dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European Power we shall not interfere."

2. "Our policy in regard to Europe. . . is not to interfere in the internal concerns of any of its Powers."

3. "The American continents . . are not henceforth to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European Power."

66

The Doctrine embodied the policy succinctly defined by the aged Jefferson six weeks earlier in a letter to Monroe, laying it down that our first and fundamental doctrine should be never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe, our second never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with cis-Atlantic affairs." It was invoked by Andrew Johnson when he insisted on the evacuation of Mexico by French forces in 1867, and by Cleveland when he claimed a voice for the United States in the boundary dispute between Venezuela and Great Britain in 1895; while President Roosevelt carried it a step further in taking over the financial administration of San Domingo in 1907 in order to satisfy claims that might otherwise have justified intervention by foreign creditors.

When Mr. Wilson took office in 1913 he found himself committed to a foreign policy, and an application of the Monroe Doctrine, of which not more than three of his predecessors had had experience. The exclusion of European Powers from colonization of American soil had been sufficient to safeguard the continent in the days

when Monroe's Doctrine was formulated. It was not sufficient when the Russo-Japanese War had suddenly revealed the presence, ten days' steaming across the Pacific, of a nation equal in military achievement to any European Power, and destined inevitably to seek early opportunities of expansion. The need for broadening the formula became very clear during the presidencies of Mr. Wilson's immediate predecessors, and an unofficial corollary was added to it by a declaration of the Senate in 1912, when Japanese were reported to be negotiating for interests in a harbour on the western coast of Mexico, that such a development could not be viewed by the United States without grave concern.

The new importance attaching to foreign policy generally arose from the fact that down to the Spanish War of 1898 America had had no overseas possessions and never contemplated acquiring any. No provision was made in the Constitution for the administration of dependencies that were neither States of the Union nor self-governing territories, and there was a strong feeling that for a democracy, certainly for a federal democracy, dependencies were an anomaly. When at the end of the war with Spain the Union found itself unexpectedly and through force of circumstances in possession of a number of islands in the Atlantic and Pacific, the first thought was how to get rid of them again. Cuba was never fully acquired. It was given its independence, with certain reservations in the matter of its foreign relations, and it now conducts its own affairs under a very loose

American suzerainty. The Philippines were a more serious problem, as they were clearly not ready for immediate self-government, and these islands, like Porto Rico, were put under an executive appointed by the President of the United States, with a Chamber elected on a popular franchise. The Democratic platform of 1912 demanded that the United States should " recognize the independence of the Philippine Islands as soon as a stable Government can be established." Mr. Wilson took an early opportunity of indicating his approval of that policy, and it was clear that the matter would come before Congress before the new Administration had run its course.

But more important than any single issue in this field was the attitude of the President to the policy declared in the Monroe Doctrine and all the implications arising from it. The Doctrine was popularly regarded, and with much justice, as being mainly negative and precautionary in character. Europe was warned off America; America was pledged against interference in Europe. To Mr. Wilson Monroe's principle involved much more than that. Apart from the European War, which, as the President early realized, may entail a radical restatement or an almost entire abandonment of the Doctrine, he recognized that it must have positive applications hardly less important than the negative. If it conferred rights it equally imposed duties. America could not prohibit European interference in countries where large European interests were at stake unless she was prepared to assume some

trusteeship for those interests herself. That doctrine had been severely strained in Mexico, and had European Powers been less ready to repose confidence in Mr. Wilson a serious position might have arisen. In the island divided into the republics of San Domingo and Hayti the United States was compelled, out of regard to its own and foreign interests, to enter and administer, the responsibility being assumed in the case of San Domingo by Mr. Roosevelt and in the case of Hayti by Mr. Wilson.

But President Wilson carried the Monroe Doctrine farther still. Influenced at once by a sincere altruism and by a necessary regard for the interests of the United States, he visualized a relationship between the twenty-one republics of the American Continent that would, so far as there is any faith in bonds and treaties, guarantee the whole continent against the perils of external attack and internal dissension. The danger of such attack was no mere bogy of apprehensive statesmen. Mention has already been made of American distrust of the intentions of Japan, and the European War had inspired equal anxiety as to Germany's future attitude towards South America. In this country there seems to be no popular recognition of the almost limitless potentialities of South America, or of the culture and prosperity to which many parts of Argentina, Brazil, and other States have already attained. There is no such lack of knowledge or of enterprise in Germany. German capitalists and traders have of late years been concentrating their efforts

on South America, and characteristically applying themselves to their task with far more thoroughness than their rivals of other nations ever exhibited.

66

The number of North Americans in Buenos Aires," wrote a well-known American author in 1911," is very small. While we have been slowly waking up to the fact that South America is something more than a land of revolutions and fevers,' our German cousins have entered the field on all sides. The Germans in South Brazil are a negligible factor in international affairs, but the well-educated young German who is being sent out to capture South America commercially is a force to be reckoned with. He is going to damage England more than Dreadnoughts or gigantic airships."

I

The German trader in South America is as great a menace to the United States as to Great Britain, for it is south of Panama that the American manufacturer should find the chief market for his growing output. The urgency of Germany's need for commercial expansion after the war is palpable, and unless she secures such peace terms as only victory can give her, it will be to South America first that she will look for her market. The gravity of that prospect in President Wilson's eyes lies not in the possibility of acute competition with American traders, but in the danger of the financial penetration of some weak Latin State, with the almost inevitable sequel of diplomatic or even military intervention by the lending Hiram Bingham, Across South America.