this, as we note the fine hand of Secretary Hay in the following:

"If the Republic of Panama shall hereafter enter as a constituent into any Government, or into any union or Confederation of States, so as to merge her sovereignty or independence in such government, union or confederation, the rights of the United States under this convention shall not be in any respect lessened or impaired."

In other words, if we should restore Panama to Colombia, less the Canal Zone, which ostensibly was all we wanted, the point to be arbitrated would be the value of the Canal Zone. It would be necessary, of course, as the foregoing article provides, that all our privileges under the present treaty with Panama should be binding if the province returned to the sovereignty of Colombia. Those privileges include the vital right to use any rivers or lands in the Republic that may be necessary to the construction, maintenance, operation, or defense of the canal.

Colombia would regain control of a province vastly improved since the separation. The cities of Panama and Colon have been made into modern cities by the Americans. Of the $10,000,000 we paid to Panama, about $6,000,000 remains unexpended and invested in New York real estate. This would revert to Colombia, as well as the improvements made with the portion expended. Whatever loss in revenues during the

separation that Colombia might claim would not be a material consideration to the United States.

Undoubtedly under such an arrangement provision would have to be made whereby the old order of things that existed prior to the revolution should not recur. The United States could not tolerate a turbulent situation on the banks of the canal. It still would have to retain the plenary powers in respect of sanitation and order that exist under the present treaty. This doubtless would be the hitch that would come in attempting such a solution.

The people of Panama, remembering the old days, and keen in the enjoyment of conditions as created and maintained by the United States, probably would object to any solution that gave Colombia renewed sovereignty. It would be far less of an exercise of arbitrary power to overrule this objection than it was to set the republic up in 1903. In whatever solution that may be selected some authoritative actions will be necessary.

Those Americans who balk at the prospect of a large money indemnity to Colombia, for taking Panama, should ask themselves whether any mere love of lucre should stand between us and a clean conscience. The situation in which we are involved may cost dearly to straighten out, but that is the inevitable price, in the individual or national life, of walking in the paths of unrighteousness. The Colombian claim is a call to arms between the forces of good and evil in the American national character. Do we stand at Armageddon, and do we battle for the Lord?

CHAPTER XXII

THE MONROE DOCTRINE

T is to be doubted if so lion-hearted a policy ever

IT

was announced by so weak a people as the principle that is involved in the Monroe doctrine, promulgated in 1823. That it should have stood all the years prior to our attainment of the physical strength to make it good, is proof that its real vitality lies in the truth that it expresses rather than in the battleships we can summon to intimidate its acceptation.

To-day, more than ever, the American people need to study the spirit that prompted that declaration. The United States in recent years has been perilously near to just the violation of it that we prohibited to Europe. It is certain that if we ourselves ever step over its spirit we will need all the steel and powder this resourceful nation can command to hold Europe and Asia back; whereas, if we continue to interpret it aright, the land-hungry nations may look covetously upon the Western Hemisphere, but that same vital quality that restrained them in the days of our weakness will hold them back now.

The Monroe doctrine asserted that the principle of democracy, which had sought a haven in this Hemisphere, must not be pursued and persecuted by the institution of monarchy. The phraseology declared that the Americas must not henceforth be considered

a place for European colonization, but the spirit of the policy meant that two such irreconcilable systems of government as monarchy and democracy could not live side by side in the same hemisphere, and that the safety of democracy required the exclusion of monarchy.

In these latter days there has sprung up a tendency, not strongly developed as yet, to interpret that doctrine to mean that, while Europe and Asia must keep out, the United States is destined to dominate the whole situation. That instead of America for Americans, it means the Western Hemisphere for the United States.

It is certain that the nations of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea discern such a tendency in the actions of the United States. The United States looms up to them with a strength far more formidable than we are conscious of, and they fear the day when we grow conscious of that strength with a waning sense of Puritan justice.

The Spanish-American War was a revelation to them as it was to us. Far-sighted Latin Americans could read in that altruistic interference in their affairs the forerunner of interferences which might not be so altruistic. So far it substantially is true that we have not interfered anywhere in Central or South America that it was not to the benefit of the nation involved.

When the United States executed the coup that rid Venezuela of Castro it did a service of inestimable value to that nation. When it rid Nicaragua of

Zelaya it did a similar service. In aiding Santo Domingo to straighten out its finances, in setting civil government upon its feet in Cuba, and in other instances of interference not so important, the Americans have played the rôle of disinterested friendship. On the other hand, the manner in which we acquired the Canal Zone suddenly showed Latin America that, though Uncle Sam might bear the visage of a rector, he could just as readily play the rôle of a strong-arm man not overly scrupulous when he is selfishly impelled.

In the early days of our own republic political controversy revolved around the relation to England, with one faction being intensely provincial, and generally successful, and the other faction rather inclined to take the European view of our affairs. The situation in the republics that fringe the Gulf and Caribbean Sea to-day is identical, only the factions revolve around the issue of American interference.

Our smaller Southern neighbors have grown to look upon American interference as inevitable, with the faction that can enlist our sympathy pretty well assured of success. Hence the revolutionary factions struggle for the strategic position involved in the approval of our State Department. Sooner or later such approval means United States Marines to help the favored side.

This strikingly was illustrated in the June and July Presidential elections in the Republic of Panama in 1912. Dr. Belisario Porras, the popular candidate, openly solicited American military intervention, and