With the new republic negotiation went on pleasantly and rapidly, and as early as November 18, 1903, a convention was drawn up, in which the United States guaranteed the independence of Panama and in return received in perpetuity a grant of a zone ten miles wide within which to construct a ca.n.a.l from ocean to ocean.
CHAPTER XVI. Problems Of The Caribbean
As the acquisition of the Philippines made all Far Eastern questions of importance to the United States, so the investment of American millions in a ca.n.a.l across the Isthmus of Panama increased popular interest in the problems of the Caribbean. That fascinating sheet of water, about six hundred miles from north to south by about fifteen hundred from east to west, is ringed around by the possessions of many powers. In 1898 its mainland sh.o.r.es were occupied by Mexico, British Honduras, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Venezuela; its islands were possessed by the negro states of Hayti and the Dominican Republic, and by Spain, France, Great Britain, Holland, and Denmark. In the Caribbean had been fought some of the greatest and most significant naval battles of the eighteenth century and, when the ca.n.a.l was opened, across its waters would plough a great share of the commerce of the world. As owner of the ca.n.a.l and professed guardian of its use, the United States was bound to consider its own strategic relation to this sea into which the ca.n.a.l opened.
Gradually the situation which existed in 1898 has changed. Spain has been removed from the Caribbean. Of her former possessions the United States holds Porto Rico; Cuba is independent, but is in a way under the protection of the United States, which possesses on her coast the naval station of Guantanamo. The American treaty with the new republic of Panama practically created another American protectorate, and the fortification of the ca.n.a.l gave the United States another strategic position. The negotiation for the purchase of the Danish islands has been completed successfully. But these obvious footholds are of less importance than the more indirect relationships which the United States has been steadily establishing, through successive Administrations, with the various other powers located on the borders of the Caribbean.
The Spanish War did not lull the suspicions of the United States regarding the dangerous influence which would be exerted should the ambitions of European powers be allowed a field of action in the American continents, and the United States remained as intent as ever on preventing any opportunity for their gaining admittance. One such contingency, though perhaps a remote one, was the possibility of a rival ca.n.a.l, for there are other isthmuses than that of Panama which might be pierced with the aid of modern resources of capital and genius. To prevent any such action was not selfish on the part of the United States, for the American ca.n.a.l was to have an open door, and there was no economic justification for another seaway from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
There might, however, be some temptation in the political and military influence which such a prospective second ca.n.a.l could exert. Negotiations were begun, therefore, with all the transcontinental powers of Central America, offering liberal compensation for the control of all possible ca.n.a.l routes. These negotiations have been long drawn out and are only lately coming to fruition. They have served, however, to taboo all projects by other nations, and one of these treaties negotiated with Colombia, but not yet ratified, holds out the prospect of winning back her friendship which was so seriously alienated by the recognition of the republic of Panama by the United States.
In one respect the changing world has rendered quite obsolete the p.r.o.nouncements of President Monroe. In the case of j.a.pan there has grown up a great power which is neither European nor American. American policy in the Far East has made it abundantly evident that the United States does not regard the self-imposed limitations upon its activity as extending to Asia. In her case there is lacking the quid pro quo by which the United States has justified its demand that European powers refrain from interfering in America. By no means, however, has the Government admitted the right of Asia to impinge on the American continents.
In 1912 Washington heard that j.a.pan was negotiating with Mexico for a concession on Magdalena Bay. Senator Lodge promptly introduced a resolution in the Senate, declaring that "when any harbor or other place in the American continents is so situated that the occupation thereof for naval or military purposes might threaten the communication or the safety of the United States, the Government of the United States could not see, without grave concern, the possession of such harbor or other place by any corporation or a.s.sociation which has such relation to another government, not American, as to give that government practical power of control for naval or military purposes-" This resolution, which pa.s.sed the Senate by a vote of 51 to 4, undoubtedly represented American sentiment, at least with regard to the foreign occupation of any territory bordering on the Caribbean or on the Pacific between Panama and California.
A more subtle danger lay in the financial claims of European powers against the various states in Central America, and the possibility of these claims being used as levers to establish permanent control. Most of these foreign demands had a basis in justice but had been exaggerated in amount. They were of two kinds: first, for damage to persons or property resulting from the numerous revolutions and perpetual brigandage which have scourged these semitropic territories; second, for debts contracted in the name of the several countries for the most part to conduct revolutions or to gild the after-career of defeated rulers in Paris,-debts with a face value far in excess of the amount received by the debtor and with acc.u.mulated interest in many cases far beyond the capacity of the several countries to pay. The disputes as to the validity of such claims have been without end, and they have furnished a constant temptation to the cupidity of individuals and the ambition of the powers.
In 1902 Germany induced Great Britain and Italy to join her in an attempt to collect the amount of some of these claims from Venezuela. A joint squadron undertook a "pacific blockade" of the coast. Secretary Hay denied that a "pacific blockade" existed in international law and urged that the matter be submitted to arbitration. Great Britain and Italy were willing to come to an understanding and withdrew; but Germany, probably intent on ulterior objects, was unwilling and preferred to take temporary possession of certain ports. President Roosevelt then summoned the German Amba.s.sador, Dr. Holleben, and told him that, unless Germany consented to arbitrate, Admiral Dewey would be ordered at noon ten days later to proceed to Venezuela and protect its coast. A week pa.s.sed with no message. Holleben called on the President but rose to go without mentioning Venezuela. President Roosevelt thereupon informed the Amba.s.sador that he had changed his mind and had decided to send Admiral Dewey one day earlier than originally planned; he further explained that in the event the Kaiser should decide to arbitrate, as not a word had been put on paper, there would be nothing to indicate coercion. Within thirty-six hours Holleben reported that Germany would arbitrate. Only once before, when Seward was dealing with Napoleon III concerning Mexico, had forcible persuasion been used to maintain the Monroe Doctrine.
It was perfectly clear that if the United States sat idly by and allowed European powers to do what they would to collect their Latin American debts, the Monroe Doctrine would soon become a dead letter. It was not, however, so plain how American interference could be justified. The problem was obviously a difficult one and did not concern the United States alone. Latin America was even more vitally concerned with it, and her statesmen, always lucid exponents of international law, were active in devising remedies. Carlos Calvo of Argentina advanced the doctrine that "the collection of pecuniary claims made by the citizens of one country against the government of another country should never be made by force." Senior Drago, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the same country in 1902, urged upon the United States a modification of the same view by a.s.serting that "the public debt cannot occasion armed intervention."
President Roosevelt handled the matter in his messages of 1903 and 1904. "That our rights and interests are deeply concerned in the maintenance of the [Monroe] Doctrine is so clear as hardly to need argument. This is especially true in view of the construction of the Panama Ca.n.a.l. As a mere matter of self defense we must exercise a close watch over the approaches to this ca.n.a.l, and this means we must be thoroughly alive to our interests in the Caribbean Sea." "When we announce a policy... we thereby commit ourselves to the consequences of the policy." "Chronic wrongdoing or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power."
To prevent European intervention for the purpose of securing just claims in America, then, the United States would undertake to handle the case, and would wield the "Big Stick" against any American state which should refuse to meet its obligations. This was a repet.i.tion, in a different tone, of Blaine"s "Elder Sister" program. As developed, it had elements also of Cleveland"s Venezuela policy. In 1907 the United States submitted to the Hague Conference a modified form of the Drago doctrine, which stated that the use of force to collect contract debts claimed from one government by another as being due to its citizens should be regarded as illegal, unless the creditor nation first offered to submit its claims to arbitration and this offer were refused by the nation against which the claim was directed. The interference of the United States, therefore, would be practically to hale the debtor into court.
Around the Caribbean, however, were several nations not only unwilling but unable to pay their debts. This inability was not due to the fact that national resources were lacking, but that constant revolution scared away conservative capital from seeking constructive investment or from developing their natural riches, while speculators loaned money at ruinous rates of discount to tottering presidents, gambling on the possibility of some turn in fortune that would return them tenfold. The worst example of an insolvent and recalcitrant state was the Dominican Republic, whose superb harbors were a constant temptation to ambitious powers willing to a.s.sume its debts in return for naval stations, and whose unscrupulous rulers could nearly always be bribed to sell their country as readily as anything else. In the case of this country President Roosevelt made a still further extension of the Monroe Doctrine when, in 1905, he concluded a treaty whereby the United States agreed to undertake the adjustment of the republic"s obligations and the administration of its custom houses, and at the same time guarantee the territorial integrity of the republic. This arrangement was hotly attacked in the United States as an indication of growing imperialism, and, though it was defended as necessary to prevent the entrance of new foreign influences into the Caribbean, the opposition was so strong that the treaty was not accepted by the Senate until 1907, and then only in a modified form with the omission of the territorial guarantee.
For the United States thus to step into a foreign country as an administrator was indeed a startling innovation. On the other hand, the development of such a policy was a logical sequence of the Monroe Doctrine. That it was a step in the general development of policy on the part of the United States and not a random leap is indicated by the manner in which it has been followed up. In 1911 treaties with Nicaragua and Honduras somewhat similar to the Dominican protocol were negotiated by Secretary Knox but failed of ratification. Subsequently under President Wilson"s Administration, the treaty with Nicaragua was redrafted and was ratified by both parties. Hayti, too, was in financial difficulties and, at about the time of the outbreak of the Great War, it was reported that Germany was about to relieve her needs at the price of harbors and of control. In 1915, however, the United States took the island under its protection by a treaty which not only gave the Government complete control of the fiscal administration but bound it to "lend an efficient aid for the preservation of Haitian independence and the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty."
Since 1898, then, the map of the Caribbean has completely changed its aspect. The sea is not an American lake, nor do the Americans wish it to be such. In time, as the surrounding countries become better able to stand alone, direct interference on the part of the United States will doubtless become less than it is today. There is, however, practically no present opportunity for a non-American power to establish itself and to threaten the commerce or the ca.n.a.l of the United States.
Few people in the United States and perhaps fewer in the countries involved realize from what American influence has saved these small states. A glance at Africa and Asia will suggest what would otherwise have been the case. Without the United States and its leadership, there can be little doubt that giant semi-sovereign corporations owing allegiance to some great power would now possess these countries. They would bristle with forts and police, and their populations would be in a state of absolute political and of quasi-economic servitude. They might today be more orderly and perhaps wealthier, but unless the fundamental American belief in democracy and self-government is wrong they would be infinitely farther from their true goal, which involves the working out of their own civilization.
The Caribbean is but a portion of the whole international problem of the Americas, and the methods used by the United States in solving its problems seemed likely to postpone that sympathetic union of the whole to which it has been looking forward for a century. Yet this country has not been unappreciative of the larger aspects of Pan-Americanism. In 1899 President McKinley revived Blaine"s project and proposed a Pan-American congress. To popularize this idea, a Pan-American Exposition was arranged at Buffalo in 1901. Here, just after he had expounded his views of the ties that might bind the continents together, McKinley was a.s.sa.s.sinated. The idea, however, lived and in the same year a congress was held at the City of Mexico, where it was proposed that such meetings be held regularly. As a result, congresses were held at Rio de Janeiro in 1906 and at Buenos Aires in 1910, at which various measures of common utility were discussed and a number of projects were actually undertaken.
The movement of Pan-Americanism has missed achieving the full hopes of its supporters owing not so much to a difference of fundamental ideas and interests as to suspicion and national pride. The chief powers of southern South America-Argentina, Brazil, and Chili-had by the end of the nineteenth century in large measure successfully worked out their own problems. They resented the interference of a power of alien race such as the United States, and they suspected its good intentions in wielding the "Big Stick," especially after the cavalier treatment which Colombia had received. They observed with alarm the strengthening of the grip of the United States about the Caribbean. United in a group, known from their initials as the "A.B.C." powers, they sought to a.s.sume the leadership of Latin America, basing their action, indeed, upon the fundamentals of the Monroe Doctrine-the exclusion of foreign influence and the independence of peoples-but with themselves instead of the United States as chief, guardians.
Many of the publicists of these three powers, however, doubted their capacity to walk entirely alone. On the one hand they noted the growing influence of the Germans in Brazil and the indications of j.a.panese interest in many places, and on the other they divined the fundamental sincerity of the professions of the United States and were anxious to cooperate with this nation. Not strong enough to control the policy of the various countries, these men at least countered those chauvinists who urged that hostility to the United States was a first duty compared with which the danger of non-American interference might be neglected.
Confronted by this divided att.i.tude, the United States sought to win over but not to compel. Nothing more completely met American views than that each power should maintain for itself the principles of the Monroe Doctrine by excluding foreign influences. Beyond that the United States sought only friendship, and, if it were agreeable, such unity as should be mutually advantageous. In 1906 Elihu Root, the Secretary of State, made a tour of South America with a view of expressing these sentiments; and in 1913-1914 ex-President Roosevelt took occasion, on the way to his Brazilian hunting trip, to a.s.sure the people of the great South American powers that the "Big Stick" was not intended to intimidate them. Pan-American unity was still, when President Taft went out of office in 1913, an aspiration rather than a realized fact, though the tangible evidences of unity had vastly multiplied since 1898, and the recurring congresses provided a basis of organization upon which some substantial structure might be built.
The United States had sincerely hoped that Mexico, like the "A.B.C." powers, was another Latin American power which had found itself. Of all it was certainly the most friendly and the most intimate. The closeness of its relations with the United States is indicated by the fact that in the forty years between 1868 and 1908, forty agreements, treaties, and conventions had been concluded between the two countries. Nor was intimacy confined to the Governments. The peace arranged by President Diaz had brought foreign capital by the billion to aid the internal development of the country, and of this money more had come from the United States than from any other nation. Nor was it financial aid alone which had gone across the border. There was but little American colonization, it is true, but business managers, engineers, mine foremen, and ranch superintendents formed thousands of links binding the nations together. The climax of intimacy seemed reached when, in 1910, a general treaty of arbitration was made after President Taft and President Diaz had met at El Paso on the Mexican border in a personal conference. A personal interview between the President of the United States and the chief of a foreign state was almost unique in American history, owing to the convention that the President should not depart from the national territory.
It was, therefore, with a bitter sense of disappointment that Americans heard of the revolution inaugurated in 1910 by Francisco Madero. In common with France, Spain, Great Britain, and Germany, the United States was disturbed for the safety of the investments and persons of its citizens. The Government was also concerned because the points of first and most persistent fighting were where the various railroads crossed the American boundary. This circ.u.mstance brought the whole border within the range of disturbance. The Government was apprehensive, too, as to the effect of long-continued war upon territories within the circle of its chief interest, the Caribbean area. Yet, when the first surprise caused by the revolution had pa.s.sed and the reason for the outbreak was perceived,-the fact that the order and apparent prosperity of the Diaz regime had been founded upon the oppression and exploitation of the ma.s.ses,-public sympathy in the United States went out to Madero and his supporters.
The Diaz Government collapsed with surprising suddenness. The resignation of President Diaz in May, 1911, was accepted as a proof of the popular character and the success of the revolution, and Madero, who was elected president in October, was promptly recognized as the const.i.tutional head of the Mexican Government. The revolution, however, aroused the United States to the fact that there still persisted the era of disturbance which it had hoped was drawing to a close in Latin America. With this disturbing revelation in mind, Congress took another step in the development of American policies consequent upon the Monroe Doctrine by pa.s.sing an act authorizing the President, whenever he should "find that in any American country conditions of domestic violence exist which are promoted by the use of arms and munitions of war procured from the United States," to prohibit trade in such articles. Under this authority, President Taft promptly forbade the export of such articles to Mexico except to the Government.
Real revolutions, however, seldom result simply in the transfer of authority from one group to another. The breaking of the bonds of recognized authority releases all sorts of desires, represented in the state by separate groups, each of which sees no reason for accepting the control of another. All seek to seize the dropped reins. The inauguration of Madero, therefore, did not result in a new and popular government but in continued disturbance. Factions with differing creeds raised revolts in various sections of the country until, in February, 1913, Madero was overthrown by one of these groups, led by Felix Diaz and General Victoriano Huerta, and representing a reactionary tendency. Madero and his vice president Pino Suarez were killed, it was believed by order of Huerta, and on the 27th of February, in the City of Mexico, Huerta was proclaimed President. Don Venustiano Carranza, Governor of the State of Coahuila, straightway denied the const.i.tutionality of the new Government and led a new revolution under the banner of the Const.i.tution.
It was in such a condition that President Wilson found the affairs of the continent when he took office on March 4, 1913. The American policy in the Caribbean was well defined and to a large extent in operation. Pan-American sentiment was developing, but its strength and direction were yet to be determined. Mexico was in chaos, and upon the Government"s handling of it would depend the final success of the United States in the Caribbean and the possibility of effecting a real and fruitful cooperation of the Americas.
CHAPTER XVII. World Relationships
It became increasingly evident that the foreign policy of the United States could not consist solely of a Caribbean policy, a Pan-American policy, and a Far Eastern policy, but that it must necessarily involve a world policy. During the years after the Spanish War the world was actively discussing peace; but all the while war was in the air. The peace devices of 1815, the Holy and the Quadruple Alliances, had vanished. The world had ceased to regard buffer states as preventives of wars between the great nations, although at the time few believed that any nation would ever dare to treat them as Germany since then has treated Belgium. The balance of power still existed, but statesmen were ever uncertain as to whether such a relation of states was really conducive to peace or to war. A concert of the Great Powers resembling the Quadruple Alliance sought to regulate such vexing problems as were presented by the Balkans and China, but their concord was not loud enough to drown the notes of discord.
The outspoken word of governments was still all for peace; their proposals for preserving it were of two kinds. First, there was the time-honored argument that the best preservative of peace was preparation for war. Foremost in the avowed policies of the day, this was urged by some who really believed it, by some who hoped for war and intended to be ready for it, and by the cynical who did not wish for war but thought it inevitable. The other proposal was that war could and should be prevented by agreements to submit all differences between nations to international tribunals for judgment. In the United States, which had always rejected the idea of balance of power, and which only in Asia, and to a limited degree, a.s.sented to the concert of powers, one or the other of these two views was urged by all those who saw that the United States had actually become a world power, that isolation no longer existed, and that a policy of nonintervention could not keep us permanently detached from the current of world politics.
The foremost advocates of preparedness were Theodore Roosevelt and Admiral Mahan. It was little enough that they were able to accomplish, but it was more than most Americans realize. The doubling of the regular army which the Spanish War had brought about was maintained but was less important than its improvement in organization. Elihu Root and William H. Taft, as Secretaries of War, profiting by the lessons learned in Cuba, established a general staff, provided for the advanced professional training of officers, and became sufficiently acquainted with the personnel to bring into positions of responsibility those who deserved to hold them. The navy grew with less resistance on the part of the public, which now was interested in observing the advance in the rank of its fleet among the navies of the world. When in 1907 Roosevelt sent the American battleship squadron on a voyage around the world, the expedition not only caused a pleased self-consciousness at home but perhaps impressed foreign nations with the fact that the United States now counted not only as a potential but as an actual factor in world affairs.
Greater popular interest, if one may judge from relative achievement, was aroused by the proposal to subst.i.tute legal for military battles. The United States had always been disposed to submit to arbitration questions which seemed deadlocked. The making of general arrangements for the arbitration of cases that might arise in the future was now advocated. The first important proposal of this character was made to the United States by Great Britain at the time of the Venezuela affair. This proposal was rejected, for it was regarded as a device of Great Britain to cover her retreat in that particular case by suggesting a general provision. The next suggestion was that made by the Czar, in 1899, for a peace conference at The Hague. This invitation the United States accepted with hearty good will and she concurred in the establishment of a permanent court of arbitration to meet in that city. Andrew Carnegie built a home for it, and President Roosevelt sent to it as its first case that of the "Pious Fund," concerning which the United States had long been in dispute with Mexico.
The establishment of a world court promoted the formation of treaties between nations by which they agreed to submit their differences to The Hague or to similar courts especially formed. A model, or as it was called a "mondial" treaty was drawn up by the conference for this purpose. Secretary Hay proceeded to draw up treaties on such general lines with a number of nations, and President Roosevelt referred them to the Senate with his warm approval. That body, however, exceedingly jealous of the share in the treaty-making power given it by the Const.i.tution, disliked the treaties, because it feared that under such general agreements cases would be submitted to The Hague Court without its special approval. * Yet, as popular sentiment was strongly behind the movement, the Senate ventured only to amend the procedure in such a way as to make every "agreement" a treaty which would require its concurrence. President Roosevelt, however, was so much incensed at this important change that he refused to continue the negotiations.
* The second article in these treaties read: "In each individual case the high contracting parties, before appealing to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, shall conclude a special agreement defining clearly the matter in dispute."
President Taft was perhaps more interested in this problem than in any other. His Secretary of State, Elihu Root, reopened negotiations and, in 1908 and 1909, drew up a large number of treaties in a form which met the wishes of the Senate. Before the Administration closed, the United States had agreed to submit to arbitration all questions, except those of certain cla.s.ses especially reserved, that might arise with Great Britain, France, Austro-Hungary, China, Costa Rica, Italy, Denmark, j.a.pan, Hayti, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Paraguay, Spain, Sweden, Peru, San Salvador, and Switzerland.
Such treaties seemed to a few fearsome souls to be violations of the injunctions of Washington and Jefferson to avoid entangling alliances, but to most they seemed, rather, to be disentangling. It was, indeed, becoming increasingly apparent that the world was daily growing smaller and that, as its parts were brought together by rail and steamships, by telegraph and wireless, more and more objects of common interest must become subject to common regulation. General Grant can hardly be regarded as a visionary, and yet in 1873 in his second inaugural address, he had said: "Commerce, education, and rapid transit of thought and matter by telegraph and steam have changed all this.... I believe that our Great Maker is preparing the world in His own good time, to become one nation, speaking one language, and when armies and navies will be no longer required."
Quietly, without general interest, or even particular motive, the United States had accepted its share in handling many such world problems. As early as 1875 it had cooperated in founding and maintaining at Paris an International Bureau of Weights and Measures. In 1886 it joined in an international agreement for the protection of submarine cables; in 1890, in an agreement for the suppression of the African slave trade; in 1899, in an agreement for the regulation of the importation of spirituous liquors into Africa; in 1902, in a convention of American powers for the Arbitration of Pecuniary Claims. In 1903 it united with various American powers in an International Sanitary Convention; in 1905 it joined with most countries of the world in establishing and maintaining an International Inst.i.tute of Agriculture at Rome. It would surprise most Americans to know that five hundred pages of their collection of "Treaties and Conventions" consist of such international undertakings, which amount in fact to a body of international legislation. It is obvious that the Government, in interpreting the injunction to avoid entangling alliances, has not found therein prohibition against international cooperation.
In 1783 the United States had been a little nation with not sufficient inhabitants to fill up its million square miles of territory. Even in 1814 it still reached only to the Rockies and still found a troublesome neighbor lying between it and the Gulf of Mexico. Now with the dawn of the twentieth century it was a power of imperial dimensions, occupying three million square miles between the Atlantic and the Pacific, controlling the Caribbean, and stretching its possessions across the Pacific and up into the Arctic. Its influence was a potent factor in the development of Asia, and it was bound by the bonds of treaties, which it has ever regarded sacred, to a.s.sist in the regulation of many matters of world interest.
Nor had the only change during the century been that visible in the United States. The world which seemed so vast and mysterious in 1812 had opened up most of its dark places to the valor of adventurous explorers, of whom the United States had contributed its fair share. The facilities of intercourse had conquered s.p.a.ce, and along with its conquest had gone a penetration of the countries of the world by the tourist and the immigrant, the missionary and the trader, so that Terence"s statement that nothing human was alien to him had become perforce true of the world.
Nor had the development of governmental organization stood still. In 1812 the United States was practically the only democratic republic in the world; in 1912 the belief in a government founded on the consent of the governed, and republican in form, had spread over all the Americas, except such portions as were still colonies, and was practically true of even most of them. Republican inst.i.tutions had been adopted by France and Portugal, and the spirit of democracy had permeated Great Britain and Norway and was gaining yearly victories elsewhere. In 1912 the giant bulk of China adopted the form of government commended to he; by the experience of the nation which, more than any other, had preserved her integrity. Autocracy and divine right, however, were by no means dead. On the contrary, girt and prepared, they were arming themselves for a final stand. But no longer, as in 1823, was America pitted alone against Europe. It was the world including America which was now divided against itself.
It was chiefly the Spanish War which caused the American people slowly and reluctantly to realize this new state of things-that the ocean was no longer a barrier in a political or military sense, and that the fate of each nation was irrevocably bound up with the fate of all. As the years went by, however, Americans came to see that the isolation proclaimed by President Monroe was no longer real, and that isolation even as a tradition could not, either for good or for ill, long endure. All thoughtful men saw that a new era needed a new policy; the wiser, however, were not willing to give up all that they had acquired in the experience of the past. They remembered that the separation of the continents was not proclaimed as an end in itself but as a means of securing American purposes. Those national purposes had been: first, the securing of the right of self-government on the part of the United States; second, the securing of the right of other nations to govern themselves. Both of these aims rested on the belief that one nation should not interfere with the domestic affairs of another. These fundamental American purposes remained, but it was plain that the situation would force the nation to find some different method of realizing them. The action of the United States indicated that the hopes of the people ran to the reorganization of the world in such a way as would subst.i.tute the arbitrament of courts for that of war. Year by year the nation committed itself more strongly to cooperation foreshadowing such an organization. While this feeling was growing among the people, the number of those who doubted whether such a system could ward off war altogether and forever also increased. Looking forward to the probability of war, they could not fail to fear that the next would prove a world war, and that in the even of such a conflict, the noninterference of the United States would not suffice to preserve it immune in any real independence.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE:
Each President"s "Annual Message" always gives a brief survey of the international relations of the year and often makes suggestions of future policy. Of these the most famous is Monroe"s message in 1823. Since 1860 they have been accompanied by a volume of "Foreign Relations", giving such correspondence as can be made public at the time. The full correspondence in particular cases is sometimes called for by the Congress, in which case it is found in the "Executive Doc.u.ments" of House or Senate. A fairly adequate selection of all such papers before 1828 is found in "American State Papers, Foreign Affairs." Three volumes contain the American "Treaties, Conventions, International Acts," etc., to 1918. A. B. Hart"s "Foundations of American Foreign Policy" (1901) gives a good bibliography of these and other sources.
More intimate material is found in the lives and works of diplomats, American and foreign. Almost all leave some record, but there are unfortunately fewer of value since 1830 than before that date. The "Memoirs" of John Quincy Adams (1874-1877), and his "Writings," (1913-), are full of fire and information, and W. C. Ford, in his "John Quincy Adams and the Monroe Doctrine," in the "American Historical Review," vol. VII, pp. 676-696, and vol. VIII, pp. 28-52, enables us to sit at the council table while that fundamental policy was being evolved. The most interesting work of this kind for the later period is "The Life and Letters of John Hay," by W. R. Thayer, 2 vols. (1915).
Treatments of American diplomacy as a whole are few. J. W. Foster"s "Century of American Diplomacy" (1901) ends with 1876. C. R. Fish in "American Diplomacy" (1915) gives a narrative from the beginning to the present time. W. A. Dunning"s "The British Empire and the United States" (1914) is illuminating and interesting. Few countries possess so firm a basis for the understanding of their relations with the world as J. B. Moore has laid down in his "Digest of International Law," 8 vols. (1906), and his "History and Digest of International Arbitrations," 6 vols. (1898).