studied them as carefully as the Spanish toreador studies his fierce Andalusian bull, and I say that all South America would join with Europe on the Monroe Doctrine if it ever came to an issue.

The leading men of South America believe it is our Monroe Doctrine that has kept them at the mercy of these bandit chiefs for nearly a hundred years, while the "Generales" fear and hate the United States more than they do any European country. So, before we permit a theorist like Grover Cleveland, or an enthusiast like Mr. Herbert W. Bowen, to involve us in a war over the Monroe Doctrine, we had better give the matter serious thought. The conflagration which this would start might be world-wide.

No power, not even the mighty government of the United States, can defy Europe. It may tickle our vanity to have campaign orators tell us that we can whip the world; but we cannot do it. Europe is the very seat and origin of the intellectual and military power of the world. We are the offspring of Europe, and the child is not yet as great as its parent. Any attempt to meet Europe on the field of duel is foredoomed to appalling disaster. The policy of bully and bluster and brag should be held in check by the authority of an enlightened and powerful public opinion. If we ever get into a war on account of the Monroe Doctrine, the Great Rebellion will pass into history as child's play alongside it; and at the end of the war the Monroe Doctrine will be eternally dead.

VIII.

SANTO DOMINGO ANNOUNCES THAT IT WILL RESIST ALL COERCIVE ACTS AND SOLICIT THE ASSISTANCE OF THE UNITED STATES

In 1895 diplomatic relations were broken off between France and Santo Domingo, and the former country sent a formidable fleet of war-ships to visit the latter. The "Republic" had undertaken to destroy the National Bank of Santo Domingo, a French institution, because it refused to place its vaults completely at the service of the Dictator, General Heureaux. Outrages were also committed on various French citizens, among them Boimare and Chiapini. The Spanish minister had undertaken to restore harmony, when a French citizen, Noel Caccavilli, was assassinated, and affairs were brought dangerously near a crisis. Admiral Abel De Libran, with a fleet, was sent to Santo Domingo to demand the execution of the murderer and the payment of an indemnity of $80,000 cash. General Heureaux bitterly opposed the demand for the execution of the assassin, and the Santo Domingo Chargé d'Affaires in New York, A. Wos y Gil, endeavored long to get the United States to interfere. Mr. Wos y Gil wrote Secretary Gresham on February 18, 1895:

"But your Excellency will permit me to state the idea that the French government might seek some other way to exert a pressure upon the Dominican

government, and, saving the existing American interests in Santo Domingo, might carry into effect its plan of assault against our sovereignty, has not been lost sight of by my government.

"In case of such an event transpiring, I beg to say to your Excellency that my government, in defence of its rights and the principles of justice upon which its cause is based, is disposed to resist all coercive acts and solicit the assistance of government of the United States. For this purpose I beg to inform your Excellency that I have received special instructions from my government, and in the event that such a contingency should arise, they will be at once submitted for your consideration. I cannot forego the present opportunity to express to your Excellency the high appreciation in which my government holds the United States, and how deeply it esteems its aid and sympathy, so potent and so powerful that no suggestion of other assistance has been made."

How pleasant to have the United States, with its navy, at the support of every assassin in Latin America, at least morally, if not physically! In this case the United States used its "good influences" sufficiently to prevent the punishment of Caccavilli's assassin. Of course, the negotiations did not take exactly that form; they related to "friendly neutrality," and all that sort of thing; but in the final round-up the murderer went unpunished.

Any one who is familiar with the facts as to the firing on the American schooner Henry Crosby in Santo Domingo only a short time before the French incident, who has observed the disgraceful impotency of our government in that case, who then reads the "stuff" from Santo Domingo authorities about their love and sympathy for the United States as soon as they get in real trouble with a foreign power, and who weighs well the supine folly of the Cleveland administration in its foreign relations, must draw a breath of relief to believe that those days of disgraceful truckling to the sycophant freebooters of the Latin dictatorships are speedily passing away, and forever.

IX.

WHETHER UTOPIAN OR PRACTICAL, WHETHER DESIGNED TO
PROMOTE REPUBLICANISM OR PROTECT OUR OWN INTERESTS,
THE MONROE DOCTRINE IS A PATHETIC FAILURE

If in adopting the Monroe Doctrine the United States thought it would promote liberty and republicanism the outcome has been an absurd abortion.

Did it think it would promote its own welfare, or the interests of its own citizens? If it did, it has been sadly mistaken. Perhaps it was thought these Latin-American dictatorships would be more friendly to us than would be monarchial governments, or colonies of the European powers occupying the same soil? If so, how great was destined to be our disappointment! To-day we are face to face with the fact that we have elsewhere no such implacable enemies in the

world as these same Latin-American dictatorships, particularly Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Central America, San Domingo, and Haiti.

If these powers, or any one of them, had the strength of Germany, or France, or England, we should have continual war with them. It would not be a war for a day or a year; it would be a war until one side or the other was finally conquered.

The greatest monarchial colony in the world, Canada, is our best friend; it welcomes our citizens, and protects them as its own; we have hundreds of millions of dollars of investments there, and tens of thousands of our citizens; their rights are respected, their property protected, and they are welcomed with open arms. How about Venezuela, Colombia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador, Haiti, San Domingo? In those countries the exequaturs of our ministers and consuls are cancelled on the slightest pretext, our citizens are thrown into jail or robbed or murdered by the so-called gov

ernments.

This friendship of "Sister Republics" is a great thing! Suppose they had the power? Now, conscious of their weakness, some of them at times use phrases of flattery when speaking of the Great Republic - especially if they are figuring on some particularly atrocious deed, and think it advisable to curry favor with our government a little in advance, so that it will not upset their scheme. But if they had the power the navies and the armies they would soon visit on our government as a whole the spleen and vengeance which they now mete out to our citizens as individuals.

If our people think the Monroe Doctrine has resulted in creating countries which are friendly to us, they are laboring under the greatest of mistakes. We have no enemies in Europe, and never have had, at all comparable with these pestiferous dictatorships. We should be safer from invasion if Russia, Germany, China, Japan, or any other power on this earth possessed that territory than we should be for the present dictatorships to occupy it if they had the power. It is not to the interest of the United States to nourish dictatorships in the littoral of the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. The people there are constitutionally and unalterably hostile to us.

T

CHAPTER XI

THE LOGIC OF TRADE

HE majority of our press and people have been so ready to fight at the drop of the hat in behalf of our "Sister Republics" that it becomes pertinent to ask whether it is worth while to antagonize needlessly those great civilized powers with whom we have such satisfactory trade relations, for the sake of the pure love and affection which it is supposed we ought to have for those countries to the south of us. In discussing this matter, little regard need be given to the ethical theories or absurd vagaries of men who are chiefly occupied in holding conferences, Pan-American conventions, or dreaming of a Pan-American commercial union. A fact is worth forty theories. If South America could be civilized by junketing trips or holding love feasts, if our commerce could be extended there by pretty speeches, then a practical man might be induced to listen with some patience to the raillery against England and Germany, and the laudation of Latin America. But the statistics of commerce do not point that way. Leaving sentimentality aside, let us examine the figures as to our foreign commerce.

I. BALANCE OF TRADE AGAINST THE UNITED STATES

The first fact of importance, and it is worth considering, is that the United States has bought over one thousand million dollars of products from Spanish-American countries more than we have sold to them in the past ten years. This enormous balance of trade against us is not being decreased in any appreciable degree. Eighty or one hundred millions of dollars of American gold goes into Spanish America every year to remain there. But that is not all. The United States, in order to encourage this trade, subsidizes, if not directly then indirectly by paying large bonuses for carrying the mails, all the steamship lines flying the American flag running to South American ports. This subsidy amounts to two thousand dollars a trip to certain steamers. Not alone have we paid Venezuela fifty millions of dollars in gold more than we have received from her in the past ten years, but we also virtually subsidize the ships which enable that country to carry on this profitable business with us. Nor is this all. There have

been hundreds of millions of dollars of American money invested in these countries which has been absolutely lost, frequently destroyed by the revolutionists, or, because of repeated government interference rendered valueless.

The commerce of the United States with South American countries for the years 1901-1902 and 1902-1903 is as follows, as given by the United States government:

Total South America. . $119,785,756 $38,043,617 $107,428,323 $41,137,872

From this it will be seen that there is a stream of American gold yearly going into South America to stay there. Our trade with the other Spanish-American countries for these two years was as follows: