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publicity, and an up-to-date international library of 50,000 volumes, and other practical features, for the maintenance of which the United States and the other governments contribute annually $175,000.

Seventh: As convincing evidence of the efficiency of this American League in promoting peace and commerce through educating the peoples of every American Republic concerning those of each and all the others, it is a matter of record that, during the administration of the present Director, 5,000,000 reliable descriptive pamphlets, bulletins and reports on Pan American subjects, printed in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French, have been carefully circulated among the American Republics, and the annual value of Pan American commerce has been in

creased from $450,000,000 to $1,750,000,000, or nearly 300 per cent.; in other words, while fifteen years ago the United States was far behind all the European countries in Pan American trade, last year it had a greater commerce with the Latin American countries than had

all the rest of the world put together. Reciprocal commerce, friendship and peace are interlocking: they promote and protect each other. Why not continue and give greater powers

to an organization which accomplishes such results?

Eighth: In the light of the above absolute facts, the question arises: If the approval by the United States Senate of the World League plan, as finally submitted, shall depend upon definite reservations covering the settlement of purely American questions and the Monroe Doctrine, will it not be possible and practical that, at the next Pan American Conference, to be held at Santiago, Chile, the American governments shall give this Supreme Council of the Pan American Union, or some similar body to be created, authority not only to initiate and effect mediation, adjudication, and arbitration of disputes, but to enforce its conclusions,

without the interference of the Old World Powers, unless this American League seeks such interference, and again, without its interference in Old World disputes unless requested or justified? Such an an arrangement would care for American questions, preserve Pan American solidarity, make permanent the Monroe Doctrine, and not necessarily weaken the World League, but have a relation thereto somewhat similar to that of the legislature of a sovereign state to a national congress.

"Whatever the pretenses of the proposed constitution may be, it actually proposes to turn over the destinies of the United States to a star chamber council the majority of whom would be Europeans and Asiatics."Senator Borah of Idaho.

"If the present League of Nations plan is adopted Great Britain will rule the league, and I object to America's becoming again a subsidiary country to the British Isles."-Senator Fall of Wyoming.

trine Cannot be Abandoned

By EDWARD L. CONN

Special Correspondent of the League of Nations Magazine at Washington, D. C.

The following correspondence gathers together the arguments at our national capital which are used to support the claim that the Monroe Doctrine is a bald policy of self-defense whose justification at any time or in any form is the will of the United States and the power to enforce it.

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that the United States and its asso

ciate signatories would always have clean hands; that non-American na

Canning, but its instinctive suggestions, and this is the vital consideration was present with the founders of the Republic, as, of necessity, the spirit and intent of it is universal, whether active or latent. sence of the doctrine is a political necessity, the right of a State to exist and to determine its policy free from outside interference or control. Its justification is the power of the nation to enforce respect for it. There is a duality of philosophy involved in it, the first of which is a policy of self-protection, a selfish, but natural policy; the second, deriving from the first, an altruistic interest in the welfare of the sister Republics of this hemisphere, an interest which contemplates the exclusion of non-Republican forms of government in the Americas except where such other forms may already obtain, and, in these cases, to prevent their territorial expansion in these continents.

A League of Nations covenant which did not contain a reservation of the Monroe Doctrine, either specific or implied, would presuppose

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tion, would no longer be covetous of American territory, of political control of American States; that neither they nor any one of them would ever attempt to colonize in the Americas, and would not seek to establish, in indirect ways, naval or military bases either in this or the South American continent. Without a reservation of the Monroe Doctrine, and with the system of tutelage the League of Nations plan contains, the secondary States, especially those not directly represented in the council of nine nations, five of which would be the great Powers, would be put in leading strings. That is not the theory accepted by the authors of the League covenant as originally drafted, but that has been the practice of the nations: it might confer a distinct right of intervention, and the intervening nations might, in the absence of a reservation of the Monroe Doctrine, be non-American nations, which have no special regard for the republican form of govern

ment; in fact, no liking for republican institutions. Intervention, history discloses, when practiced as a right, as well as otherwise, has been productive in a majority of instances of human misery. As a policy, intervention is distinctly different; when practiced by by the

United States in Latin American countries it has been productive of beneficial results. There is no inherent right to intervene; when viewed as a policy, it is seen to be a doctrine based on the theory of self-preservation. Intervention is not only not a right, it is contrary to internationl law; but it might in the future, as it has been on memorable occasions in the past, be a matter of urgent expediency. When intervention is to be practiced in the Americas, the intervening nation or nations should be American.

There is supposed to be a right created by the Monroe Doctrine. The right existed before the Monroe Doctrine was formulated by John Quincy Adams, Monroe's Secretary of State; before it was suggested by a British diplomatist who, through the medium and instrumentality of the United States, sought to protect British commercial interests and to defeat continental imperialism's aspiration in Latin America. There may be a nebulous conception on the part of the average American of the nature, character and standing of the doctrine; some regard it as embodied in accepted international law; others as international law proclaimed by the United States, differing from European international

law. It is not international law in any sense, except that it serves as a notice, supported by the sentiment and determination of the American people, to all the world that the political institutions and the territories of the Americas are inviolate. That much the average American understands. He knows that it is a doctrine for Americans, that it means no schemes of political colonization can be carried out in this hemisphere, that we look after our own affairs and will not tolerate foreign intervention. They know that the world knows that Americans would regard the action of a nonAmerican nation looking towards intervention anywhere in the Americas as an unfriendly manifestation. Being an instinctive policy, based upon the nation's experience and the history of all governments and political systems, it has become naturally the traditional policy of this country; as it is supernational, it could not have expression in the national Constitution, but that fundamental document does not sanction any theory which contradicts the intent of the Monroe Doctrine; it rather suggests the policy comprehended in the doctrine. The doctrine itself, as our traditional policy, is regarded by the citizens of the Republic as being our fundamental policy in regard to foreign affairs, and in that sense as indispensable as is the Constitution itself for our purely domestic affairs.

Political colonization in the Americas by non-American governments, on account of their appreciation, though not their recognition of the

Monroe Doctrine, being excluded, so long as that doctrine is in force, nonAmerican governments may not take any action the tendency of which would be to give such government control over the destinies of or to oppress an American State. If, however, the Monroe barrier should be removed, European or Asiatic governments might, without giving the United States any recognized ground for offence, or concern, take advantage of the withdrawal of the protecting arm of the United States, and under the recognized principles of international law, which it must be assumed would be upheld by the League of Nations, circumvent the intent of the abandoned doctrine and accomplish in this hemisphere the ends to which ambitious nations have always aspired. Under such circumstances, the United States, having become signatory to the League of Nations covenant, the State Department might make representations, in response to the certain pressure of public opinion, but the representations would of necessity be derived from the essential elements of the Monroe Doctrine, which would have no standing. Every European and Asiatic nation would, in that case, be on an equal footing with this country as regards American territory and American States: England might purchase Dutch Guiana from the Netherlands without furnishing ground for protest by the State Department; Mexico or Colombia might lease or sell to Japan or any other Power lands so situated that their possession by a

non-American government-or by interests bearing such a relationship to a non-American government as to give it virtual control of the territory or to make it possible to convert such territory into a naval or military base-would constitute a menace to the safety of the Republic. The United States would have deprived itself of any claimed right of protest. Furthermore, should such a transaction be negotiated, and the Congress of the United States should deem it necessary to prevent its consummation by force, diplomacy having failed, we should have no legal right to intervene, having resigned our claim to it, and the resort to force would align against us the combined strength of all nations members of the League of Nations. It is not sufficient to argue that no nation would thus challenge the United States; that all are solicitous of our good opinion and good will; we know too well, from recent, as well as more analyzed history, the urge that moves governments, and, more than that, the urge that moves peoples to acts of aggression, of expansion. We have witnessed for some months the progress of events at Paris, and we know that the hardened diplomatists of Europe and Asia have not been converted by President Wilson; we know that they place the selfish interests of their own countries above every international interest; and fair-minded students of international politics will not, cannot blame them. What great Power, save America, has faith in the projected League of

Nations? France is irrevocably pledged to the principle of the balance of power; Great Britain insists that she must maintain control of the seas; Italy sees a necessity for planting outposts on the eastern shores of the Adriatic; Japan's interests in the Pacific prompt her to fortify the South Sea Islands she captured from Germany; France desires not only an international army, to be stationed in France, and presumably under a French Generalissimo, but demands the Sarre basin and the invention of a system for the west bank of the Rhine which would insure her against another German militaristic eruption. What would it avail the United States to place its incautious trust in a world political system of distrust? It requires great courage to stand, as President Wilson is standing, resolute, uncompromising, at the conference board in Paris, confronting European statesmanship with its broken word, its repudiation in action of the promises it gave when it accepted the principles laid down by

President Wilson for the conclusion of peace. The situation, however, requires quite as much caution as courage, and it is the duty of the American plenipotentiaries at Paris, while urging principles that will give to all independent nations moral assurance of their peace and preservation, not to take a step, nor subscribe to a principle, which will destroy the greatest defense of America's peace and preservation and the demonstrated bulwark of

Republican institutions in Latin America, the Monroe Doctrine.

Under this doctrine, the United States claims the right to prejudge as between American and non-American States. We assume that it would be impossible for an American State to do certain things, especially to commit such acts as would seem to give another nation the right to make war upon it. In practice, that theory has not always worked happily, but the effect has been eminently wholesome. Looking the world over, it would be difficult to find the repose, the freedom from alarm for the national safety, that obtains in every American country. International wars in this hemisphere are so unlikely, so lacking cause; and, in

the instance of some of the smaller Republics "one-man" governments -in which the persons in control are adventurers, the opportunity is so absent that in this hemisphere the thought of war is remotest from the consciousness of the populations. The national consciousness in every American country, excepting for the

moment, Mexico, where the strife is

internecine, not international, is of peace, and the only apparent apprehension is that non-American governments might undertake, if occasion offered, to establish their national interests here.

It would only be just to say, to admit, that not all American governments subscribe to the Monroe Doctrine. They do not all approve of the interpretations given to it and the constructions of it by the publicists of the United States. Some

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