tral America, and those of the United States in any way jeopardized?

Before dismissing the subject, we feel that the attitude, the views, the preferences and purposes of the Latin-American governments deserve attention, for it may be that today they regard the assumed protectorate of the United States as different from the very acceptable service rendered ninety years ago. Suppose that one of the Latin-American republics desires to hand over its autonomy to a European Power or for a consideration to cede to that Power a bit of territory for the location of a coaling-station, has the United States a right to set up the Monroe Doctrine, and, if set up, would it prove a deterrent? Without answering this question can we not say that the United States has shown too little general interest in the affairs of her Spanish-American neighbors? The matter of interrelation is one which this country should not ignore, and which means far more to the Latin-Americans than the North American people at present comprehend. During the last twenty years several of our southern neighbors have made such progress, and have so increased their resources, that they are amply able to look out for their own affairs in the event of threatened aggression of European nations.

Review of Reviews. 34: 114. July, 1906

Commercial Side of the Monroe Doctrine

What has our adhesion to the Monroe Doctrine done for the extension of American commerce? This question has been raised in connection with the coming Pan-American Conference at Rio. Harold Bolce, a writer in the July number of Appleton's Magazine, ventures the assertion that our trade with South America would be greater if England owned that entire continent.

The latest figures show that little British Guiana bought more goods from America, by one million dollars' worth, last year than the whole of Venezuela did, and Venezuela has an area equal to all that of the United States east of the Mississippi River and north of the fringe of Gulf States. The Britisher the world over is a big buyer of American merchandise. To Canada, with its less than six million people, we sell more goods in six months than we do in a whole year to all the republics of South America, with its upward of forty million inhabitants. Theoretically,

it would appear that a practical nation like America would gather material benefits from its guardianship of a continent. The opposite is true. It is the European nations, protesting against the Monroe Doctrine, who have prospered most in the southern portion of the western hemisphere. In the past decade, for example, Germany's progress in Brazil has been phenomenal, while we have lost ground in that republic.

The latest returns show that the amount of merchandise bought by all nations, exclusive of the United States, amounted last year to 11.6 billions of dollars. Of that America supplied 14.33 per cent. If the Monroe Doctrine were of any value in getting foreign trade for the United States, our proportion of the commerce of South America would be greater than our share in the trade of countries beyond the pale of our political protection. But of South America's imports we supply only 13.28 per cent.

After recalling the disasters resulting to the London banking house of Baring and to American financial interests from the failure of Argentina to meet her obligations, in 1890, this writer continues:

Some people question Uncle Sam's right to act as the receiver for insolvent San Domingo, but any one who will study the path of panics will realize that it is a solemn obligation upon the part of the American nation to avert, whenever possible, any financial collapse in the countries of Latin America. The disaster that began in Buenos Ayres reached America when our harvests were prodigal, and when our factories were running overtime. It is more picturesque, perhaps, to think of the Monroe Doctrine as safeguarding our export trade with South America. In 1890 we were shipping at the rate of $32,000,000 worth of goods to the southern half of this hemisphere, but twenty years of such commerce would not compensate the United States for the loss we sustained in the three years of failures following the fall of the house of Baring. In that brief period of panic the liabilities of failures in the United States amounted to $650,000,000.

Summing up the lessons of the past, Mr. Bolce shows that the downfall of a Latin-American republic represents,-first, the alarm of Europe and the collapse of some of its financial houses; second, a reflex disaster in the United States, and, third, the utter demoralization of the South American people who hold the spurious paper of the defunct republic.

The total export and import trade of South America now exceeds $1,000,000,000,— —a sum greater than that representing the trade of the United States in 1870.

North American Review. 173: 832-44. December, 1901 Shall the Monroe Doctrine Be Modified? Walter Wellman

The weakness and falseness of the Monroe Doctrine is that it applies not only to the islands and seas near our shores and to the isthmus, where we have a large and unmistakable special interest, but broadly to the whole hemisphere, in a considerable part of which we have almost no actual interest at all, and where the interest of other Powers is in many cases equal to ours and in some cases far greater than ours. What is the evidence that the United States possesses an interest in middle and lower South America sufficiently greater than that of the remainder of the world to give the United States a reasonable right to exclusive privilege? Not in the preservation of a republican form of government, for as a general principle no nation has a right to dictate what the form of government of any of its neighbors shall be; besides, the Monroe Doctrine applied to Brazil when it was under a monarchy as well as now, when Brazil is a republic; further, the chief countries of Europe, whose possible activities in South America we seek to limit, are better democracies than the best of the governments we seek to perpetuate. Evidence is not found in trade, investment of capital, or colonization, for in all these respects several European nations have vastly greater interests in South America than the United States. It is not found in the danger of greater proximity of European Powers, for proximity is not of itself a danger, except in special circumstances or when accompanied by the menace of enmity. No one will assert that any European Power is the enemy of the United States. We have friendly relations with them in all other parts of the world; the assumption that our friendship would be endangered by having them nearer to us is of itself a false and unfriendly note. say that you will not have your friend as a dweller in your own house, but you may not with decency or consistency forbid him to live in your neighborhood.

You may

Besides, when the Monroe Doctrine was born proximity counted for much more than it does in this day of electricity, cables, steam and sea power. Now it counts only under special circumstances. We should be justified in saying we did not want Germany in Cuba, or Russia in Mexico, or France in the

Isthmus. But what has the political control of Argentina, or Patagonia, or Brazil, or Chili, to do with the security of the United States? The proximity excuse, even if valid, would not hold as to South America. New York is farther from Rio Janeiro than from Hamburg, Bremen, Cherbourg or Liverpool. It is much farther from New York to Buenos Ayres than from New York to any port of western Europe.

The one broad justification of United States exclusiveness in central and lower South America-superiority of interest— does not exist. Is there any particular justification? It might be found in two new declarations accompanying the Monroe Doctrine, as follows:

I. That the United States will at once assume a suzerain's relations to all South American nations, maintaining responsibility for them, standing between them and the remainder of the world, securing or offering redress for all wrongs committed by them, and disciplining such of them as may be rash enough to reject our control.

2. That wherever government fails and disorder or wrong follows in South America, the United States will take over such territory in its rôle of primate Power-as a trustee for civilization-and through annexation and its Own superior administration bring about better conditions.

Declaration of such policies as these would be aggression and imperialism of the boldest stamp, and would doubtless involve us in no end of troubles with South American states. But they would afford a better basis for the Monroe Doctrine than none at all, and would at least possess the merit of candor and consistency of an unmistakable though selfish sort. If the United States is going to fence off all America and put up “no tresspass" signs against all comers, we must on demand show at least a color of justification. But we cannot in decency put up the signs, forbidding all others to go in and improve, and at the same time declare that we have no intention of doing so. We cannot assume an attitude of responsibility for the selfish purpose of keeping others out, and then repudiate that responsibility in order to save ourselves the trouble of meeting it.

The Monroe Doctrine, as applied to the whole hemisphere, is to-day the one example of a first-class Power setting its strength against progress. There is abroad to-day a world

movement which follows natural law, which is as irresistible as the march of time itself-a movement in which we are ourselves mightily participating in various parts of the globe. This movement is the centralization process, a political phase of the natural law of survival of the fittest. In the present state of international morality, it does not mean the passing of the small into the control of the great, for the doctrine of the absolute domination of the strong over the weak is happily becoming obsolete. The essence of the law and of the movement which springs from it is the passing of the inefficient and unfit and the coming of the efficient and worthy. Thus there is constantly going on the transfer of control from the incompetent to the competent, from the ineffective to the effective, from the inferior to the superior. The first and most important function of government is uplifting the people governed. As the world is now constituted, broadly speaking, all governments which do this are insured against overthrow from without, for it is one of the glories of civilization at the beginning of the twentieth century that the strong do not prey upon the weak, so the weak be only competent. But every government which is both weak and incompetent, which fails to meet its responsibilities to its people and to the world, is inevitably threatened both from within and from without. For object-lessons on the bright side of the picture, it is only necessary to cite Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway. For examples on the darker side, it is only necessary to cite Hawaii, the causes which led to our ousting of Spain from Cuba and the Philippines, European overrunning of semi-savage Africa, the concert of all the Powers in distressed China. This principle of the constantly increasing responsibility of the superior and competent nations, of the constantly lessening sway, influence and territory of the inferior and the incompetent, is the international law of gravity. It is the mightiest force in the progress of the world, the advancement of civilization, the preservation of peace. It is the practical application of the theory of trusteeship which has wrought great works in Africa, in Asia, in the islands of the sea, and which, better than all, has brought with greater and more complex responsibility a higher morality to the chief nations of the world.

There is one exception to the universality of the application