only two alternatives: to fight an appalling war, probably against overwhelming odds; or to retire under pressure in national humiliation.

It is useless to claim that the United States could count on England for aid. She has made her alliances based on what are deemed her imperative geographical and political necessities. To her, in this matter, the United States is a formidable trade rival pursuing a somewhat fatuous political course.

Despite the higher instincts of man's intellectual side,-love of peace and justice, abhorrence of war's cruelty and suffering,— the attitude of any large number of people gathered into a nation has always been principally, if not conspicuously, influenced by purely material considerations.

For example, England dared to make no small part of the world her empire because of her geographical isolation, her immunity to attack by land. This powerful sense of security at home had much to do with shaping her policies. France, on the other hand, though exposed on every side by land and sea, plays her important part through faith in her wealth and in the enforced assistance of England should she ever again be seriously threatened with invasion. Germany is similarly exposed to attack, and, if anything, more so than France. Her coasts are within easy striking distance of England's superior navy; her frontiers are menaced on one side by the French army and on the other by Russia's formidable forces. Only southward mạy she look for some respite from the strain of constant preparedness. Germany has been so occupied in knitting herself together and insuring continued existence as an empire that she has had little time to acquire important colonies. Russia lies like a colossus across northern Europe and Asia, protected, except from attack by Germany and Austria, by climatic conditions and the nature of her frontiers. She easily holds her western boundaries against Europe while extending her flag and influence eastward over Asia until she touches Japanese interests in the north or threatens India in the south. Italy's passive attitude in European affairs is largely due to her exposed position on the Mediterranean.

With regard to the United States, her mainland territory is fortunately several thousand miles from the natural military and naval bases of the European Powers. This was her great safeguard in the early days of the republic, and it has never ceased

to be. Virtually free by nature from serious danger of land invasion, she has grown to be a world Power through prolonged peace and industry, with little of the strain and drain entailed by the maintenance of immense military establishments such as have economically weakened Europe.

But this gracious isolation ceases to aid the American flag and prestige when the United States indulges in irritating challenges, which, if accepted, would necessitate the issue being decided far beyond her own coasts. Off Sandy Hook or the Panama Canal, the American fleet may be doubly efficient, with shore batteries behind it and harbors and supplies within easy reach. But what becomes of this advantage of geographical isolation from European naval bases if a hostile fleet shall defy the Monroe Doctrine off Rio de Janeiro or Curityba or at Montevideo? Has the United States in such case any strategical advantage at all? In other words, is the American navy capable of defending against attack by one or more great world Powers not only the Atlantic, Pacific, and gulf coast-lines of the United States, but the immense coast-line of another vast continent? The question may well cause reflection to the most ardent jingo.

Unless the American people are determined on building and maintaining an absolutely commanding fleet, the assertion of the Monroe Doctrine under modern conditions becomes somewhat blatant.

To understand better how the nations of Europe regard it, let us suppose that just before the Spanish-American War was declared, and while Spain was endeavoring to subdue the Filipino rebellion, it had occurred to Japan to proclaim her aversion to the taking of the Philippine Islands by any other western power. Is there any doubt as to, the way that the United States would have regarded such a declaration?

It would be prudent for the American people to study carefully and analyze a foreign policy which is a constant menace to their pride and tranquillity; which exacts care, risk, responsibility, and expenditure from its sponsor, and renders up only shadowy advantages. Common sense and political strategy unite in demanding that the false and unnecessary features of the Monroe Doctrine be abandoned before some sudden shift in the world's political balance may compel it. Otherwise red danger looms

large for the United States the day when some great Powers compose their fancied difficulties and forget old animosities.

There always remains, of course, the question how the United States could modify or withdraw from certain features and corollaries of the Monroe Doctrine without appearing either to show weakness or to invite and sanction hostile aggression against Latin-American countries. The problem is a complicated one; but if the American people once became convinced that a change of policy should be had, the means and the opportunity for a President to make a "new interpretation" would not be hard to discover.

It should be possible to make plain to our fellow-Americans to the south that while the United States desires to build up and maintain with them the most intimate and cordial political and trade relations, based on genuine friendship and mutual confidence and respect, it should be clearly understood that the United States recognizes the most complete sovereignty and freedom of action on the part of all existing independent nations in the western hemisphere, including both their privileges and their liabilities according to the law of nations, but that because of propinquity and similarities in institutions and forms of government, the United States has an inherent special interest in any dispute, controversy, or change of sovereignty in which any American nation or portion thereof might become involved, and therefore expects that interest to be considered in any settlement which might be made of, or any consequences which might arise from, any such dispute, controversy, or change.

The question of how a change may be brought about in the eyes of the world, and particularly with the Latin-American nations, regarding the real attitude of the United States in its foreign relations and line of conduct may well engage the serious attention of all thinking Americans. It is a duty which should not be evaded because of its difficulty or the obscurity which surrounds the exact degree of harm resulting or danger threatening from the actual state of affairs.

Even in acting upon the Monroe Doctrine itself the United States has not appeared to be entirely consistent. The alacrity with which American marines were poured into Nicaragua, a tiny nation, contrasted with the indecision which has been plainly

and not unnaturally, shown regarding a somewhat similar condition of affairs in a neighboring country of much greater resisting powers, must inevitably make even the one American foreign policy smack somewhat of opportunism in unbiased foreign eyes. Is it not wise to reshape a policy to meet greatly changed conditions while it is still intact and even unthreatened?

Fortnightly Review. 70: 1013-26. December, 1901

Some Aspects of the Monroe Doctrine. Sydney Brooks

If Americans could only for a little while free themselves from the bondage to rhetoric and sentiment, and collect themselves for the effort of seeing things as they are, they would, I believe, recognise that to abandon the Monroe Doctrine would entail as little harm to their political and material interests as to their moral. In their present condition they either cannot or will not see, at any rate they do not acknowledge, what are the obvious effects of their cherished policy on South America. The Monroe Doctrine perpetuates in South America the predominance of a religion which Americans detest, of a race which they despise, and of a system of government which in all but the name is a flat negation of everything America stands for. It rules out Teutonic civilisation in favour of the religious and military dispositions beyond which, after eighty years' trial, the Spanish and Portuguese mestizos have proved their incapacity to advance. In the name of Republicanism it condemns a whole continent to weakness, backwardness, and anarchy. It precludes all moral progress as decisively as it hampers material development; it blocks the way to all that might make South America stable and prosperous, that might open up what are perhaps the richest untapped markets in the world, that might stimulate the Americans themselves by contact with neighbours on their own level. On almost every page of Professor A. H. Keane's "Central and South America," though the Monroe Doctrine is never mentioned, one finds the traces of its blighting influence. Here is a colossal continent with a destiny that should rival Russia's, magnificently watered, inhabitated by Caucasians, all of it sparsely populated and much of it barely explored, teeming with mineral and agricultural wealth, and yet lying half-derelict, the prey of revolu

tionary turbulence--and all for lack of a strong government that would ensure to capital the fruits of its enterprise.

As things are, there appears to be nothing in front of South America but a cycle of revolutions. The hope of a stable, orderly rule ever being evolved under the presidency of half-caste attorneys and guerilla chieftains is one that, after the experience of the last eighty years, no one entertains. From Patagonia to Panama there broods over the continent the spirit of insecurity, disorder, and insurrectionary violence. There is no real guarantee, except perhaps in the case of Chili and Argentina, that what is now happening in Colombia and Venezuela may not to-morrow be the fate of any and every South American state. Such a guarantee can only be forthcoming under a firm, well-established and responsible government, and no such government is possible unless and until either the United States or some European Power takes the matter in hand. But the Americans, at all events for the present, have no intention of expanding southwards. They do not colonise South America themselves; they are not reserving it for any private schemes of aggrandizement; they barely even trade with it. Such benefit as they derive from warning-off Europe from South America is altogether indirect, and this again differentiates Pan-Americanism from such an honestly self-secking and tangible movement as Pan-Germanism. When Americans drop declamation on the subject and condescend to argument, their reasoning runs substantially as follows:-"It is to our interests to keep South America impotent and in a restless state of anarchy because only so can we maintain the hegomony of the American continent without trouble or expense to ourselves. Under existing conditions our position is invulnerable; nobody can conquer America, and we are consequently spared the burden of huge armaments and their inevitable drain on the productive energy of the people. But once admit that European Powers have the right to absorb South America at will, and the whole situation is changed. We should then be no longer the sovereign of the new world; our 'fiat' would be 'law' only within the precise confines of the United States, and the national prestige and authority would be proportionately diminished. More than that. By allowing our rivals in peace and our possible enemies in war to establish themselves at our very doors, we provide them gratuitously with a jumping-off ground from which they may be