Two notable explanations have been given, as follows:
Secretary of State Olney in his dispatch of July 20, 1895, on the Venezuelan boundary dispute, said:
“It (the Monroe Doctrine) does not establish any general protectorate by the United States over other American States. It does not relieve any American State from its obligations as fixed by international law, nor prevent any European power directly interested from enforcing such obligations or from inflicting merited punishment for the breach of them.”
President Roosevelt, in a speech in 1902 upon the results of the Spanish-American war, said:
“The Monroe Doctrine is simply a statement of our very firm belief that the nations now existing on this continent must be left to work out their own destinies among themselves, and that this continent is no longer to be regarded as the colonizing ground of any European power. The one power on the continent that can make the power effective is, of course, ourselves; for in the world as it is, a nation which advances a given doctrine, likely to interfere in any way with other nations, must possess the power to back it up, if it wishes the doctrine to be respected.”
President Wilson in an address to the Senate of the United States, Jan. 22, 1917, advised an American interest in an extension of the Monroe Doctrine. The main points were as follows:
“No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand people about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property.
“I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world: That no nation should seek to extend its policy over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own policy, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great.”
III. THE LOYALTY OF YOUTH
Rome and Greece in their age of world dominion were great because of the loyalty and nobility of their youth. Patriotism is by no means a modern virtue, and it is often wondered if the youth of the new world is alive to their country’s honor equal to the youth of the ancient world.
