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power in opposition to industrial Europe. And this includes its strong interest in seeing that Germany especially does not again become dangerous as a competitor in the export trade.

The entire Anglo-Saxon element in the United States is thoroughly convinced that Germany is the disturber of the peace. German world commerce, the German Navy, and, consequently, German international policy, are red rags for every Anglo-Saxon American. From this proceeds the manner in which Wilson wants to bring about "the future guaranteeing of peace "-that is, through "a universal association of the nations to maintain inviolate the security of the highway of the seas for the common and unhindered use of all the nations of the world." Up to the time of "the knocking down" ("Niederboxung") of Germany in the negotiations Wilson took pleasure in talking about the freedom of the seas and repeatedly emphasized in his notes how dear to his heart this freedom was and how his efforts were directed, even during the war, in combination with Germany, toward putting the freedom of the seas into practical operation. Now, after he is convinced that he has obtained from Germany a definite abandonment of the submarine war against merchant vessels, he no longer talks about the freedom of the seas, but about the "security of the highway of the seas." This new turn is openly directed toward having the ban on submarine warfare erected into a principle of international law; otherwise the words are only an empty phrase. In time of peace no internationally guaranteed security of the highway of the seas is needed, as they are free eo ipso. But the nicest kind of international conferences and treaties will not succeed in guaranteeing the security of the highway of the seas in a future war, and, indeed, in the sense that Germany needs it -through the guarantee of the German connection with the oceans and their free use both coming and going by German and neutral trading ships. If President Wilson had honestly entertained the wish that he emphasizes now and has formerly emphasized he would have

been able to insure the security of the highway of the seas to a very high degree since August, 1914. If at that time he had placed the United States at the head of neutral seafaring powers, and, in arcord with them, had demanded the observance of the Declaration of London, &c., with threats and, in case of necessity, with the application of the means of force at hand, he would have obtained it. Great Britain could easily have been forced to do this by the United States. By doing this and by putting a ban upon the exportation of munitions of war Wilson would, furthermore, have brought about that which he characterizes as his dearest ideal for the future-peace. The interests of a quick peace, which Wilson emphasizes again at the close of his remarks, would also have been served through the German underwater trade

war.

He did not wish all that. His idea of the future on the seas is a state of affairs in which no war can be begun unless "the public opinion of the world" has first passed a favorable judgment upon it. We Germans have no confidence in this public opinion of the world, because up to now, and especially during this war, the public opinion of the world, under the influence of anti-German lies, of hate, and of jealousy, has been opposed to a peacefully progressive German people and empire, though this empire simply demanded the place in the world to which it was entitled by its daily proofs of its right to exist. The public opinion of the world will continue to make itself felt against Germany, be it in a military way, in a political way, or in an economic way, as long as those who are envious of us fail to comprehend the entire hopelessness of their efforts. The only way and the only means of arriving at that end and thus insuring a peace, sound in a German sense, lies in the maintaining and the increasing of German power. Certainly that does not stand upon Mr. Wilson's program; on the contrary, the Anglo-Saxon powers and their friends and vassals aim at holding it down and stunting it.

W

By Professor Brander Matthews* Of Columbia University

ITH the doubtful exception of Porto Rico, there is scarcely a square mile of all the millions of miles over which the Stars and Stripes now float that was originally won by the sword and continuously held by arms. Texas revolted from Mexico, proclaimed its independence, applied for admission to the United States, and was admitted. In like manner Hawaii came under our flag by the free choice of its inhabitants. And all the rest of our territory, beyond that in our possession when the Constitution was adopted in 1789, was bought and paid for.

We have never rectified our frontiers

by forcible annexation. We purchased Louisiana from France in 1803; we purchased Florida from Spain in 1819; and we purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. At the close of the war with Mexico in 1848 we purchased California and what are now its sister States on the Pacific-although it is only honest to admit that this cession was consented to under duress. And at the close of the war with Spain in 1898 we kept Porto Rico, which we had captured, and we paid a price for the Philippines, which the Spaniards were not sorry to part with-if we may credit the report that the islands would have been sold to Germany in case we had not insisted on buying them ourselves. And then finally in 1904 we purchased the Canal Zone from Panama—although it must be admitted that we were very prompt in recognizing the independence of the revolting State.

This is a fairly clean record, in that we have taken little or nothing by forcible annexation. What we have acquired since we became a nation we have paid for in cash. And the cleanness of this record is still further emphasized by our withdrawal from Cuba, which we had

* Condensed from a paper prepared for The New York Times Sunday Magazine.

promised not to take, which most European nations expected us to take, and which we did not take in spite of the fact that we had to be invited to return a second time to set its affairs in order.

These successive accretions of our domain were not the result of any predetermined plan of expansion, and they all of them came about more or less unexpectedly. What is more, and what shows the abiding attitude of a large part of our population, is the significant fact that every one of these increases of territory was bitterly opposed by an influential section of the American public. The Federalists, for example, were loud and fierce in their denunciation of Jefferson for the Louisiana Purchase.

Forty years later the hostility to the admission of Texas and to the purchase of California was almost as intense. The frequent proposals made before the civil war for the purchase of Cuba never succeeded in winning popular approval; and even after the civil war, when President Grant negotiated the annexation of Santo Domingo, in 1870, the treaty failed of ratification. And it is within the memory of us all that the opposition to the retention of the Philippines was equally bitter and that it has been even more persistent.

In the Philippines we can never be at home, and we cannot people them. We may continue to possess these islands and to rule their inhabitants, but we must do it always as aliens even if we refrain from rapacious exploitation, and even if we seek to govern solely for the good of the natives. * We must never allow ourselves to forget that everywhere and always men dislike being governed except by men of their own race and of their own choice, tacit or expressed. All men detest the rule of the alien, no matter how richly endowed with good intentions the foreign governors may believe themselves to be.

When all is said the fact remains that the territory of the United States has immensely increased since the beginning of the nineteenth century, and that the area of the British Empire has been mightily expanded during the same period, whereas the more recently founded German Empire has had to be satisfied with the snapping up of a few unconsidered trifles, far inferior in value. It is no wonder that there are many Germans who resent this and who ascribe the exclusion to the underhand intrigues of rival peoples. They see that the Monroe Doctrine debars them from acquiring territory in South America, where there are already tens of thousands of Germans, and they see also that the British and the Russians recently outmanoeuvred them in what seems to amount almost to a partition of Persia. Yet an American may wonder whether the German desire for colonies is not largely imitative and whether it is in accord with the best interests of Germans themselves. Germany has now no surplus population. In consequence of its soaring industrial development emigration has almost ceased, and in 1913 half a million laborers had to be imported to gather the German harvests.

Moreover, it may be suggested that the German insistence on rigid organization is a hindrance to effective colonization. What is needed in a new country is freedom of individual initiative, liberty to turn around swiftly to meet novel conditions, and little more administration than is requisite for the maintenance of peace and order. It is significant that the Germans themselves do not flock into the existing German colonies, and that the German settlers in Brazil have never been heard to express any desire to be incorporated in the German Empire.

We have not the political machinery for ruling alien races; and to attempt to rule them is not in accord with our political ideals, which compel us to base our form of government on the consent of the governed. So long as the people of any community are fitted for self-government by descent or by long training, we can make them welcome,

as we should gladly receive the Canadians, if they wished to join us and if the British were willing to release them Το from their allegiance to the crown. admit the Canadians upon an equal footing with ourselves would put very little strain upon our political fabric. But we are not likely ever to be willing to confer full citizenship upon the Mexicans, if they were to clamor at our doors for admission into the Union. That they should ever so clamor is most improbable; but it is even more improbable that we should yield to their appeal.

The Mexican peon is at present as unfit or as ill-prepared for American citizenship as the Filipino. And it is for the Mexicans, as it is for the Cubans, to work out their own political salvation as best they can. Quite possibly it would be better for the Mexicans if we controlled Mexico; but it would certainly be worse for us.

And in matters of so much importance we have a right to be selfish and to refuse to endanger our own political ideals for the sake of strangers without the gates.

Furthermore, if the opinions expressed in this paper are those of a majority of the citizens of the United States, if it is a fact that we have no desire to go on increasing our possessions, either by annexing territory adjoining our borders or by acquiring distant colonies, if we really shrink from rivalry with the European empires in the game of greedily grabbing alien lands, then it would be wise for us to let the whole world know this so plainly that there would be no doubt about our intentions. The economic competition of the leading nations is not likely to be relaxed in the immediate future, in fact, it will probably be furiously intensified; and economic rivalry is ever an existing cause of international jealousy and international suspicion. It is not enough that we should be resolved to keep our hands clean, as we have done in Cuba; it is needful also that we should at least try to make rival and jealous and suspicious peoples believe that our hearts are pure and devoid of vain desire to despoil any State weaker than we

are.

By The Editor

The Monroe Doctrine receives a fresh vitality and new significance in consequence of the great European war and the general political unrest which it produces throughout the world. The actual text of the doctrine appeared in the annual message of President James Monroe, communicated to Congress Dec. 2, 1823, and is as follows:

"In the discussions to which this interest has given rise, and in the arrangements by which they may terminate, the occasion has been deemed proper for asserting, as a principle in which rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European power. We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers 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 maintain 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 toward the United States."

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July 2, 1823, John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State, communicated as follows to Richard Rush, who was our Minister at the Court of St. James's, in discussing a possible solution of the question:

These independent nations [that is, those of South America and Mexico] will possess rights incident to that condition [settlement of the controversy] and their territories will of course be subject to no exclusive right of navigation in their vicinity or of access to them by any foreign nation. A necessary consequence of this state of things will be that the American continents henceforth will no longer be subject to colonization by civilized nations; they will be accessible to Europeans and each other on that footing alone; and the Pacific Ocean, in every part of it, will remain open to the navigation of all nations in like manner with the Atlantic

it, and Austria, Prussia, Spain, and Russia did actually interfere, though England held aloof at first, but finally became involved.

After Waterloo, Russia, Austria, and Prussia entered into an alliance, known as "The Holy Alliance." It has been generally believed the main purpose of the agreement was to suppress revolutionary movements and the spread of liberal ideas. In September, 1818, the congress of Aix-laChapelle convened, with Great Britain, France, Austria, Russia, and Prussia participating. It was here decided to remove the army of occupation from France and uphold Louis XVIII. on his throne, and there was a supposed understanding, though no specific agreement, that whenever absolutism was imperiled there should be interference. Another congress was held in 1820, and it was then proposed to interfere in the affairs of Naples, where a revolution had broken out. England protested, and would have nothing to do with it, yet Austria proceeded and restored the monarch at Naples.

[graphic]

GEORGE CANNING JOHN QUINCY ADAMS Photo Underwood & Underwood

On July 17, 1823, Mr. Adams is quoted in George R. Tucker's History of the Monroe Doctrine (1885) in an interview with the Russian Ambassador regarding the territorial dispute as follows: "We [the United States] should contest the right of Russia to any territorial establishment on this continent, and we should assume distinctly the principle that the American continents are no longer subjects for any new European colonial establishments.

Portentous occurrences in Europe hastened the proclamation of the doctrine, the germ of which appears in the preceding paragraph.

In 1822 another congress of the powers was held at Verona to consider an insurrection which had broken out in Spain the year before, and it is here that the interests of the United States became seriously involved. England's envoy at the Verona Congress was the For centuries the right was conceded Duke of Wellington. Spain was in sore among European powers to interfere straits with rebellion at home and the whenever the ambitious designs of any flames of revolution were alight in all her of the rulers tended to disturb the "bal- South American and Central American ance of power," but it was not conceived colonies, which declared their independas applying in any way to the acquisi- ence in rapid succession. She was tion of territory outside of Europe. powerless to suppress the revolt, and it The autocratic Governments adhered to was proposed that the powers come to this agreement and used it as a basis her assistance. All agreed except Engfor a further extension. When the land. She again refused to interfere, French Revolution began it was supposed but, disregarding her protest, the others that they should all intervene to suppress went ahead; France sent an army into

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