For the United States thus to step into a foreign country as an administrator was indeed a startling innovation.On the other hand, the development of such a policy was a logical sequence of the Monroe Doctrine.That it was a step in the general development of policy on the part of the United States and not a random leap is indicated by the manner in which it has been followed up.In 1911 treaties with Nicaragua and Honduras somewhat similar to the Dominican protocol were negotiated by Secretary Knox but failed of ratification.Subsequently under President Wilson's Administration, the treaty with Nicaragua was redrafted and was ratified by both parties.Hayti, too, was in financial difficulties and, at about the time of the outbreak of the Great War, it was reported that Germany was about to relieve her needs at the price of harbors and of control.In 1915, however, the United States took the island under its protection by a treaty which not only gave the Government complete control of the fiscal administration but bound it to "lend an efficient aid for the preservation of Haitian independence and the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty."Since 1898, then, the map of the Caribbean has completely changed its aspect.The sea is not an American lake, nor do the Americans wish it to be such.In time, as the surrounding countries become better able to stand alone, direct interference on the part of the United States will doubtless become less than it is today.
There is, however, practically no present opportunity for a non-American power to establish itself and to threaten the commerce or the canal of the United States.
Few people in the United States and perhaps fewer in the countries involved realize from what American influence has saved these small states.A glance at Africa and Asia will suggest what would otherwise have been the case.Without the United States and its leadership, there can be little doubt that giant semi-sovereign corporations owing allegiance to some great power would now possess these countries.They would bristle with forts and police, and their populations would be in a state of absolute political and of quasi-economic servitude.They might today be more orderly and perhaps wealthier, but unless the fundamental American belief in democracy and self-government is wrong they would be infinitely farther from their true goal, which involves the working out of their own civilization.
The Caribbean is but a portion of the whole international problem of the Americas, and the methods used by the United States in solving its problems seemed likely to postpone that sympathetic union of the whole to which it has been looking forward for a century.Yet this country has not been unappreciative of the larger aspects of Pan-Americanism.In 1899 President McKinley revived Blaine's project and proposed a Pan-American congress.To popularize this idea, a Pan-American Exposition was arranged at Buffalo in 1901.Here, just after he had expounded his views of the ties that might bind the continents together, McKinley was assassinated.The idea, however, lived and in the same year a congress was held at the City of Mexico, where it was proposed that such meetings be held regularly.As a result, congresses were held at Rio de Janeiro in 1906 and at Buenos Aires in 1910, at which various measures of common utility were discussed and a number of projects were actually undertaken.
The movement of Pan-Americanism has missed achieving the full hopes of its supporters owing not so much to a difference of fundamental ideas and interests as to suspicion and national pride.The chief powers of southern South America--Argentina, Brazil, and Chili--had by the end of the nineteenth century in large measure successfully worked out their own problems.They resented the interference of a power of alien race such as the United States, and they suspected its good intentions in wielding the "Big Stick," especially after the cavalier treatment which Colombia had received.They observed with alarm the strengthening of the grip of the United States about the Caribbean.United in a group, known from their initials as the "A.B.C." powers, they sought to assume the leadership of Latin America, basing their action, indeed, upon the fundamentals of the Monroe Doctrine--the exclusion of foreign influence and the independence of peoples--but with themselves instead of the United States as chief, guardians.
Many of the publicists of these three powers, however, doubted their capacity to walk entirely alone.On the one hand they noted the growing influence of the Germans in Brazil and the indications of Japanese interest in many places, and on the other they divined the fundamental sincerity of the professions of the United States and were anxious to cooperate with this nation.Not strong enough to control the policy of the various countries, these men at least countered those chauvinists who urged that hostility to the United States was a first duty compared with which the danger of non-American interference might be neglected.
