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robbing Salvador of her financial autonomy." But at length, through public need in Salvador and pressure on the part of the United States, the contract was signed on the centenary of the signing of the Monroe doctrine.
The situation in Nicaragua, lately much in the public eye, is the same as elsewhere in Latin America, with several flagrant features of its own.
The excuse of protecting our canal route concessions in Nicaragua is made the justification for controlling by force the internal affairs of that country, although no party or individual in Nicaragua has ever proposed to violate those concessions, and no sane man supposes that they could be violated by any Nicaraguan Government. Behind all this is a shadow of financial intrigue and imposition so shameful that American public opinion would instinctively repudiate our Nicaraguan policy if the facts were widely known. These facts are a matter of record in the Senate hearings on Nicaragua, 1914, and on foreign loans, 1927.
Instances could be multiplied indefinitely; any well-informed American citizen is now aware that our present Latin American policy is frankly one of economic aggression involving political dictatorship. It is still covered by the name of the Monroe doctrine, but it has nothing in common with that doctrine as originally enunciated. In Costa Rica, Honduras and Guatemala, as well as in the countries already mentioned, the American financial protectorate is based on the same general methods. American banking and bonding interests, trading corporations, public utilities, hemp and timber concessions, represent the principal enterprises for which our Federal Government practices dollar diplomacy" in Latin America. The State Department acts as commercial agency and diplomatic referee. The Navy Department furnishes and directs the United States marines to enforce the terms of the contract. The customs revenues of the various republics are the principal securities for American loans and investments, and the levying and collection of these funds are placed in the hands of agents either directly or indirectly responsible to the United States Government.
BENEFITS TO LATIN AMERICA.
I am well aware of certain material advantages which we have brought about in Latin America during the past 25 years; I can from personal observation testify to the good roads, the harbour improve- ments, the sanitary betterment, and the great work we have done in the elimination of preventable disease. But this is not the real ques- tion. If such things have not been achieved by the Latin American countries themselves, and if they have been bought at the price of liberty and freedom, they are not worth while, and will not endure.
The danger exists not only for Latin America but quite as clearly for our own institutions at home. Since when have we entertained the pernicious theory that we must lift all neighbouring coutries to our own standards of life by military force and political control if need be? The moment that theory is actually accepted by the United States we shall have lost the cause for which the American Revolution was fought, and in whose name our Republic came into being as a nation. The country that denies freedom abroad has lost freedom at home.
Old-fashioned as it may seem, I still believe in the principles of human liberty. I still believe that the only way for humanity to
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advance is for the different unit peoples all over the world to be left to govern themselves. I still believe that right and justice as between nations can not only be professed, but can actually be practised. I still believe in honest diplomacy, in doing what you promise, in calling a spade a spade.
In the case of the Monroe doctrine we must do one of two things. Either we must abandon the idealism of the Monroe doctrine altogether, acknowledging frankly what our acts are in Latin America and accept- ing the consequences both at home and abroad, or we must revive the idealism of the Monroe doctrine, cleave to it in deeds as in words, and make our acts square with our professions.
It is a moral issue of first proportions. But moral issues work them- selves out in practical results.
The question before us is: Can we afford, in dollars and cents, to pursue our present policy in Latin America much longer? Has dollar diplomacy" really paid, in terms of national gain? It undoubtedly has paid well for a few interests and individuals. But does all this actually pay to the general commercial enterprise of the nation ?
The following statistics for 1925 and 1926 are taken from the monthly summary of the Department of Commerce for the year ended December, 1926:-
United States Exports to
Mexico
Costa Rica Honduras
Nicaragua Salvador Cuba
Dominican Republic Haitian Republic ..
Total
Calendar Year.
1925.
1926.
Change (per cent.).
$144,720,323 | $134,994,164
P
7
6,800,819
6,312,416
7
9,569,937
7,540,286
21
7,434,539
6,264,272
-15
9,193,916
9,556,521
198,655,032
160,487,680
-19
17,763,577
13,711,585
14,572,376 10,857,427
18 -22
$407,849,726 | $350,585,142 -14
Thus, granting that the activities of the State Department and the employment of the United States marines have brought profits to perhaps a score of our leading industrial and financial interests, what is the gain to the general business of the country, to the merchants, manufacturers, and farmers, who have to work without the special services of the Federal Government in their behalf? Their lot seems to be to bear in taxation a share of the expense of a policy which benefits only a privileged few, a policy which netted a loss in trade of $57,200,000 to the nation, or 14 per cent. of our total exports to eight of our sister Latin American Republics in the calendar year just closed. These are serious figures. When an export trade shrinks at the rate of 14 per cent. a year, something is radically wrong with the policy which controls it. It is time to face the question in all candour. Are we not "killing the goose that lays the golden egg" in Latin America?
مادر