[294]. Hiram Bingham, The Monroe Doctrine: An Obsolete Shibboleth (New Haven, 1913).
[295]. No one knows exactly what it means today because its scope has been rather indefinitely extended at various times. No doubt it would be further extended if the occasion should arise. For example, the original doctrine was directed against European powers only. But if Japan should attempt to acquire territory in Central or South America, the Monroe Doctrine would unquestionably be invoked as applicable to an Asiatic power as well.
[296]. Washington was well aware that the United States might have to take a hand in European quarrels if they should assume an extraordinary importance. Notice the exact wording of the passage in his Farewell Address. “It would be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her (Europe’s) politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.” Washington was not in the habit of wasting words, and he did not twice insert the limitation “ordinary” without good reason. By the way, he did not use the phrase “entangling alliances”. That expression was first used by Jefferson in his inaugural address (March 4, 1801).
[297]. From 1815 to 1914 all the great wars were localized. The Crimean War (1854-1855), although five nations took part in it, was confined to the territories around the Black Sea; the War of 1859, in which the French and Italians on the one side fought the Austrians on the other, was settled in Northern Italy. The other important wars were, for the most part, individual duels between two nations or between two sections of a single nation.
[298]. The total amount loaned to European governments by the United States during the war was about ten billion dollars, of which nearly half was loaned to Great Britain.
[299]. The payments made by Germany to Great Britain, France, and Italy, as well as the payments made by these countries to the United States, must inevitably take the form of payment in goods. There is not enough gold in Europe to make payment in gold. All this means that so long as the reparations and loans are being liquidated large imports of goods from Europe are likely to come into this country.
[300]. By the terms of a supplementary treaty, this does not include the main Japanese islands themselves.
[301]. It is said that the Thirty Years’ War reduced the population in some sections of the warring states to one-half or one-third of what it had been when the struggle began. The losses of all the countries engaged in the World War have been estimated to be almost ten millions, more than the entire population of Canada from ocean to ocean. Millions more died from famine and under-nourishment at home. Is it not strange that nations should work for years with might and main to increase the size and prosperity of their populations, then turn around and undo a large part of what they have been able to accomplish? In peace nations labor to alleviate each others’ distress; in war they labor to cause it. Patiently through the decades men of science wrestle with the problem of relieving pain and suffering; then, in an instant, all their skill is devoted to killing, maiming, and suffocating men by the million! There is no wisdom like the wisdom of man, and no folly like it either.
[302]. The covenant was made an integral part of the peace treaty, largely at President Wilson’s insistence, for two reasons: First, because it was believed that this would be a surer way of obtaining the assent of all the great nations to the provisions of the covenant; second, because many of the terms of the treaty (for example, those relating to boundaries and mandates) were framed on the assumption that a League of Nations would be in existence to carry them into effect. Taken together, the treaty and the covenant make the longest international document ever framed, a printed book of 87,000 words—about half the size of this text-book. Nearly a thousand diplomats, experts, and clerks spent more than three months in drafting it.
[303]. Invitations were not extended to Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey, Russia, or Mexico. Austria, however, has since been admitted to membership.