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XII. DISGRACING THE AMERICAN FLAG

To the poor, simple-minded people of South America, outraged and oppressed by one bandit government after another, the American flag is a kind of emblem of safety. They have seen all sorts of people in dire extremity rush beneath its folds, as in Biblical times they ran to the "cities of refuge," and although they do not know exactly how or why, they instinctively feel that it is a good flag, and that there are peace and safety where it flies. They look upon the American flag as a token from another world a sort of invisible world and in a

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kind of mysterious way they respect it and reverence it. Taking advantage of this feeling among the people, Castro, the Dictator of Venezuela, in September, 1903, used the American flag to accomplish his own ends in the bombardment of Ciudad Bolívar. The following Associated Press despatch explains the main facts:

"Port of Spain, Island of Trinidad, Sept. 24. — A leading German merchant who recently escaped from Ciudad Bolívar, on the Orinoco River, Venezuela, arrived here yesterday and made a statement under oath before the officials here, setting forth that on August 20 the Venezuelan war-ship Restaurador, formerly George J. Gould's yacht Atlanta, when steaming up the Orinoco River for the second time in order to bombard again Ciudad Bolívar, hoisted the American flag in order to be able to reach that city without arousing the suspicions of the inhabitants as to her identity, and that by this stratagem the Restaurador reached the custom house at Ciudad Bolívar and immediately opened fire on the centre of the city, causing loss of life and damage to property in the quarters inhabited by foreigners. The merchant also stated that the foreign consuls and all the population of Ciudad Bolívar protested against the actions of the Restaurador.

"Washington, Sept. 24. The singular circumstance reported by the German merchant in the above cable despatch was explained by the reception of two cable despatches from United States Minister Bowen at Caracas, at the State Department this afternoon. The first despatch stated that the Venezuelan gunboat Restaurador had approached Ciudad Bolívar flying the American flag. She did not lower the flag until she was very close to the shore, when she opened fire upon the insurgents from her position there, creating great consternation. When the Restaurador returned to La Guaira, the fact was reported to Minister Bowen, who indignantly demanded a complete apology from the Venezuelan government, and also that the flag of the United States be saluted by the offending ship.

"The second cable despatch from Mr. Bowen reports that the Venezuelan government promptly acceded to these terms, made a suitable apology, and the commander of the Restaurador hoisted the American flag and fired a national salute."

Now the facts are that when the Restaurador steamed up the river flying the American flag, the people went out by the hundreds to greet it-men, women, and children. These people had suffered from the revolutionists, who were then in control of the city. They hoped,

not exactly that the American flag would do them any good, but at least it might relieve them to some extent from the oppression of the brigands who were in control. But alas! they were doomed to disappointment. Suddenly the Restaurador hauled down the American flag, and without an instant's warning opened fire on the plaza filled with men, women, and children. Several hundred of these helpless and innocent people, non-combatants all of them, were killed, almost in the twinkling of an eye. The city was greatly damaged, and the flag which the people had come out to greet had proved to be their death-trap.

Apologies! How can any one discuss such outrages as these with patience? Bowen went through with some heroics, did some stage playing, got his name in the papers, and one would have thought he was bringing the strength of Hercules to support the dignity and honor of the United States, to hear him tell it. Who cares for apologies? What do they amount to? Any Dictator of South America would give the United States a bushel basket full of apologies if that will suffice to let him go ahead in his work of butchery and murder without molestation. And up to the present time it has sufficed.

XIII. NEITHER ARBITRATION NOR DIPLOMACY IS ADEQUATE TO CIVILIZE THESE COUNTRIES

We have heretofore shown that international arbitration is of but little use in furthering civilization in semi-barbarous communities. We now see that diplomacy is equally impotent. The foregoing discussion and relation of a few of many incidents sufficiently makes it clear that most of these communities are not amenable to diplomatic representations. If they were, there would be greater reason to hope for the future. But the typical military Jefe has a contempt for diplomatic procedure, and therefore our State Department has not been able to exercise any important influence over him.

I began this chapter with a quotation from Cowper's majestic poem in which he holds up to scorn the statesmen of England for their timid foreign policy. I wonder what Cowper would say, were he an American, about the policy of Bayard or Olney, of Gresham or Root?

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CHAPTER VIII

ELEMENTS OF DISORGANIZATION IN THE
AMERICAN GOVERNMENT

S a nation advances in civilization the problems confronting it increase in complexity. The problems confronting a savage race are very simple; to the savage they are as difficult as our more complex problems are to us. As savage tribes progress the problems take on a new character. How to plant a little corn, construct a rude hut, make the simplest clothing; such problems are joined with the more rudimentary problems of self-preservation. Further advancement introduces new and more complex questions for consideration and decision, and brain development comes about in precisely this way. In proportion as the problems of production and distribution, of ethics and government, of science and invention, are solved and practically applied, a people flourishes and becomes civilized. There is little reason to doubt that if a nation should advance as far ahead of the United States as the latter is of Venezuela, there would be proportionally as great a number of new and complicated problems confronting it as there are now confronting us in comparison with those facing Venezuela.

The problems of civilization are necessarily complicated. How to make one hundred persons of good character live in comfort on the land upon which only one savage existed in squalor, that is the heart of the aim of civilization, and the resultant problems growing out of this central object increase in complexity the farther we travel on the road to a realization of the ideal.

But because grave problems confront us that is no reason why we should grow faint-hearted. Rather they should make us stronger and more hopeful. Every force which plays upon us now, hostile as well as friendly, tends to our intellectual development. It will do no harm, however, to consider some of the dangers which threaten the American people, if for no other purpose than to see what, if any, effect they should have on our policy towards Latin America.

I. FAILURE OF THE AMERICAN JUDICIARY SYSTEM

"In order to establish justice❞—so says the Constitution of the United States, "promote the general welfare"- here we have justice again; for there can be no general welfare without justice"and

secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," that means justice once more, for there can be no liberty without justice.

The State Constitutions are no less explicit in regard to the necessity of establishing and maintaining justice. That of Illinois, as typical of the rest, says:

"Every person ought to find a certain remedy in the laws for all injuries and wrongs which he may receive in his person, property, or reputation; he ought to obtain by law, right and justice freely, and without being obliged to purchase it, completely and without denial, promptly and without delay."

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These words sound well; they show that the fathers, at least, were men of high ideals. How far short their offspring have come from 'making good," in establishing our judiciary system, is a matter of common notoriety; for it is not too much to say that in no State of this Union can justice be obtained at all, within any time or at any price, not alone "completely and without denial, promptly and without delay."

The administration of justice is confessedly a complicated subject. It is the most difficult department of the government, and the one most neglected by the people at large. The American citizens, including the Constitution makers, have devoted profound thought to the executive department of the government. There has always been among us an acute aversion to executive usurption, a disposition to criticise unsparingly every chief magistrate, or other executive officer, to limit his powers by all sorts of constitutional prohibitions, and to hold him to the strictest accountability to the people by frequent elections. This has come about because the tyrannies from which our forefathers escaped proceeded mainly from the executive branch of the government, and it was not deemed probable that the legislative or the judiciary department might become an even greater tyrant than any Emperor or Czar.

This intense scrutiny exercised by the American people with reference to the executive department has resulted, as might have been expected, in a high degree of excellence; and it may safely be asserted that the executive department, not only of the national government, but also of the several States and municipalities, has no equal, certainly no superior, in any nation of ancient or modern times. No country has ever had a line of kings or emperors which would compare with the American presidents, from Washington to Roosevelt; while examples of insolence, usurpation, corruption, or depravity among our inferior executive officers are rare indeed. It is the executive department which has chiefly made the reputation of this Republic as a land of liberty.

Our legislative department is on the average bad - the people pay less attention to it than to the executive; a representative is considered of less importance than a governor; an alderman than a mayor; so that while the latter are usually good men, the former are frequently

bad. The almost universal pollution of our legislative bodies, the vast number of "freak" and blackmailing laws, and the general odor of "graft" connected with practically all legislative proceedings, are bringing this department of the government into disrepute. A discovery of mild corruption in the agricultural or post-office department causes an instantaneous sensation, while corrupt bills by the hundred are passed in the State legislature with but little or no comment from the public. But public interest is at least to some extent directed towards the legislature.

It is in the judiciary department, however, where the American system of free government shows its gravest defects. The normal American attitude towards the judiciary is that of blind support and unthinking adherence. Unnumbered outrages are committed by the courts every day to which nobody pays any attention. If a tithe of the crimes committed in the name of the law, by the judges who are appointed as its ministers and the juries which are ordained as its organs, were done by the Executive, there would be an instantaneous revolution. But committed by the judiciary department, nothing is said, for we give the same unquestioned worship to the judiciary that the heathen do to their clay gods. As long as this spirit prevails among our people there will be inefficiency and corruption in our courts, and they will continue to be, as many of them are at present, a menace to the property and lives of honest men and a joy to criminals and blackmailers.

It was not Choate who was so severely criticised, I take it, as it was the judiciary itself, by Phillips, when he said:

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"Suppose we stood in that lofty temple of jurisprudence - on either side of us the statues of the great lawyers of every age and clime and let us see what part New England - Puritan, educated, free New England - would bear in the pageant. Rome points to a colossal figure and says, “That is Papinian, who, when the Emperor Caracella murdered his own brother, and ordered the lawyer to defend the deed, went cheerfully to death rather than sully his lips with the atrocious plea.' And France stretches forth her grateful hands, crying, "That is D'Agnesseau, worthy, when he went to face an enraged King, of the farewell his wife addressed him "Go! forget that have you wife and children to ruin, and remember only that you have France to save.' England says, 'That is Coke, who flung the laurels of eighty years in the face of the first Stuart, in the defence of the people.'

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"This is Selden, on every book of whose library you saw written the motto of which he lived worthy, 'Before everything Liberty!' That is Mansfield, silver-tongued, who proclaimed, 'Slaves cannot breathe in England.' — This is Romilly, who spent life trying to make law synonymous with justice, and succeeded in making life and property safer in every city of the Empire. That is Erskine, whose eloquence, in spite of Lord Eldon and George III, made it safe to speak and print.

"Then New England shouts, "This is Choate, who made it safe to murder; and of whose health thieves asked before they began to steal.' ”

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