extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety."

Seventy years later, President Cleveland in his Venezuelan message asserted the same principle in much the same language. "Without attempting extended argument in reply to these positions it may not be amiss to suggest that the doctrine upon which we stand is strong and sound, because its enforcement is important to our peace and safety as a nation, and is essential to the integrity of our free institutions and the tranquil maintenance of our distinctive form of government."

Incidentally, no doubt, the Monroe policy safeguarded Latin America, but its prime object was to protect the United States; it was entered into from motives of self-interest, not of altruism. Neither ethical reasons nor legal reasons, therefore, stand in the way of its alteration or abrogation if a changed policy so wills. II. The Monroe Doctrine is based upon the right of selfdefense.

This is the first law of nations as of individuals. A few sentences are quoted almost at random from a recent and very sound authority, Professor Hershey, to show the nature of this right.

The right of self-preservation takes precedence in a sense of all other rights and duties and is more than a right in the ordinary use of this term. A state has unquestionably the right under modern conditions to make such preparations and to take such measures as it may deem necessary for it own safety and defense, but it has no right to make a disposition of its forces or assume an attitude threatening to the existence or safety of another state.

The right of self-preservation includes the right to preserve the integrity and inviolability of its territory with the corresponding duty of respecting that of other states.

It is upon this right of self-defense that the balance of power principle was based, as well as the balancing of alliances, which is its modern substitute. But the danger which warrants action must threaten national territory or national life or the integrity of a nation's institutions. It must be real and serious, not a mere blow at commercial interests or political prestige. And if we study again the language of Monroe's message we shall see how real the menace to the existence of the United States and of its institutions was, which he believed he was combating. "Dangerous to our peace and safety," "endangering

our peace and happiness." These are the words by which Monroe characterized the proposed intervention of the Holy Alliance in this hemisphere. Such language we should use to-day were a great European Power to seize Cuba, or a great Oriental Power a slice of Lower California.

There are two lines of reasoning to show that self-defense was and is the principle upon which the Monroe Doctrine rests. The first is that upon subsequent declarations of it, this principle has been adhered to and restated in language the most explicit. Examine again the Venezuelan version in 1895. President Cleveland objected to British encroachment upon Venezuela because (in words already quoted) it threatened "our peace and safety as a nation"; because it endangered "the integrity of our free institutions"; because it jeopardized "the tranquil maintenance of our distinctive form of government." Every argument tending to show that the policy was not altruistic proves also, looking at the obverse of the medal, that it must have been based upon the idea and desire of self-protection.

The second proof of our contention is that there exists no other principle upon which the Doctrine can be founded.

Notice what the Monroe Doctrine involved. It met a policy of intervention by a warning of "hands off." It set a limit upon the freedom of action of a friendly Power. In other words, it denied the full sovereignty of that Power. Such a denial of a fundamental right can only be justified by reason of some principle equally fundamental. There is no such principle except that of self-defense. Here was no claim to intervene on the score of outraged humanity as in Greece or Cuba; nor was there any question of international police power such as in southeastern Europe has attempted to justify its interferences, though this in fact is itself dictated by fear, is itself a case of selfdefense. The United States, warned by its somewhat sympathetic friends abroad that a plan was on foot to crush the Latin-American republics and restore them to Spain, their former sovereign, realized the danger to itself, announced that it was a danger, and stopped the plan by a public protest. It acted in defense of vital interests; one can hardly reiterate the fact too often.

III. The Monroe Doctrine called no new rights into existence. Here is the opportunity for much loose thinking. Because the Doctrine, as a policy, has taken on new forms, has been

altered, expanded, developed like the opportunist thing which it is, we are apt to forget that its fundamental base remains and must remain unaltered. It is indeed a paradox that the stronger we have become as a nation, the less we need to fear any power or to consider any principle of self-defense, so much the more broadly has the policy been construed. Whether this expanded policy is justified or unjustifiable is not here discussed. It is the legal right, the basic principle, not the policy of the Doctrine, which is under examination. Whatever becomes of the policy, whether it be expanded or be surrendered, whatever the power of a great state may read into it, the principle upon which it is based remains unchanged. A policy guiding one state and acquiesced in by others may readily change. A law of nations, except with the consent and by the act of all states, does not change. We may, however, well remember that if a right is pushed beyond its reasonable and logical limits, it becomes an aggression upon the rights of others. A policy, therefore, has its limitations. They are reached when the rights of others are violated. By the Ashburton treaty of 1842, disputed territory in northern Maine was by compromise divided between Great Britain and the United States. No one thought the Monroe Doctrine violated, though it meant a gain of territory upon this continent by a European Power and at our very doors. It is reasonable, therefore, to ask for proof that a somewhat similar struggle for territory by the same Power in distant Venezuela, in 1895, was a violation of the Doctrine, was a real danger to our safety and to our institutions as Cleveland said it was. As a policy, submitted to, by a nation desirous of our good will, it may be defended; as the exercise of a right, not so easily, because the basic principle was probably exceeded and thereby British rights invaded.

This is a single illustration of what seems to the writer a selfevident proposition. If a state pushes its action beyond the rights, reasonably interpreted, upon which that action is based, then ipso facto, an aggression has been committed upon some other state's rights, just as truly as one army crossing its own frontier invades a neighbor's territory. There is no middle ground. And inasmuch as rights are based upon law, without a change in the law there can be no expansion of rights.

The Monroe Doctrine thus is to be regarded from a two

fold point of view: as a policy meaning and accomplishing what other states submit to, and what seems to the United States useful: as a measure of self-defense which cannot be pushed beyond the facts calling for self-defense and yet be legally justifiable.

The writer does not desire to call in question the development of the Monroe Doctrine. That it has greatly changed in course of time is patent to every one. As now ordinarily interpreted it denies to a European Power, under any pretext, fresh acquisition of territory upon the American hemisphere. If European Powers put up with this policy, well and good. If the Latin-American states resent the air of superiority implied in this interpretation, that is a phase of the policy which must be taken into account. If the responsibility which the United States unconsciously assumes for the actions of its neighbors becomes a burden and a danger, that too is a factor. The only purpose of the present argument is to call fresh attention to the fundamental basis of the Doctrine and to its legal, not its practical, limitations, with the thought in mind, however, that no civilized state, the United States least of all, would care to gain the reputation of unscrupulousness in its observance of International Law.

Annals of the American Academy. 54: 107-12. July, 1914

What European Countries Think of the Monroe Doctrine. Herbert Kraus

It would be interesting to present a picture of the many international conflicts which the Monroe Doctrine has prevented, and at the same time to attempt to portray what would have been the probable condition of affairs on the American continent had the Monroe Doctrine never been promulgated. But it is impossible for any human brain to furnish a detailed picture of this imaginary situation. To do so would require the prophetic vision of

a seer.

No stretch of imagination is necessary, however, to recognize clearly that Central and South America without this great principle of isolation would be a field of great rivalry for coloniza

tion; a rivalry which, on account of the higher value of the prizes offered, and also on account of the greater power of resistance of the American states in question, would make the struggle for the division of Africa seem small in comparison, and cause the shedding of rivers of blood. This side of the Monroe Doctrine is, as a rule, not yet sufficiently understood, and hence not appreciated, by the public opinion of Europe, which follows, registers, notes and criticizes the circumstances in which this dogma of American politics is applied.

European interest in the Monroe Doctrine, at least in the three countries chiefly concerned, viz., Germany, England and France, is uncommonly great. In Europe as in America it is only necessary to connect a particular incident with the Monroe Doctrine in order to arouse a lively public interest. Very different, however, are the feelings which this word arouses on the opposite shores of the Atlantic. In the United States one always finds confirmed the words of one of its leading statesmen, who once wrote me that "it may, indeed, almost be said that all our government has to do to rally the people to the support of any measis to couple it with the revered title of the Monroe

ure

Doctrine."

European opinion, on the contrary, generally taking a critical attitude towards such matters as are coupled with the Monroe Doctrine, oscillates between a dignified reserve and a certain distrust which soon develops into open hostility on the part of the chauvinistic press. That Europe has not fully appreciated the causes, aims and accomplishments of this doctrine, and that the full comprehension of its character and its tasks only slowly and hesitatingly makes its way in the public opinion, is hardly to be wondered at. Is the situation, after all, very different in the United States? How many are there in that country who really have a correct idea of the purport and limitations of the Monroe . Doctrine, based on an intimate and unprejudiced knowledge? How often, for instance, is it associated with affairs with which it has no connection whatever? For example, what relation has it with the much discussed question of the Panama Canal tolls? This controversy is nothing more than a dispute about the interpretation of treaty rights. And yet the Monroe Doctrine is incessantly drawn into the discussion. Even such a man as Champ Clark declared in his recent speech, in the House, against