negotiated with American banks to liquidate all foreign indebtedness, and set its own house in order. By comparison with the other treaties this seems, offhand, a selfish kind of treaty, but the provisions for administration of revenues and the regular and honest disbursement of government funds have already been arranged for in supplementary undertakings as between the Nicaraguan Government and the United States bankers, such mutual undertakings depending upon the support of the United States Government for their successful continuation. The treaty itself shows, though much less evidently than do the corresponding agreements with Haiti and Santo Domingo, the great underlying purpose of transforming a perplexed and disorderly community into a coherent nation, free from the disorganizing effects of foreign indebtedness and able to align itself as an independent efficient member of the American confederation of republics, "all for one, and one for all."

WHERE IN AMERICA IS NICARAGUA? And where is Nicaragua, anyway, and, once plotted geographically, why have we, the United States of America, any special responsibility for that particular sister republic? Let us answer the first question a little carefully at the outset, try to visualize Nicaragua. People who

know what they mean by North or South America often have a very foggy idea about what joins the two continents together. The best way to think of the link, called Central America, is to remember a wedge, with its apex balanced on the Panama Canal, the most sensitive point of our possessions, and reaching up northwestward to the southern end of Mexico. Five republics form that wedge. Right in the middle of it, facing westward over the Pacific, with its tangled backyard of tropic vegetation making up the Mosquito Coast on the Atlantic, is Nicaragua. Several things distinguish this particular republic from its immediate neighbors; a few things make it more interesting at present for us.

About as far northwest of the Panama Canal and the Canal Zone as Boston is northeast of New York, 121 miles of another interoceanic canal out of a total distance of 168 miles has already been dug by Nature across Nicaragua. On the east Greytown corresponds to Colon and on the west Brito corresponds to Panama. In the entire long spine of mountains reaching from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego the lowest notch lies in the depression, seventeen miles across from east to west, between Brito and Lake Nicaragua. These considerations make the relative merits of the Nicaragua and

Panama canal routes a subject for long discussion, and they will always make Nicaragua desired of many nations.

NICARAGUA'S STRATEGIC POSITION Take a chart with soundings printed on it and look at the Pacific coast of Mexico and Central America from Lower California to Panama. It will be seen that no harbor exists so suitable for a naval base as that formed by Fonseca Bay in Nicaragua. For strategic reasons then, Nicaragua becomes extremely interesting to a prepared Monroe Doctrine, to the new Monroe Doctrine in which the other republics of America are joint tenants with ourselves. There are other features of the country which distinguish it. On its western side, 110 feet above sea level, lie the largest bodies of fresh water between Lake Michigan, on the Canadian border of the United States, and Lake Titicaca, in Peru. Lake Nicaragua is a little more than ninety-two miles long and thirty-four miles wide, and you have no difficulty in experiencing sincere sea-sickness while crossing it in the 400-ton steamers belonging to the railroad company. When the gold rush was on to California in '49, Commodore Vanderbilt, before the Panama Railroad was built, ran steamers up the San Juan River and across the lake to that low place in the continental mountain spine where his stage-coaches carried the seekers for treasure seventeen miles across to the Pacific.

The strategic and economic characteristics which distinguish Nicaragua from the other neighboring republics of Central America constitute for that country, and for the entire polity of American republics, strung together now as never before by a mutually acknowledged Monroe Doctrine, their greatest danger. Before the war came to annul all lesser considerations for European nations in this hemisphere, the tentacles of possible or even probable European interference could be detected here and there about the Caribbean. Nicaragua these tentacles appeared in the form of a constant tendency toward commercial or financial dependency upon foreign agencies. It worked out somewhat in this manner.

In

In Nicaragua, as elsewhere in Latin America, a European merchant makes his permanent home, often marries a native woman, and soon from a business standpoint becomes a native himself. With sufficient backing he begins by making private loans to high politicians, in return for which he gets valuable contracts or concessions or secures special privileges. Finally, through him the European syndicate which he represents negotiates a national loan on leonine terms which, in one way or another, is secured by something like a direct obligation of the Government.

The part of the United States in such transactions between some of the Latin Republics and European creditors has generally been the unenviable rôle of buffer. It has often seemed that in these cases the debtor, whether actually bankrupt or not, relies upon the Monroe Doctrine to make him execution-proof. The creditor who otherwise might be relentless enough even to the extent of forced collections haswith the exception of the familiar Venezuelan incident so firmly dealt with by President Cleveland-balked in practice at testing the doctrine, which in theory he may have not only resented but repudiated. Thus, for many years, it has been the business of the United States to see that such bills got paid somehow or other, and it usually emerges from such good offices with more ill will on the part of our neighbor than it enjoyed before.

THE CURSE OF POLITICS

To make matters much worse, we have had in too many of these instances to deal with professional or standardized politicians who, caring little if anything about the welfare of their people concretely, have cared not at all for the abstract conception of the State. ception of the State. Such men and such. factions have kept Haiti and Santo Domingo at a standstill for many generations, and just such self-seeking and personal animosity has kept Nicaragua back.

No representations on the part of a foreign Government, however disinterestedly conceived, can possibly take effect upon the electorate through this political incubus. On the other hand, in dealing direct with the masses, propaganda of any

ind, good or bad, is enormously handiapped by the high percentage of illiteracy mong them-in Nicaragua 80 per cent. 1 a population of 600,000. It is therefore It is therefore n exasperatingly difficult proposition to ttempt to help a people thus marooned rom outside influences to enjoy the same reedom, enlightenment, and workable lemocratic form of government that btains in our own country. In this ountry we have our own standardized oliticians, but we can get by them hrough the press to a high percentage of literate constituencies. But in going vith any message into several of the other epublics of America which are struggling with misgovernment, any attitude or policy which we may adopt—so abysmal is the gulf separating the oligarch from the peon -reaches the people in such a distorted form as to be at once rejected as a "trespass upon sovereignty" or a "suppression of sacred rights."

To act upon a thorough realization of these conditions often seems ruthless on the part of a stronger government. In reality it is often beneficent. Our action in Cuba was of this character, to the consternation of an incredulous gallery of nations. Santo Domingo and Haiti are additional chapters of the same unwillingness to be held off from constructive help to a people actually needing and desiring such help-held off by the self-interest of political factions backed by other, sometimes foreign, forces. What we have got to remember is that in these cases parties are not dealing with parties but a nation is dealing with another nation, a people with a people. Clear-eyed and resolute statesmanship will have to overcome the same opposition at home in framing or ratifying measures which can be put into effect only over the same kind of opposition in the territory and among the people to be benefited thereby.

In many of the lesser Latin republics the original idea of a government of laws has become distorted into a government of persons. The United States has not been entirely free from the same limitations. But even in a volcanic Central America, Nicaragua has been conspicuous for disorder. Under the guiding hand of President

Zelaya, from 1893 to 1910 Nicaragua was either perennially in revolution at home or trying to overthrow the attempts of some of her neighboring sister republics to maintain their governments. On one occasion Zelaya's ambitions reached as far south as Ecuador, clear across the Isthmus and three intervening republics.

Finally, after seventeen years of this form of "liberty," the conservative (sic) party rebelled. They pooled what little of their property and money had not already been confiscated by Zelaya and in 1909 dedicated that and themselves to a revolution which finally-in 1910-overthrew that despot. No revolution ever had a more legitimate object or a more patriotic result. Right in the middle of it Secretary Knox's celebrated note of December, 1909, declared Zelaya's régime a reproach and blot on the escutcheon of Nicaragua, and that in this instance the further maintenance by the United States of that respect and confidence which one nation owes to another in its diplomatic relations had become impossible. It was during that revolution that two American citizens, Groce and Cannon, after being imprisoned and tortured in a Nicaraguan prison at San Carlos, were finally executed it has always been believed, though not actually proved, by the order of Zelaya.

The leaders of this successful revolution of 1910, Emiliano Chamorro, Pedro Rafael Cuadra, and Adolfo Diaz, the present President, released their country from political bondage, but when they started to establish a government of laws they found the whole country in a deplorable condition economically. Zelaya had honeycombed it with ruinous concessions to foreigners: such as the Aguardiente (Italian) Syndicate, the Bluefields Fruit & Steamship Company, of New Orleans, and other pioneer Louisiana exploiting concerns. The main sources of revenue had been hypothecated for a national loan on almost Haitian terms, and the taxpayers were shouldering a large internal. debt the proceeds of which had apparently all been devoted to those interested in its negotiation without any corresponding benefit to the tax-payers themselves. The incoming government was also confronted

with 14 millions of dollars' worth of claims arising out of the destruction of native and foreign property during the revolution, but the most discouraging phase of the entire situation was the political atrophy of the people inherited by the new government. They had seventeen years of a Zelaya past to contend with.

THE COMING OF THE BAYONET

Nevertheless, in spite of all these handicaps, this government of laws rather than of men was beginning to take hold in Nicaragua and to impress Nicaragua's neighbors, when in July, 1912, the then Secretary of War, General Mena, jealous of the President's growing popularity, rebelled against the Government and established himself in Granada, carrying with him a good part of the army who were naturally enough his henchmen. There he soon formed an alliance with the disgruntled politicians who were "out," whom he armed in return for their support of his candidacy as President.

Then the revolution started in earnest. Mena led off by confiscating the American railroad with its rolling-stock operating between Managua, the capital, and Granada, on the great lake. To be consistent they also took the boats, on both lakes, owned by the railroad company, and used them to bombard unfortified towns along the shores. In the course of this naval preparedness they threw three-inch shells with a fine impartiality over the foreign legations, the cathedral, hospitals, and private houses of the capital, killing there many women and children. One of these 14-pound emissaries of frightfulness exploded in the writer's dining room.

All means of communication and transportation being cut off, the United States Legation was, for a very uncomfortable week, prevented from getting any word to the outside world. During that time the American Minister requested from the Nicaraguan Government adequate protection for the American railroad, the American boats on the lakes, and the American interests and lives that were being daily menaced in the capital. The Secretary of Foreign Affairs explained very clearly that the government forces had

their hands more than full as it was. In view of the proportions attained by the revolution he said that it would be nec essary for our Minister to ask for American forces if he expected to be protected. Accordingly, the American Minister promptly forwarded a call for help to Secretary Knox at Washington with a few brief specifications of the uncivilized warfare then being waged in Nicaragua.

Here enters the United States marine, pacificator. Two thousand five hundred of him and of his shipmate, the United States blue-jacket, were landed at Corinto, the first of them going ashore on August 4, 1912. This first contingent formed a Legation guard at Managua, and the rest of them as they came up from the Pacific port were distributed by rail and boat among the large cities and in patrols along the railroads. During the two months that this small army of occupation occupied Nicaragua they fought just one battle. This was the battle of Masaya, where some of the rebel forces under a "conservative" by the name of Zeledon were holding a hill which commanded the railroad below it. After repeated demands for surrender, promising safe conduct to Zeledon and no reprisals to his command, had been refused, the marines carried the position in thirty-seven minutes with a loss of four men. The Legation guard of 100 men is still stationed in the "campo," on the outskirts of Managua.

The important thing to remember about those particular marines is that they were officially asked to afford the protection for American lives and interests in Nicaragua which the Nicaraguan Government was at the time unable to supply. The peculiar thing about those marines is that the Nicaraguans do not want them to go away. Their original landing and that of the bluejackets has been criticised as an “unwarranted trespass upon the sovereignty” of Nicaragua and as an "undue interference" with the internal affairs of that country. But let us not forget that some of these critics were beneficiaries of the old Zelaya régime, who do not view with contentment the continuance of orderly government under the existing régime.

Possibly our intervention in Nicaragua

prevented the overthrow of the existing government. So its opponents contend. Conceding that it had such an effect then, in addition to protecting foreign lives and property from uncivilized warfare, we were helping to support a duly established and recognized constitutional government. Our intervention in Nicaragua was based then, first, on broad humanitarian principles, and secondly, on a political privilege, if not actually a duty, under a broad conception of the Monroe Doctrine. From personal observation on the ground at the time I can state further without reservation that our men conducted themselves in a manner which reflected conspicuous credit on their country. Officers men, as we have a right to expect, were invariably courageous and determined, but more than that, they have continued to conduct themselves with a restraint and discretion which, more than their bravery, have impressed the Nicaraguans during the three years when two successive Administrations at Washington of differing political faith have maintained them at their pacific station.

EVIDENCES OF GOOD FEELING

and

The official reports of Admiral Southerland and his subordinate officers to the Secretary of the Navy of the operations of the United States marines and bluejackets in Nicaragua established officially the cause and effect of our intervention in that country. They ought to put at rest speculation as to the necessity or propriety of that act. But in case they do not, abundant evidence is at hand from the Nicaraguans themselves to establish this footnote to history alongside its Cuban predecessor on the same page.

Upon leaving Nicaragua in October, 1912, Admiral Southerland reported that conditions throughout that country were, by the admission of its citizens of both parties, more settled than they had been for many years previous. This condition of affairs was directly due to the operations of his forces, called military but in reality far less military than pacific, which operations had been materially helped by the uniformly excellent impression made by United States officers

and men upon the people. Admiral Southerland's opinion was that the retention of a small force of marines in Nicaragua was an absolute necessity, because its withdrawal would undoubtedly be followed by the recurrence of revolutionary activities. His opinion has been concurred in by two successive Secretaries of the Navy, one acting for a Republican President and the other for a Democratic Chief Executive. The marines, as I have said, are still in Nicaragua. Let us see what the people of Nicaragua say about their continued stay there.

The women of Granada said to Admiral Southerland on his departure:

We, the daughters of this beloved soil, would feel happy and contented if we had the tranquility indispensable for the development and well-being of our families. But unfortunately civil conflicts have continually weakened the ties which in every civilized country are considered sacred and which maintain the stability of all well-organized Society, which cannot exist without due respect for lives and property. These conflicts have become here constantly more stubborn and bloody, the bitterness always greater and the loss each time more irreparable, bringing about a division so deep in the Nicaraguan people that the most perverse elements predominated in this city, and it fell to our lot to live in a state of horror and

cease.

fright. It was for this that we celebrated with enthusiasm your arrival on the shores of Nicaragua as a token that soon our troubles would Our hopes were fulfilled, inasmuch as you brought with wonderful rapidity the peace and good order that we had so vainly longed for. So we send you these flowers, gathered from our gardens, which carry for you and your generous country the gratitude of the women of Granada.

President Diaz thus expressed himself in an official communication to the American Admiral:

When the last revolutionary conflicts broke out you happily arrived on our shores as a true representative of a friendly nation, and what otherwise would have been a bloody and a long war was promptly and energetically quelled in its beginning, thanks to your friendly and effective cooperation. Allow me on behalf of my Government and the nation under my care to tender you personally my deepest thanks, as well as to the Government of the United States of America for this act of gener