amends for certain affronts and indignities committed against the United States. The President thereupon sent to Vera Cruz an expedition which captured the place and occupied it from April to September, 1914. During this time the A B C powers offered their good offices and worked out a scheme for the settlement of Mexico, which seemed likely to be accepted by the leading factions. Again the victorious faction divided into rival bodies, and Mexico was again thrown into anarchy. Enormous quantities of foreign property were destroyed and lives of some Americans were taken. Foreigners, especially Spaniards, were roughly handled by the revolutionists. Probably in the whole history of Latin America no such crop of damages and claims was ever sown as in Mexico. After four years of warfare the country was no nearer peace, and the United States was no nearer a decision as to how it should deal with a long-drawn out civil war within her nearest neighborhood. European powers were diverted from this question by the breaking out of the Great War in July, 1914; but by holding back from intervention in Mexico, they have thrown upon the United States the moral and political responsibility for reaching a solution somehow. And the United States hesitates because of the prophecy stated by a general of the army: "If we ever get into Mexico, we'll never get out again." Annexation of Mexico would not fit into any form of the American Doctrine. FIXED POLICY OF PROTECTORATES Three administrators, Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson, have for ten years been pushing the influence of the United States into Latin America, by their combined policy of gold and steel. If the Senate ever ratifies the treaties, the United States will be enlarged by bringing within our sphere of influence a complex of countries, islands, and naval bases, which will be practically territory of the United States. This policy leads in the direction of annexing the whole island of Haiti with its two republics, and all Central America, with its five States. If that is accomplished, the United States will possess or control three West India Islands (Cuba, Porto Rico, and Santo Domingo), and six mainland dependencies (Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Salvador, Costa Rica, and Panama). The country may as well face the danger of an expansion which will make it responsible for twelve million people of whom not one fiftieth can speak English, and not one twentieth have ever shown a capacity for self-government. They are accustomed to the rule of the sword. They have traditions and standards which are strange to Washington. The main reason put forward for taking them is that otherwise they will go to smash; that they are practically bankrupt; that Americans lend them money and sell them goods and cannot collect. That is hardly an encouraging point of departure for making future territories and States of the Union. If these new protectorates are not to be future States of the Union, they will be colonies, and will thus go back to the status from which their fathers revolted a century ago. Uncle Sam has done well with the Philippines and Porto Rico; he has been a good friend and aid to Cuba; but there is a limit to the size of the family which the most good-natured uncle can bring up to advantage. It will be a queer family with two kinds of children: the legitimate forty-eight equal sisters, and ten others darker in color who are not to be admitted to the common living room but enter into separate apartments of their own by a side entrance. Is that "government of the people, by the people, for the people"? CHAPTER XXI RELATION OF THE AMERICAN DOCTRINE TO COM MERCE THE WEST INDIAN THEORY IN all the various statements of the Monroe Doctrine, official and unofficial, the motive put in the foreground has usually been the political-foreign policy, territory, conquest, treaties, effect of democracy, paramount interest. One of the tickling things about the Doctrine is that it adds to the national selfconsciousness of being a great power in the world. The American eagle screams partly because he likes to hear his sounds re-echoing among the crags. When Secretary Fish made the impolitic statement that the United States had a "leading voice" in North America; when Secretary Olney unchained his doctrine of the "fiat" and "sovereignty" of the United States, they were saying those things partly in order to show the world that they dared to say them. Another motive which undoubtedly was always in the background was the commercial interest of our country, but it was never distinctly stated as a significant force till Fish, in the despatches just referred to, talked of "commercial connections" and "the development of a peaceful American policy." The idea that West Indian trade was the chief motive of the Monroe Doctrine has been discussed earlier in this volume. The argument against this view is that there was good trade both before and after the Declaration. From 1783 to 1823 there was plenty of trade with the British West Indies in British bottoms; and with French, Spanish, and other West Indies in American vessels which braved the dangers of limited and contraband trade. After 1823, for a good twenty years the colonial systems of Great Britain, France, and Spain remained an impediment to trade in the West Indies. England under pressure from Jackson, and a system of "countervailing duties" passed by Congress, admitted American vessels in 1830, and in 1849 gave up the Navigation System altogether. The new states admitted imports on nominally reasonable terms, except that there continued a vexatious system of fines or duties on the transit of imported goods. The Monroe Doctrine placed no restraint on the right of the Latin-Americans to make such commercial treaties as they chose, provided there should be no preference to any European power as against the rest of the world. The total South American trade at- this time was not large, and the United States probably got a fair share. Few of the modern tropical and sub-tropical staples were then exported. The trade in fruit, rubber, frozen meats, and nitrates was not yet set in motion. The most that our ancestors could expect was that they should have as good an opportunity as any one else to develop reciprocal trade. The North Americans were handicapped by a lack of capital. They founded few importing and exporting houses outside our boundaries. They were not yet a manufacturing country. Foreign trade in all directions did not bulk so big as it does nowadays. POLICY OF RECIPROCITY The turn of feeling on the subject of trade with Latin America, and the reciprocity acts of 1890 and 1897 have already been discussed. After 1870, two parallel forces brought into relief the commercial motive in America. These were, investments and surplus manufactures. Cuba always had a stable government, and Mexico after Diaz came to power in 1879 invited investments. Money therefore poured into these countries to build railroads, to open mines, to develop agricultural estates. In Mexico particularly the railroads had a subsidy from the government; and those who desired concessions of other kinds found means of convincing the authorities. With these investments went a considerable number of American citizens with their families. Thousands of business men throughout the Union had interests in Mexico and knew something of LatinAmerican conditions. Their thrift and far-sightedness quickened the pulse of Mexico, in which the revenue and the exports and imports rapidly increased. Thus investors at home and |