169
54
As regards establishments on shore to ensure the efficiency of this fleet, the Independent Board of the New Arsenal with the funds it has at present available can fit up an arsenal for docking and repairs, etc. A floating dock with sufficient resources in one of our ports--- Mozambique or Angola―would complete the service.
And now it will be asked how are we to obtain the sum of £9,000,000 for the reconstruction of our Navy? The reply is, by means of a loan subscribed principally by the constructing firms at a moderate interest, since we know that there are firms in England disposed to make it, this loan to be redeemable in a period of ten years.
It would then be necessary to enter in the budget of the Navy an item for reconstruction which would correspond to the annual sum payable on a loan of £9,000,000 redeemable in ten years at a probable interest of 8 per cent. By prolonging these annual payments over more than ten years, we would have after twenty years adequate resources for the essential replacements of the different units.
This is in a broad way what we think should be done as regards naval reconstruction, so that in a period of not more than four years we could count on a naval force worth having.
"DOLLAR DIPLOMACY" IN LATIN AMERICA. By HENRIK SHIPSTEAD, Member of the Foreign Relations Committee of the United States Senate.
(From
Current History," September, 1927.)
The Monroe doctrine is dead, and has been dead for many years. It lived only as long as its original spirit was followed. The spirit was the protection of human liberty. It was departed from by the United States in her policy toward Latin America fully 25 years ago. To-day the Monroe doctrine remains only as a diplomatic subterfuge. Its ideals are being used as a cloak to cover acts subversive of human liberty and contrary to the institutions and traditions of our nation. At the beginning of the 19th century new political principles were challenging the existing order of society. The thirteen American colonies had revolted against the European monarchial system; the French revolution had thrown down a firebrand into the heart of Europe itself; and in Central and South America republicanism was advancing by leaps and bounds. This new confession of political faith which was overturning the world was best expressed in our great Declaration of Independence, wherein it is stated that we dedicate ourselves and the soil of America to the principle that governments receive their powers "only from the consent of the governed."
The treaty of the Holy Alliance had been signed by the leading monarchs of Europe with the main objective of building a barricade against the spread of this new theory of government. President Monroe and other American statesmen of the time looked upon this alliance, with its determination to maintain and extend the European colonial system, as a threat against the freedom of the whole western continent.
Accordingly, there was enunciated a policy on behalf of the United States Government to the effect that any attempt on the part of
55
European Powers to interfere with the governments of our sister Republics in the western continent would be met with the armed resistance of the United States. In the same message President Monroe stated clearly what was to be the relation of the United States towards these Republics. It is still the truly policy of the United States," he said, to leave the parties the sister Republics-to themselves, in the hope that other Powers will pursue the same course.”
This was the famous Monroe doctrine. No statement of public policy has ever at its inception been more purely and unselfishly dedicated to a political ideal. It has been restated again and again by successive Presidents and Secretaries of State. For instance, John W. Foster, Secretary of State in Harrison's Cabinet, in an address entitled "Misconceptions and Limitations of the Monroe Doctrine," "If the before the American Society of International Law, said: Monroe doctrine did not contain a high moral principle of ethics and government which commanded the respect of all civilised nations, we could not build a navy vast enough nor create an army large enough to enforce it against the hostile sentiment of the great Powers of Europe."
During the past 25 years, however, much confusion has arisen regarding this historic policy, even in the minds of the statesmen who were conducting it. President Wilson, addressing the Southern Commercial Congress at Mobile on 27th October, 1913, said, in speaking of the Latin American Republics :--
C
They have had harder bargains driven with them in the matter of loans than any other people in the world. Interest has been exacted of them that was not exacted of anybody else, because the risk was said to be greater; and then securities were taken that destroyed the risk. An admirable arrangement for those who were forcing the terms. I rejoice in nothing so much as in the prospect that they will now be emancipated from these conditions, and we ought to be the first to take part in assisting in that emancipation. We must prove ourselves their friends and champions upon terms of equality and honour. rights, national integrity and opportunity as against material interests that is the issue which we now have to face. We must regard it as one of the duties of friendship to see that from no quarter are material interests made superior to human liberty and national opportunity."
Human
On 30th August, 1923, Charles Evans Hughes, then Secretary of State in the Harding Cabinet, in an address before the American Bar Association assembled in convention in Minneapolis, made these high professions:-
W
'The Monroe doctrine does not attempt to establish a pro- tectorate over Latin American States. I utterly disclaim as unwarranted the observations which occasionally have been made implying a claim on our part to superintend the affairs of our sister republics, to assert an overlordship, to consider the spread of our authority beyond our own domain as the aim of our policy, and to make our power the test of right in this hemisphere. I oppose all such misconceived and unsound assertions and intima- tions. They do not express our national purpose; they belie our sincere friendship; they are false to the fundamental principles
170