America’s late-nineteenth-century venture in imperialism marked a decisive turning point in the nation’s history. A vigorous and rather flamboyant expansionism had long characterized American foreign policy, but with the major exception of Alaska (purchased in 1867) this earlier expansion had been into contiguous rather than outlying territories, and new lands had all eventually been admitted to the Union with rights and privileges equal to those of older states. Besides, these coveted regions were generally sparsely populated and presented neither the serious problem of assimilation of native cultures nor the need for a burdensome bureaucracy to administer the affairs of subject colonial peoples. To the expansionists of the 1890’s, however, the vision of America’s “Manifest Destiny” was not limited to continental shores alone. As the passing of the frontier and the rounding out of the nation’s furthermost boundaries signaled the final conquest of the continent, many Americans eagerly turned their eyes outward to champion a “large policy” for the republic. On every hand they were urged to recognize the “Mission of America” to carry the benefits and blessings of an advanced civilization to their numerous less fortunate brethren in the backward areas of the world, particularly the Far East and the Caribbean. Such plans for overseas expansion had been put before the American public before, but not until this last decade of the nineteenth century were most Americans convinced that their nation’s destiny was inextricably bound up in securing, civilizing, humanizing, “sanitizing,” Christianizing, and maintaining overseas possessions. In short, in the nineties Americans were finally to assume what Rudyard Kipling had called “the white man’s burden”—and incidentally to acquire a vast colonial empire.
America’s new willingness, or need, to assert herself imperially was probably connected very closely with the rapid development of industrial capitalism. For thirty years since the end of the Civil War an expanding, dynamic capitalism had safely and profitably engaged the nation in domestic projects of imperial proportions. A widespread network of railroads had spanned the continent; the Trans-Mississippi West had been thoroughly explored and colonized; the nation’s vast natural resources, the raw materials of a factory civilization, had been thoroughly exploited; and great industrial empires had been created to serve an ever-expanding domestic market. But by the 1890’s American industry was producing a surplus over what the domestic market, with purchasing power at the prevailing low level, could absorb; manufacturers were seeking supplies of certain raw materials that were not produced domestically; and business leaders generally were complaining that internal investment in an already well developed nation no longer provided the fantastic opportunities for profit of earlier decades. Now the business community turned its attention and energies to investments abroad, and American capital poured first into Hawaii and Cuba, and then at the turn of the century into other distant, underdeveloped areas of the world. Inevitably the flag followed the dollar, and foreign trade and investments brought extensive overseas possessions and protectorates in their wake. Then a large navy was deemed necessary to protect new possessions or “spheres of influence,” and more island bases were sought to service this far-flung navy; and so the imperial circle went, ever widening. Nor was the imperialist pattern unfamiliar. For England, France, Germany, and several lesser nations had long since joined in bitter rivalry for the raw materials, the markets, and the investment potentials of the “uncivilized” world. America was merely a belated participant in the scramble for empire.
These overseas ventures were not, however, motivated by economic drives alone, and the expansionism of the nineties is to be explained less in terms of economic interests forcing a pliant government’s hand than of intellectual and particularly emotional forces that gripped the entire nation. Indeed, the most blatant example of American aggressiveness, the Spanish-American War of 1898, was emphatically popular in origin and was waged despite the vehement objections of the larger portion of the business community. At the end of the brief war, when the spoils were well in hand and popular enthusiasm had already carried America well along the path to empire, businessmen were quick to make the nation’s new possessions economically advantageous, and in the twentieth century their concern for profit considerably influenced America’s imperial plans. But business had for the most part opposed the coming of war at the very moment that “jingoes” and the “yellow press” were making much of the nation’s psychological readiness for aggression to whip up explosive feelings against Spanish misrule in Cuba.
Thus the tempo of acquisition quickened for reasons more deeply rooted in popular feeling than in private greed, and every bellicose act of national self-assertion was widely cheered. But Americans’ aggressiveness did not stem from genuine feelings of security and self-esteem. Instead their boastful sense of “mission,” their racism, and their nativism stemmed largely from fear rather than faith. For this was no “age of confidence”; rather it was an age of internal chaos and turbulence, when depression, farm revolt, labor strife, the specter of monopolization, and continuous conflict between older agrarian values and the material symbols of a new industrial urbanism beset middle-class Americans with overwhelming confusion and anxiety. The nervous energies that popular leaders channeled into a wild enthusiasm for expansion were less the product of a real feeling for mastery and world domination than an expression of immaturity, insecurity, and fear.
Foremost among the “jingoes” who advocated a “large policy” for the United States was Theodore Roosevelt, an aristocratic and Harvard-bred young historian, reformer, and politician whose early association with the Dakota badlands had given him the frontiersman’s generally belligerent outlook and a taste for the “strenuous life.” These were characteristics that thoroughly endeared him to a public ripe for aggressive self-reliance. Responding to popular acclaim, the inflammatory Roosevelt vigorously preached the expansionist doctrines of the eminent naval historian and philosopher of imperialism, Captain Alfred T. Mahan, whose volumes on the influence of sea power in history had made a profound impression on educated Americans. Affirming America’s destiny to “look outward” beyond national borders, Mahan argued that the nation’s honor and prestige, as well as her defense and trade, depended upon the acquisition of numerous overseas naval bases, the control of the Caribbean and trade routes to the Far East, and the creation of an insurpassable naval force. There were some Americans, of course, who took violent exception to Mahan’s doctrines and to the bombastic, flag-waving jingoism of Roosevelt and his followers. But the anti-imperialists were hopelessly out of temper with their times, and when in 1897 Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt delivered his famous Naval War College speech on preparedness (“Washington’s Forgotten Maxim”), he met with widespread approval throughout the country. In this classic expression of naval expansionism Roosevelt asked for “a great navy . . . an armament fit for the nation’s needs, not primarily to fight, but to avert fighting.” Roosevelt declared that “preparation for war is the surest guaranty for peace,” and he extolled the “soldierly virtues” as the “most valuable of all qualities.” One year later the “glorious little war” with Spain secured an empire for America and swept the indomitable Colonel of the “Rough Riders” into the Governorship of New York. From there he rose rapidly to the Vice-Presidency, and then, in 1901, to the Presidency of the United States.
Fantastically energetic and ebullient—John Morley once described the President as “an interesting combination of St. Vitus and St. Paul”—Roosevelt played a particularly vital role in sparking and directing America’s expansionist drive. But Roosevelt’s greatest significance in this period was as a folk hero, as a living, fighting symbol of the nervous energies that dominated America. Earlier statesmen of a very different turn of mind and character had at times surrendered to the expansionist demands of an anxiety-ridden public. In 1893 the anti-imperialist Grover Cleveland had successfully opposed the annexation of Hawaii when American sugar planters, without regard for the native majority, staged a revolution in an attempt to protect their own extensive investments in the islands and sought admission to the Union. Nevertheless two years later even the courageous Cleveland submitted to the jingoist fervor in an act of national self-assertion that momentarily endeared him to the most violent expansionists. For in the Olney Doctrine of 1895 Cleveland peremptorily ordered the British to arbitrate a disturbing boundary dispute with Venezuela, claiming that “Today the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition.” Ultimately England succumbed to Cleveland’s bellicose demands, and the President was wildly applauded for twisting the lion’s tail so ferociously. The unwarlike McKinley, too, had surrendered to the tide of popular feeling when he took the nation to war with Spain and presided over the acquisition of Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands, and the establishment of a protectorate over Cuba. Thus Cleveland and McKinley had contributed largely to America’s emergence as a great imperial power. But they had done so halfheartedly and under intense pressure from an aroused public, while Roosevelt so thoroughly embodied the national temper that his every thought and act, however childlike or warlike, unhesitatingly bespoke the swashbuckling spirit of adolescent America.
Anti-imperialists violently denounced the colonial bequest of the war with Spain, but most Americans retorted with cries of “Don’t haul down the flag” and turned to Theodore Roosevelt to half-lead, half-follow them into the expansive years of the early twentieth century. The keystone of Roosevelt’s foreign policy was his injunction that the nation “speak softly and carry a big stick.” But Americans seldom spoke softly in those feverish years. In 1899–1900 Secretary of State John Hay had demanded an “Open Door” policy in China, insisting that American traders be treated equally with the nationals of those countries that had forcibly extorted trade concessions from the defenseless Chinese. Then in 1903 Roosevelt actively interfered in the internal affairs of Colombia, aiding and abetting a revolution in that Latin-American republic that left Panama free to negotiate an isthmian canal route with the impatient “Colossus of the North.” And in his Annual Messages of 1904–5 the “Roosevelt Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine warned our Latin neighbors that “Chronic wrong-doing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society . . . may force the United States, however reluctantly . . . to the exercise of an international police power.” This bold enlargement of American prerogatives throughout the Western hemisphere was frequently invoked in the following two decades to justify armed interference in the domestic as well as foreign affairs of the republics to the South. But by the late 1920’s and early 1930’s America’s youthful aggressiveness had been largely dissipated by the tremendous burdens of world power. Under the guidance of Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt the nation’s attitude toward the sovereign powers of the Western hemisphere underwent profound change, and a genuine sense of mutual respect and responsibility among equals—the “Good Neighbor” policy—was substituted for the “Big Stick” and “Dollar Diplomacy.” America had finally come of age.
Indications are not wanting of an approaching change in the thoughts and policy of Americans as to their relations with the world outside their own borders. For the past quarter of a century, the predominant idea, which has asserted itself successfully at the polls and shaped the course of the Government, has been to preserve the home market for the home industries. The employer and the workman alike have been taught to look at the various economical measures proposed from this point of view, to regard with hostility any step favoring the intrusion of the foreign producer upon their own domain, and rather to demand increasingly rigorous measures of exclusion than to acquiesce in any loosening of the chain that binds the consumer to them. The inevitable consequence has followed, as in all cases when the mind or the eye is exclusively fixed in one direction, that the danger of loss or the prospect of advantage in another quarter has been overlooked; and although the abounding resources of the country have maintained the exports at a high figure, this flattering result has been due more to the superabundant bounty of nature than to the demand of other nations for our protected manufacturers.
For nearly the lifetime of a generation, therefore, American industries have been thus protected, until the practice has assumed the force of a tradition, and is clothed in the mail of conservatism. In their mutual relations, these industries resemble the activities of a modern ironclad that has heavy armor, but inferior engines and guns; mighty for defense, weak for offense. Within, the home market is secured; but outside, beyond the broad seas, there are the markets of the world, that can be entered and controlled only by a vigorous contest, to which the habit of trusting to protection by statute does not conduce.
At bottom, however, the temperament of the American people is essentially alien to such a sluggish attitude. Independently of all bias for or against protection, it is safe to predict that, when the opportunities for gain abroad are understood, the course of American enterprise will cleave a channel by which to reach them. . . .
The interesting and significant feature of this changing attitude is the turning of the eyes outward, instead of inward only, to seek the welfare of the country. To affirm the importance of distant markets, and the relation to them of our own immense powers of production, implies logically the recognition of the link that joins the products and the markets—that is, the carrying trade; the three together constituting that chain of maritime power to which Great Britain owes her wealth and greatness. Further, is it too much to say that, as two of these links, the shipping and the markets, are exterior to our own borders, the acknowledgment of them carries with it a view of the relations of the United States to the world radically distinct from the simple idea of self-sufficingness? We shall not follow far this line of thought before there will dawn the realization of America’s unique position, facing the older worlds of the East and West, her shores washed by the oceans which touch the one or the other, but which are common to her alone.
Coincident with these signs of change in our own policy there is restlessness in the world at large which is deeply significant, if not ominous. It is beside our purpose to dwell upon the internal state of Europe, whence, if disturbances arise, the effect upon us may be but partial and indirect. But the great seaboard powers there do not stand on guard against their continental rivals only; they cherish also aspirations for commercial extension, for colonies, and for influence in distant regions, which may bring, and, even under our present contracted policy, already have brought them into collision with ourselves. The incident of the Samoa Islands, trivial apparently, was nevertheless eminently suggestive of European ambitions. America then roused from sleep as to interests closely concerning her future. At this moment internal troubles are imminent in the Sandwich Islands, where it should be our fixed determination to allow no foreign influence to equal our own. All over the world German commercial and colonial push is coming into collision with other nations: witness the affair of the Caroline Islands with Spain; the partition of New Guinea with England; the yet more recent negotiation between these two powers concerning their share in Africa viewed with deep distrust and jealousy by France; the Samoa affair; the conflict between German control and American interests in the islands of the western Pacific; and the alleged progress of German influence in Central and South America. . . .
There is no sound reason for believing that the world has passed into a period of assured peace outside the limits of Europe. Unsettled political conditions, such as exist in Haiti, Central America, and many of the Pacific Islands, especially the Hawaiian group, when combined with great military or commercial importance as is the case with most of these positions, involve, now as always, dangerous germs of quarrel, against which it is prudent at least to be prepared. Undoubtedly, the general temper of nations is more averse from war than it was of old. If no less selfish and grasping than our predecessors, we feel more dislike to the discomforts and sufferings attendant upon a breach of peace; but to retain that highly valued repose and the undisturbed enjoyment of the returns of commerce, it is necessary to argue upon somewhat equal terms of strength with an adversary. It is the preparedness of the enemy, and not acquiescence in the existing state of things, that now holds back the armies of Europe.
On the other hand, neither the sanctions of international law nor the justice of a cause can be depended upon for a fair settlement of differences, when they come into conflict with a strong political necessity on the one side opposed to comparative weakness on the other. In our still pending dispute over the seal-fishing of Bering Sea, whatever may be thought of the strength of our argument, in view of generally admitted principles of international law, it is beyond doubt that our contention is reasonable, just, and in the interest of the world at large. But in the attempt to enforce it we have come into collision not only with national susceptibilities as to the honor of the flag, which we ourselves very strongly share, but also with a state governed by a powerful necessity, and exceedingly strong where we are particularly weak and exposed. Not only has Great Britain a mighty navy and we a long defenseless seacoast, but it is a great commercial and political advantage to her that her larger colonies, and above all Canada, should feel that the power of the mother country is something which they need, and upon which they can count. . . . Whatever arrangement of this question is finally reached, the fruit of Lord Salisbury’s attitude scarcely can fail to be a strengthening of the sentiments of attachment to, and reliance upon, the mother country, not only in Canada, but in the other great colonies. These feelings of attachment and mutual dependence supply the living spirit, without which the nascent schemes for imperial federation are but dead mechanical contrivances; nor are they without influence upon such generally unsentimental considerations as those of buying and selling, and the course of trade.
This dispute, seemingly paltry yet really serious, sudden in its appearance and dependent for its issue upon other considerations than its own merits, may serve to convince us of many latent and yet unforeseen dangers to the peace of the western hemisphere, attendant upon the opening of a canal through the Central American Isthmus. In a general way, it is evident enough that this canal, by modifying the direction of trade routes, will induce a great increase of commercial activity and carrying trade throughout the Caribbean Sea; and that this now comparatively deserted nook of the ocean will become, like the Red Sea, a great thoroughfare of shipping, and will attract, as never before in our day, the interest and ambition of maritime nations. Every position in that sea will have enhanced commercial and military value, and the canal itself will become a strategic centre of the most vital importance. Like the Canadian Pacific Railroad, it will be a link between the two oceans; but, unlike it, the use, unless most carefully guarded by treaties, will belong wholly to the belligerent which controls the sea by its naval power. In case of war, the United States will unquestionably command the Canadian Railroad, despite the deterrent force of operations by the hostile navy upon our seaboard; but no less unquestionably will she be impotent, as against any of the great maritime powers, to control the Central American canal. Militarily speaking, and having reference to European complications only, the piercing of the Isthmus is nothing but a disaster to the United States, in the present state of her military and naval preparation. It is especially dangerous to the Pacific coast; but the increased exposure of one part of our seaboard reacts unfavorably upon the whole military situation.
Despite a certain great original superiority conferred by our geographical nearness and immense resources—due, in other words, to our natural advantages, and not to our intelligent preparations—the United States is woefully unready, not only in fact but in purpose to assert in the Caribbean and Central America a weight of influence proportioned to the extent of her interests. We have not the navy, and, what is worse, we are not willing to have the navy, that will weigh seriously in any disputes with those nations whose interests will conflict there with our own. We have not, and we are not anxious to provide, the defense of the seaboard which will leave the navy free for its work at sea. We have not, but many other powers have, positions, either within or on the borders of the Caribbean which not only possess great natural advantages for the control of that sea, but have received and are receiving that artificial strength of fortification and armament which will make them practically inexpungnable. On the contrary, we have not on the Gulf of Mexico even the beginning of a navy yard which could serve as the base of our operations. Let me not be misunderstood. I am not regretting that we have not the means to meet on terms of equality the great navies of the Old World. I recognize, what few at least say, that despite its great surplus revenue, this country is poor in proportion to its length of seaboard and its exposed points. That which I deplore, and which is a sober, just, and reasonable cause of deep national concern is that the nation neither has nor cares to have its sea frontier so defended, and its navy of such power, as shall suffice, with the advantages of our position, to weigh seriously when inevitable discussions arise—such as we have recently had about Samoa and Bering Sea, and which may at any moment come up about the Caribbean Sea or the canal. Is the United States, for instance, prepared to allow Germany to acquire the Dutch stronghold of Curaçao, fronting the Atlantic outlet of both the proposed canals of Panama and Nicaragua? Is she prepared to acquiesce in any foreign power purchasing from Haiti a naval station on the Windward Passage, through which pass our steamer routes to the Isthmus? Would she acquiesce in a foreign protectorate over the Sandwich Islands, that great central station of the Pacific, equidistant from San Francisco, Samoa, and the Marquesas, and an important post on our lines of communication with both Australia and China? Or will it be maintained that any one of these questions, supposing it to arise, is so exclusively one-sided, the arguments of policy and right so exclusively with us, that the other party will at once yield his eager wish, and gracefully withdraw? Was it so at Samoa? Is it so as regards the Bering Sea? The motto seen on so many ancient cannon, Ultima ratio regum, is not without its message to republics.
It is perfectly reasonable and legitimate, in estimating our needs of military preparation, to take into account the remoteness of the chief naval and military nations from our shores, and the consequent difficulty of maintaining operations at such a distance. It is equally proper, in framing our policy, to consider the jealousies of the European family of states, and their consequent unwillingness to incur the enmity of a people so strong as ourselves; their dread of our revenge in the future, as well as their inability to detach more than a certain part of their forces to our shores without losing much of their own weight in the councils of Europe. In truth, a careful determination of the force that Great Britain or France could probably spare for operations against our coasts, if the latter were suitably defended, without weakening their European position or unduly exposing their colonies and commerce, is the starting-point from which to calculate the strength of our own navy. . . .
While, therefore, the advantages of our own position in the western hemisphere, and the disadvantages under which the operations of a European state would labor, are undeniable and just elements in the calculations of the statesman, it is folly to look upon them as sufficient alone for our security. Much more needs to be cast into the scale that it may incline in favor of our strength. They are mere defensive factors, and partial at that. Though distant, our shores can be reached; being defenseless, they can detain but a short time a force sent against them. With a probability of three months’ peace in Europe, no maritime power would fear to support its demands by a number of ships with which it would be loath indeed to part for a year.
Yet, were our sea frontier as strong as it now is weak, passive self-defense, whether in trade or war, would be but a poor policy, so long as this world continues to be one of struggle and vicissitude. All around us now is strife; “the struggle of life,” “the race of life,” are phrases so familiar that we do not feel their significance till we stop to think about them. Everywhere nation is arrayed against nation; our own no less than others. What is our protective system but an organized warfare? In carrying it on, it is true, we have only to use certain procedures which all states now concede to be a legal exercise of the national power, even though injurious to themselves. It is lawful, they say, to do what we will with our own. Are our people, however, so unaggressive that they are likely not to want their own way in matters where their interests turn on points of disputed right, or so little sensitive as to submit quietly to encroachment by others in quarters where they long have considered their own influence should prevail?
Our self-imposed isolation in the matter of markets, and the decline of our shipping interest in the last thirty years, have coincided singularly with an actual remoteness of this continent from the life of the rest of the world. . . .
When the Isthmus is pierced, this isolation will pass away, and with it the indifference of foreign nations. From wheresoever they come and whithersoever they afterward go, all ships that use the canal will pass through the Caribbean. Whatever the effect produced upon the prosperity of the adjacent continent and islands by the thousand wants attendant upon maritime activity, around such a focus of trade will centre large commercial and political interests. To protect and develop its own, each nation will seek points of support and means of influence in a quarter where the United States always has been jealously sensitive to the intrusion of European powers. The precise value of the Monroe Doctrine is understood very loosely by most Americans, but the effect of the familiar phrase has been to develop a national sensitiveness, which is a more frequent cause of war than material interests; and over disputes caused by such feelings there will preside none of the calming influence due to the moral authority of international law, with its recognized principles, for the points in dispute will be of policy, of interest, not of conceded right. Already France and Great Britain are giving to ports held by them a degree of artificial strength uncalled for by their present importance. They look to the near future. Among the islands and on the mainland there are many positions of great importance, held now by weak or unstable states. Is the United States willing to see them sold to a powerful rival? But what right will she invoke against the transfer? She can allege but one, that of her reasonable policy supported by her might.
Whether they will or no, Americans must now begin to look outward. . . .
1904
. . . It is not true that the United States feels any land hunger or entertains any projects as regards the other nations of the Western Hemisphere save such as are for their welfare. All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States. 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. If every country washed by the Caribbean Sea would show the progress in stable and just civilization which with the aid of the Platt amendment Cuba has shown since our troops left the island, and which so many of the republics in both Americas are constantly and brilliantly showing, all question of interference by this Nation with their affairs would be at an end. Our interests and those of our southern neighbors are in reality identical. They have great natural riches, and if within their borders the reign of law and justice obtains, prosperity is sure to come to them. While they thus obey the primary laws of civilized society they may rest assured that they will be treated by us in a spirit of cordial and helpful sympathy. We would interfere with them only in the last resort, and then only if it became evident that their inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations. It is a mere truism to say that every nation, whether in America or anywhere else, which desires to maintain its freedom, its independence, must ultimately realize that the right of such independence can not be separated from the responsibility of making good use of it.
In asserting the Monroe Doctrine, in taking such steps as we have taken in regard to Cuba, Venezuela, and Panama, and in endeavoring to circumscribe the theater of war in the Far East, and to secure the open door in China, we have acted in our own interest as well as in the interest of humanity at large. There are, however, cases in which, while our own interests are not greatly involved, strong appeal is made to our sympathies. . . . But in extreme cases action may be justifiable and proper. What form the action shall take must depend upon the circumstances of the case; that is, upon the degree of the atrocity and upon our power to remedy it. The cases in which we could interfere by force of arms as we interfered to put a stop to intolerable conditions in Cuba are necessarily very few.
1905
. . . It must be understood that under no circumstances will the United States use the Monroe Doctrine as a cloak for territorial aggression. We desire peace with all the world, but perhaps most of all with the other peoples of the American Continent. There are, of course, limits to the wrongs which any self-respecting nation can endure. It is always possible that wrong actions toward this Nation, or toward citizens of this Nation, in some State unable to keep order among its own people, unable to secure justice from outsiders, and unwilling to do justice to those outsiders who treat it well, may result in our having to take action to protect our rights; but such action will not be taken with a view to territorial aggression, and it will be taken at all only with extreme reluctance and when it has become evident that every other resource has been exhausted.
Moreover, we must make it evident that we do not intend to permit the Monroe Doctrine to be used by any nation on this Continent as a shield to protect it from the consequences of its own misdeeds against foreign nations. If a republic to the south of us commits a tort against a foreign nation, such as an outrage against a citizen of that nation, then the Monroe Doctrine does not force us to interfere to prevent punishment of the tort, save to see that the punishment does not assume the form of territorial occupation in any shape. The case is more difficult when it refers to a contractual obligation. Our own Government has always refused to enforce such contractual obligations on behalf of its citizens by an appeal to arms. It is much to be wished that all foreign governments would take the same view. But they do not; and in consequence we are liable at any time to be brought face to face with disagreeable alternatives. On the one hand, this country would certainly decline to go to war to prevent a foreign government from collecting a just debt; on the other hand, it is very inadvisable to permit any foreign power to take possession, even temporarily, of the custom houses of an American Republic in order to enforce the payment of its obligations; for such temporary occupation might turn into a permanent occupation. The only escape from these alternatives may at any time be that we must ourselves undertake to bring about some arrangement by which so much as possible of a just obligation shall be paid. It is far better that this country should put through such an arrangement, rather than allow any foreign country to undertake it. To do so insures the defaulting republic from having to pay debt of an improper character under duress, while it also insures honest creditors of the republic from being passed by in the interest of dishonest or grasping creditors. Moreover, for the United States to take such a position offers the only possible way of insuring us against a clash with some foreign power. The position is, therefore, in the interest of peace as well as in the interest of justice. It is of benefit to our people; it is of benefit to foreign peoples; and most of all it is really of benefit to the people of the country concerned. . . .