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In the year after the war with Spain, we had trouble with Brazil over a scientific expedition to the Amazon; we were obliged to send a warship to Central American waters for the protection of American interests; we got into trouble with Ecuador over the refusal of an American consul-general to answer the serving of a summons; we made a peremptory demand on Colombia for $30,000 for damages sustained by two newspapers in Panama, owing to their seizure by the Colombian government during a revolution; we landed troops in Nicaragua; and we felt obliged to send a warship to Venezuela to look after our interests during one of her numerous revolutions. No wonder our neighbors felt worried. Our attitude caused actions which forced us to take unpleasant measures.

In 1900 the wife of the American consul at La Guaira was attacked, and in the following year in the same port the sailors of an American warship were set upon by a mob.

In 1902 Colombia seized some American property and returned it after we had

sent a warship into Colombian waters. In the same year we intervened in Venezuelan affairs.

But one of the worst blows came in 1903, when we assisted in the establishment of the Republic of Panama, and then took control of the Canal Zone. In other words, we went through the form of preventing a South American republic from subduing a revolution in one of her distant provinces, and eventually took a strip of that province because we believed we owed it to the world to build the Panama Canal. Again, let it be clear that I am not interested at this point in defending or attacking our actions in any of these cases, I merely desire to state what has happened, and to show some of the fruits of the new Monroe Doctrine. "By their fruits ye shall know them."

In 1906 Secretary Root made his tour of South America, and began negotiations looking toward the accomplishment of peace among the warring states of Central America.

In 1908 two warships had to be sent to Honduras because the exequaturs of the

American consuls had been cancelled. In 1909 we decided that the celebrated Alsop claim, made on behalf of American citizens to whom Chile owed a certain amount of money, should be brought to the front after slumbering for many years, and an ultimatum was presented to Chile that the matter be settled at once. Chile replied by offering to submit the whole case to the King of England as arbitrator. But the amount of irritation caused by the method followed was out of all proportion to the amount of money involved.

Another one of the "fruits" which has not escaped the attention of our neighbors in South America is our intervention in Santo Domingo. For years Santo Domingo had been the scene of frequent revolutions. It was impossible for her creditors to find a satisfactory government with whom to deal for any length of time. At times, it is said, there were three "governments." Several European nations whose citizens had been victims of Santo Domingo's violated contracts were talking of seizing a custom house or so. President Roosevelt felt that the con

ditions in the Dominican Republic not only constituted a menace to our relations with other foreign nations, but that they also concerned the prosperity of the people of the island and the security of American interests. The Dominican Republic was finding it impossible to defray the ordinary expenses of government and to meet its obligations. With a population of about half a million, it had a public indebtedness, not including all claims, of $32,000,000. The representatives of the European governments concerned several times appealed to the Secretary of State, setting forth the wrongs and intolerable delays to which they had been subjected in the collection of their just claims, and intimating that, unless the Dominican government should receive some assistance from the United States in the way of regulating its finances, the creditor governments in Europe would be forced to take more effective means of compulsion to secure the satisfaction of their claims.

Notwithstanding this strong statement of the case, a protocol submitted by the President and providing that the United States

should attempt to adjust all the obligations of the Dominican government and should take charge of the custom houses was not ratified by the United States Senate. Another protocol, however, under which the United States accepted the control of the administration of the custom houses, but not giving us quite such extensive powers, was ratified in 1907. Thus one of the main incentives of revolution, i.e., the hope of seizing the revenues of the government, was partly cut off. There has been an occasional revolution since we took control of the custom houses, but the financial condition of the island is certainly better than it was. Thus we may seem to have been justified in our course, but the fact remains that although our intervention may have been an excellent thing for the people of Santo Domingo, it has undoubtedly interfered with their right to do as they please with their own money, and has acted as a sinister warning to other Latin-American states as to what they may expect of us if they fail to pay their debts.

Within the past three years we have twice

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