From Isolation to Leadership, Revised / A Review of American Foreign Policy

by John Holladay Latané

The conferences above referred to were political or diplomatic in character. There have been held two Pan-American Scientific Congresses in which the United States participated, one at Chile in 1908 and one at Washington, December, 1915, to January, 1916. A very important Pan-American Financial Congress was held at Washington in May, 1915. These congresses have accomplished a great deal in the way of promoting friendly feeling as well as the advancement of science and commerce among the republics of the Western Hemisphere.

The American Institute of International Law, organized at Washington in October, 1912, is a body which is likely to have great influence in promoting the peace and welfare of this hemisphere. The Institute is composed of five representatives from the national society of international law in each of the twenty-one American republics. At a session held in the city of Washington, January 6, 1916, the Institute adopted a Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Nations. This declaration, designed to give a solid legal basis to the new Pan-Americanism, was as follows:

I. Every nation has the right to exist and to protect and to conserve its existence; but this right neither implies the right nor justifies the act of the state to protect itself or to conserve its existence by the commission of unlawful acts against innocent and unoffending states.

II. Every nation has the right to independence in the sense that it has a right to the pursuit of happiness and is free to develop itself without interference or control from other states, provided that in so doing it does not interfere with or violate the rights of other states.

III. Every nation is in law and before law the equal of every other nation belonging to the society of nations, and all nations have the right to claim and, according to the Declaration of Independence of the United States, "to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of Nature's God entitle them."

IV. Every nation has the right to territory within defined boundaries, and to exercise exclusive jurisdiction over its territory, and all persons whether native or foreign found therein.

V. Every nation entitled to a right by the law of nations is entitled to have that right respected and protected by all other nations, for right and duty are correlative, and the right of one is the duty of all to observe.

VI. International law is at one and the same time both national and international; national in the sense that it is the law of the land and applicable as such to the decision of all questions involving its principles; international in the sense that it is the law of the society of nations and applicable as such to all questions between and among the members of the society of nations involving its principles.

This Declaration has been criticised as being too altruistic for a world in which diplomacy has been occupied with selfish aims, yet Mr. Root, in presenting it at the annual meeting of the American Society of International Law, claimed that every statement in it was "based upon the decisions of American courts and the authority of American publicists."

The Mexican situation put the principles of the new Pan-Americanism to a severe test. On February 18, 1913, Francisco Madero was seized and imprisoned as the result of a conspiracy formed by one of his generals, Victoriano Huerta, who forthwith proclaimed himself dictator. Four days later Madero was murdered while in the custody of Huerta's troops. Henry Lane Wilson, the American ambassador, promptly urged his government to recognize Huerta, but President Taft, whose term was rapidly drawing to a close, took no action and left the question to his successor.