CHAPTER VIII

FOREIGN POLICY AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE

One of the chie. objects on my Administration will be to cultivate the friendship and deserve the confidence of our sister republics of Central and South America. The United States has nothing to seek in Central and South America except the lasting interest of the peoples of the two continents, the security of governments intended for the people and for no special group or interest, and the development of personal and trade relationships between the two continents, which shall redound to the profit and advantage of both, and interfere with the rights and liberties of neither. From these principles may be read so much of the future policy of this Government as it is necessary now to forecast.-Presidential Statement of March 11, 1913.

FOR ninety years the Monroe Doctrine has been the charter of American foreign policy. It has never had, and has not now, any legal sanction. It is not embodied in the American Constitution. It has never been adopted as a permanent policy by a joint vote of the two Houses of Congress. Its prima facie authority is such as pertains to an enunciation of policy by a President of no particular distinction at a time when little more than a generation had elapsed from the final establishment of American independence.

The true importance of the Monroe Doctrine is derived, not from the immediate circumstances which evoked its formulation, but from the fidelity with which it voices the consensus of political thought on the foreign relations of America from

Washington's day to Wilson's. The history of the Doctrine may be briefly recalled. Throughout the second decade of last century the Spanish colonies in Latin America had been in revolt against the mother country. In 1822 the Holy Alliance (Russia, Austria, and Prussia) took in hand the chaotic affairs of Spain, and it became apparent that the immediate sequel to the settlement of Spain in Europe would be an expedition for the subjugation of the revolted Spain in America.

That prospect was equally distasteful to Great Britain and to the United States; to Great Britain by reason of her distrust of the growing power of the Holy Alliance; to the United States on account of her sympathy with what were now the South American republics, and her fear of the consequences of a bitter and prolonged war close to her borders. Accordingly Canning took counsel with the then American Minister in London, Richard Rush, and out of their conversations emerged the declaration in respect of which Canning three years later claimed that he had "called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old."

That declaration was addressed by President Monroe to Congress in his (written) message of December 2, 1823. It fell under three heads, the following being the salient clauses :

1. "We should consider any attempt on their [the members of the Holy Alliance] part to extend their system to any part of this hemisphere as 1i.e. monarchy.

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

not to interfere in the internal concerns of any of its Powers.”

are not

3. "The American continents henceforth to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European Power."

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.

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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