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THE POSITION OF THE UNITED STATES ON THE

AMERICAN CONTINENT

By L. S. ROWE

Professor of Political Science

"We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers (the allied powers of Europe), to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power, we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition towards the United States."

Thus did President Monroe in 1823 give definite form to a doctrine, the basic principle of which has its roots in our foreign policy as formulated by Washington, Jefferson and Adams. It is probably unnecessary for me to recall to your minds that the occasion for this pronouncement was the contemplated action of the Holy Alliance composed of Russia, Austria and Prussia, to restore to Spain the colonies in America which had emancipated themselves through revolution against the mother country. In this Presidential message of December 2, 1823, there was placed before the American people the principle of our foreign policy thereafter known as the Monroe Doctrine, which, for nearly a century, has been the foundation upon which our policy toward Europe has been built. It is an interesting and significant fact that a period of more than seventy years elapsed before the doctrine received specific legislative sanction by the Congress of the United States. The absence of such legislative sanction, however, does not take

from the doctrine any part of its distinctive or national character, nor did the legislative approval, given in 1895, add anything to its prestige. Its importance, its influence and its effectiveness are due to the fact that it gave expression to a deeply rooted conviction on the part of the American people that the normal political development of the countries of the American Continent must not be undermined nor their right of self-determination destroyed by reason of the rivalries and entanglements of European politics. Monroe saw, just as Washington and Jefferson had seen, that such rivalries and jealousies once transplanted to America would constitute an ever present menace to the domestic democratic growth of the United States. They saw with the clearness of vision of true statesmanship that the great experiment in Government established in America could not hope to succeed if menaced from without. True democracy both in government and social organization is dependent for its normal growth on freedom from foreign aggression. Wherever the menace of foreign intervention is present the requirements of defense and especially the possible necessity of quick defensive national action, bring with them a political organization essentially undemocratic. Individual liberty is subordinated to the requirements of swift, decisive governmental action to preserve national integrity.

While all of these considerations may not have been consciously present to the minds of the founders of our foreign policy, they, in a greater or less degree, determined the formulation of the doctrine and its ready acceptance by the American people. The announcement of the Monroe Doctrine aroused great enthusiasm in all the emancipated Spanish colonies. They felt, and rightly so, that at a moment of imminent and supreme danger the United States had come to their rescue and they regarded the promulgation of the doctrine as a guarantee of the unselfish interest of the United States in their welfare and as an expression of the devotion of the American people to the ideals of liberty and democracy.

This favorable attitude of the people of Latin America toward the Monroe Doctrine remained unchanged for more than two

decades. The first blow to their faith in the unselfish purposes of the United States was dealt by the events immediately preceding and immediately following the Mexican War of 1846. The suspicion then first finds lodgment in the minds of the people of Central and South America that the Monroe Doctrine, far from expressing the unselfish purposes of the United States, might be used as a cloak to conceal a plan to keep Central and South America free from European domination in order that these sections of the continent might gradually come under North American control. During the half century following the Mexican War, this suspicion with its accompanying feeling of distrust grew in strength until in some countries it reached the dignity of a deeply rooted conviction.

It has only been very gradually that this feeling has been allayed, and even at the present time it has not completely disappeared. The demonstration of the unselfish purpose of the United States in giving to Cuba her independence and in steadfastly refusing the pleas of selfish interests for Cuban annexation, has contributed more than any other factor toward developing a renewed feeling of confidence in the purposes of our government. The fact that the feeling was not completely allayed, however, was shown by the widespread distrust which was aroused throughout Latin America by our treatment of Colombia in 1903. Whatever may be our own opinion with reference to the rights or wrongs of the situation, the somewhat hasty recognition of the independence of the Republic of Panama, and the notice to Colombia that we would prevent her from taking any effective action for the recovery of the lost province, was interpreted by the nations to the south of us as a step in the development of American imperialism. During the sixteen years that have elapsed since that time this feeling of distrust has again been in large measure allayed. The fact that the United States entered the European War free from all selfish purposes has had a profound effect on the thought of the Latin American peoples. In fact, the effect on them has been far deeper than on their governments. They have regarded it as a demonstration of the idealism of the American people

and of their willingness to make every sacrifice in furtherance of those ideals.

The United States has therefore entered into the negotiations at Paris at a time when she is enjoying the confidence of the nations of this continent to a degree which has not existed since the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine. Upon our national attitude toward the settlement will depend in large measure whether this growing feeling of confidence shall be strengthened or whether it shall be thrown back to the old feeling of aloofness and distrust.

The decision now to be taken is of such a vital and momentous character that it is difficult to speak with the calm and detachment appropriate to an academic atmosphere. Phrases such as "turing point in the world's history," "civilization hanging in the balance, and “national crisis, "have been used so freely during the past year that they no longer make upon us the impression which their significance merits. It is none the less true that upon the decisions that America will make during the next few months will depend in large measure the answer to the question whether this great war has or has not been fought in vain. Unless we are willing to give warm and united support to some effective form of world organization which will uphold right and justice and which will preserve the world from the aggression of predatory and outlaw communities, we will not only have failed to accomplish the great and basic principles for which this terrible conflict has been fought, but we will have proved ourselves unworthy of a position of leadership in world affairs. No half-hearted or vacillating support of a plan for a League of Nations will suffice, for it is clear that without the united support of America any plan for a League of Nations must necessarily fail.

In a word, the time has now come when the American people are called upon to make a decision, probably the most important in their history. The fact that the instances in which they have been called upon to decide vital questions of foreign policy have been so few, and so widely separated in point of time, accounts for the confusion, almost approaching bewilderment,

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