American ideals, and other essays, social and political

by Theodore Roosevelt

This is precisely and exactly the position the United States has now taken in reference to England and Venezuela. It is idle to contend that there is any serious difference in the application of the doctrine to the two sets of questions. An American may, of course, announce his opposition to the Monroe Doctrine, although by so doing he forfeits all title to far-seeing and patriotic devotion to the interests of his country. But he cannot argue that the Monroe Doctrine does not apply to the present case, unless he argues that the Monroe Doctrine has no existence whatsoever. In fact, such arguments are, on their face, so absurd that they need no refutation, and can be relegated where they belong—to the realm of the hair-splitting schoolmen. They have no concern either for practical politicians or for historians with true historic insight.

We have asserted the principles which underlie the Monroe Doctrine, not only against Russia and Spain, but also against France, on at least two different occasions. The last and most important was when the French conquered Mexico and made it into an Empire. It is not necessary to recall to any one the action of our Government in the matter as soon as the Civil War came to an end. Suffice it to say that, under threat of our interposition, the French promptly abandoned Maximilian, and the latter’s Empire fell. Long before this, however, and a score of years before the Doctrine was christened by the name Monroe even the timid statesmen of the Jeffersonian era embodied its principle in their protest against the acquisition of Louisiana, by France, from Spain. Spain at that time held all of what is now the Great West. France wished to acquire it. Our statesmen at once announced that they would regard as hostile to America the transfer of the territory in question from a weak to a strong European power. Under the American pressure the matter was finally settled by the sale of the territory in question to the United States. The principle which our statesmen then announced was in kind precisely the same as that upon which we should now act if Germany sought to acquire Cuba from Spain, or St. Thomas from the Danes. In either of these events it is hardly conceivable that the United States would hesitate to interfere, if necessary, by force of arms; and in so doing the national authorities would undoubtedly be supported by the immense majority of the American people, and, indeed, by all save the men of abnormal timidity or abnormal political short-sightedness.

Historically, therefore, the position of our representatives in the Venezuelan question is completely justified. It cannot be attacked on academic grounds. The propriety of their position is even more easily defensible.

Primarily, our action is based on national self-interest. In other words, it is patriotic. A certain limited number of persons are fond of decrying patriotism as a selfish virtue, and strive with all their feeble might to inculcate in its place a kind of milk-and-water cosmopolitanism. These good people are never men of robust character or of imposing personality, and the plea itself is not worth considering. Some reformers may urge that in the ages’ distant future patriotism, like the habit of monogamous marriage, will become a needless and obsolete virtue; but just at present the man who loves other countries as much as he does his own is quite as noxious a member of society as the man who loves other women as much as he loves his wife. Love of country is an elemental virtue, like love of home, or like honesty or courage. No country will accomplish very much for the world at large unless it elevates itself. The useful member of a community is the man who first and foremost attends to his own rights and his own duties, and who therefore becomes better fitted to do his share in the common duties of all. The useful member of the brotherhood of nations is that nation which is most thoroughly saturated with the national idea, and which realizes most fully its rights as a nation and its duties to its own citizens. This is in no way incompatible with a scrupulous regard for the rights of other nations, or a desire to remedy the wrongs of suffering peoples.

The United States ought not to permit any great military powers, which have no foothold on this continent, to establish such foothold; nor should they permit any aggrandizement of those who already have possessions on the continent. We do not wish to bring ourselves to a position where we shall have to emulate the European system of enormous armies. Every true patriot, every man of statesman-like habit, should look forward to the day when not a single European power will hold a foot of American soil. At present it is not necessary to take the position that no European power shall hold American territory; but it certainly will become necessary, if the timid and selfish “peace at any price” men have their way, and if the United States fails to check at the outset European aggrandizement on this continent.

Primarily, therefore, it is to the interest of the citizens of the United States to prevent the further colonial growth of European powers in the Western Hemisphere. But this is also to the interest of all the people of the Western Hemisphere. At best, the inhabitants of a colony are in a cramped and unnatural state. At the worst, the establishment of a colony prevents any healthy popular growth. Some time in the dim future it may be that all the English-speaking peoples will be able to unite in some kind of confederacy. However desirable this would be, it is, under existing conditions, only a dream. At present the only hope for a colony that wishes to attain full moral and mental growth, is to become an independent State, or part of an independent State. No English colony now stands on a footing of genuine equality with the parent State. As long as the Canadian remains a colonist, he remains in a position which is distinctly inferior to that of his cousins, both in England and in the United States. The Englishman at bottom looks down on the Canadian, as he does on any one who admits his inferiority, and quite properly, too. The American, on the other hand, with equal propriety, regards the Canadian with the good-natured condescension always felt by the freeman for the man who is not free. A funny instance of the English attitude toward Canada was shown after Lord Dunraven’s inglorious fiasco last September, when the Canadian yachtsman, Rose, challenged for the America cup. The English journals repudiated him on the express ground that a Canadian was not an Englishman and not entitled to the privileges of an Englishman. In their comments, many of them showed a dislike for Americans which almost rose to hatred. The feeling they displayed for the Canadians was not one of dislike. It was one of contempt.

Under the best of circumstances, therefore, a colony is in a false position. But if the colony is in a region where the colonizing race has to do its work by means of other inferior races the condition is much worse. From the standpoint of the race little or nothing has been gained by the English conquest and colonization of Jamaica. Jamaica has merely been turned into a negro island, with a future, seemingly, much like that of San Domingo. British Guiana, however well administered, is nothing but a colony where a few hundred or few thousand white men hold the superior positions, while the bulk of the population is composed of Indians, Negroes, and Asiatics. Looked at through the vista of the centuries, such a colony contains less promise of true growth than does a State like Venezuela or Ecuador. The history of most of the South American republics has been both mean and bloody; but there is at least a chance that they may develop, after infinite tribulations and suffering, into a civilization quite as high and stable as that of such a European power as Portugal. But there is no such chance for any tropical American colony owned by a Northern European race. It is distinctly in the interest of civilization that the present States in the two Americas should develop along their own lines, and however desirable it is that many of them should receive European immigration, it is highly undesirable that any of them should be under European control.

So much for the general principles, and the justification, historically and morally, of the Monroe Doctrine. Now take the specific case at issue. Great Britain has a boundary dispute with Venezuela. She claims as her own a territory which Venezuela asserts to be hers, a territory which in point of size very nearly equals the Kingdom of Italy. Our government, of course, cannot, if it wishes to remain true to the traditions of the Monroe Doctrine submit to the acquisition by England of such an enormous tract of territory, and it must therefore find out whether the English claims are or are not well founded. It would, of course, be preposterous to lay down the rule that no European power should seize American territory which was not its own, and yet to permit the power itself to decide the question of the ownership of such territory. Great Britain refused to settle the question either by amicable agreement with Venezuela or by arbitration. All that remained for the United States, was to do what it actually did; that is, to try to find out the facts for itself, by its own commission. If the facts show England to be in the right, well and good. If they show England to be in the wrong, we most certainly ought not to permit her to profit, at Venezuela’s expense, by her own wrong-doing.

We are doing exactly what England would very properly do in a like case. Recently, when the German Emperor started to interfere in the Transvaal, England promptly declared her own “Monroe Doctrine” for South Africa. We do not propose to see English filibusters try at the expense of Venezuela the same policy which recently came to such an ignominious end in the Transvaal, in a piece of weak, would-be buccaneering, which, it is perhaps not unfair to say was fittingly commemorated in the verse of the new poet-laureate.

It would be difficult to overestimate the good done in this country by the vigorous course already taken by the national executive and legislature in this matter. The lesson taught Lord Salisbury is one which will not soon be forgotten by English statesmen. His position is false, and is recognized as false by the best English statesmen and publicists. If he does not consent to arrange the matter with Venezuela, it will have to be arranged in some way by arbitration. In either case, the United States gains its point. The only possible danger of war comes from the action of the selfish and timid men on this side of the water, who clamorously strive to misrepresent American, and to mislead English, public opinion. If they succeed in persuading Lord Salisbury that the American people will back down if he presses them, they will do the greatest damage possible to both countries, for they will render war, at some time in the future, almost inevitable.