dred years and which have shown no hostility to their neighbors. There is therefore no opportunity for foreign nations to alter the map of America, though the American powers may combine or separate, and the United States is free to annex territory according to her judgment. Among these allowable territorial changes are protectorates by the United States over those formerly independent islands and small land states which are nearest to us. These are necessary to protect the Canal route, or to safeguard American capital or to avoid giving to European powers an excuse to intervene and land military forces. Protectorates of the United States. Protection against Europe. For the above reasons the United States undertakes to prevent certain causes of trouble between Latin-American and European and Asiatic states. This leaves to such powers no good reason for intervening in America except the defense of national honor or interest from violence. In such cases the United States decides whether there is a just reason for war. Against any effort to build up colonies our government will protest, and in the last resort will use military and naval force to ward off what would otherwise become a danger to the United States. For this purpose the United States will, as occasion serves, consult the strongest and stablest Latin-American states, without entering into any arrangement by which the decisions of the United States could be overruled by votes or combinations of other powers. Coöperation with Latin America. Permanent These principles depend upon the permanent interest of the United States in preventing European nations from altering the controlling status of the United States by conquest, by colonization, by acquiring naval stations, or by intervening in behalf of contracts, claims, or debts. Having by repeated statement and acts affirmed these principles, the United States holds that the rest of the world is aware of them and must accept them as the basis of their relations with America. Notice to the World. "Permanent Interest" might be well used as the briefest phrase which describes the Doctrine of the Future. It is free from the objection of "Paramount Interest", which seems to claim a supremacy in America that the United States is not called upon to assert as an official principle. Permanent Interest is not based upon the name or reputation of any one statesman. Permanent Interest is opposed to all forces and influences which might endanger other extra-American possessions of the United States, such as Hawaii and the Philippines and Liberia. Permanent Interest is as good against Asia as against Europe. Permanent Interest does not exclude the side of sympathy and neighborly feeling; it is a permanent interest of the United States to sympathize with our neighbors' troubles, for that is one way to avoid quarrels with them. Permanent Interest adapts itself to all changes of conditions, while leaving the kernel of the doctrine whole. Permanent Interest is the same in principle as the interest which external powers feel in their hemispheres and spheres of influence. Permanent Interest is no discovery or novelty: it is simply an attempt to state as the ruling principle of our government the considerations which actually rule that government. CHAPTER XXIII PEACEFUL MAINTENANCE OF THE DOCTRINE OF PERMANENT INTEREST THE MONROE DOCTRINE A STATE OF MIND ONE of the most serious faults of American statesmen and the American people has been their habit of looking upon the Monroe Doctrine as a sacred principle which needs to be stated, but not to be executed. It seems to have the weight of the Ten Commandments, which are not questioned or limited or construed, but obeyed. In some ways this trust in a paper Monroe Doctrine has been justified, because it has usually been framed in words and not deeds. The powerful sentences of James Monroe actually gave pause to European governments. Seward's despatches with their rising confidence that the French could not wish to remain in Mexico, compelled Napoleon to give the order for the withdrawal of his troops. Olney's rhetoric was more cogent than all the logic of Lord Salisbury. The motto for the popular idea of the Doctrine of Permanent Interest might well be "What the United States says, goes." What has really made both the Monroe Doctrine and the Doctrine of Permanent Interest respected, has not been this state of mind of those who have expressed the will and purpose of the United States, but the ideas of foreign statesmen who were disposed to set themselves against such a will and purpose. The effect of the Monroe Doctrine, like that of many formal laws and ordinances, has been to lead to a general belief that if it were not observed something disagreeable would happen. This idea has been allowed to hold sway in Europe because Europe had other things to think about. American affairs and the possibility of securing American territory have played rather a small part in the combinations of Europe during the last hundred years. The commercial conditions which brought the West Indies to the fore have long since changed. The semi-tropical products in which they had once almost a monopoly are now raised in many other parts of the world. Cane sugar has to compete with beet sugar on the continent of Europe, and even in the United States. Brazilian coffee must maintain its market against the Orient. Rubber about equal to the Brazilian article is raised in Ceylon. Except for the four large West India Islands, all but one of which are now under the supremacy of the United States, the parts of America best worth owning have been the most defensible. Germany is superior to Brazil in military and naval strength; but the Germans who could be landed in Brazil, for the purpose of invading it, might be inferior in strength to the defenders. The psychology of Europe has lent itself readily to the belief that there is nothing in America which up to this time has seemed worth while to possess, against the resistance of the local states, against the threats of the United States, and against the supposed conviction of Europe that it was unseemly to conquer and annex the territory of weak states. Great Britain particularly has come to the conclusion that it is not worth while to keep up an opposition to the known wishes of the United States. "You Americans are a hard people to run away from,' said a distinguished English statesman; by which he meant that whenever a controversy with this country arose it was difficult to grant it easily and gracefully without being thought weak. The present hypnotic effect of the Monroe Doctrine on Europe may die out in either of two ways. Foreign nations may cease to believe that the United States will defend her Doctrine, if the issue is squarely raised; or, the Americans may themselves show that they are not willing to endure the dangers and sacrifices which maintenance of a Doctrine of Permanent Interest is likely to bring. The effect of written statements of our position is about worn out. The two questions which the world now asks are: does the United States mean that America shall be for the Americans? If so, will the United States back up that decision with men, guns, and ships? THE NATIONAL DETERMINATION Up to the Spanish War of 1898 this country stood at the parting of the ways: it was still possible then to withdraw quietly from responsibility for any other nation on earth, or any territory outside our own boundaries. This was very nearly Grover Cleveland's policy during his first administration, and has been urged in 1898 and since by strong writers and active propagandas. The nation deliberately chose the other road. It stood by its ancient belief that misfortunes to other American powers were indirectly misfortunes to the United States of America. Specifically, it listened to the cry of the Cubans for sympathy and aid in 1898. Porto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines were unexpected prizes of war; but McKinley justly interpreted the public sentiment of the time that they must be kept. Notwithstanding the resistance of the Anti-Imperialists, they were added on varying terms to the American Empire. Roosevelt made possible a United States Canal across Panama; but if he had not secured that route by rough-and-ready methods, the sentiment of the country would have pushed the Administration to the Nicaragua route. When our government once owned the Canal, the people were willing to accept whatever form of Doctrine might be necessary to protect that route. The action of the Administration on Venezuela and the Drago Doctrine seemed reasonable to most thinking Americans. The necessary outcome of that action in the protectorate of Santo Domingo was unpopular in the Senate because it seemed to the Senators an infraction of their power over treaties; when they ratified the later treaty, they accepted the policy, as either a good thing or a necessary evil. The subsequent territorial progress of the United States in Central America and the West Indies has aroused very little alarm, perhaps because people do not realize how fast and how far it goes. The country in general supported President Taft and President Wilson in their unwillingness to intervene in Mexico; but if they had followed the same active policy of intervention there that they followed in Nicaragua, apparently they would have had the support of both houses of Congress and of a majority of voters. Voices have been plentiful to protest against these methods and their consequent responsibilities. No subject has been |