ALL of them, except Argentina, need a policeman. We cannot tell Europe to keep out and yet refuse to be policemen ourselves. For a hundred years most of these so-called republics have brought reproach on democratic institutions. One despot after another robs and murders the people and scandalizes the world. A republic is where the people rule. In Mexico, Central America, and, with a few exceptions in South America, the people do not, and never have ruled. They are incapable of it. A heavy but just hand will be their only salvation. A mongrel race of mixed negro and Indian blood never has and never will amount to anything. Professor Burgess, speaking of sixteen of the twenty governments in Central and South America and the West Indies, says, "They never have been satisfied, and are not now satisfied with the system imposed upon them by the Europeans. They do not seem to be able to rise to the enjoyment of its advantages. They feel oppressed by its opportunities, of which they can make little use. The very liberties guaranteed to them by these constitutions appear only to give the intelligent, not to say crafty, the means for overreaching them. A benevolent despotism would best fit their situation and stage of development. A democratic Republic with such populations is a wicked farce."1 Let those who are skeptical as to these views read Reuter on "The Mulatto," where he states the numbers and status of the negroes, Indians, hybrids, and whites in Mexico, the West Indies, and Central and South America, exclusive of Argentina and Uruguay. Nothing can be expected in the way of good government from such a constit

*See p. 237, supra.

uency. And those countries are not so immune as they imagine. As the population of the United States grows and manufacturing increases, foreign outlets must and will be had. Central and South America will be tempting markets, just as Cuba and the Philippines are today. The need of markets drove Germany to aggression, to its sorrow. Moreover, American history shows that we are a territory-grabbing people by nature, true to our English origin. There is Louisiana, the Pacific Coast, Florida, Texas, Alaska, Panama, Porto Rico, Hawaii, Philippines, and practically Cuba. Trade follows the flag and then clamors for protection. Central and South America will be tempting. Just as Lucullus expanded the Roman Republic to its ruin, so America may reach out and then be unable to preserve its own republican institutions. The foreign danger to America is American expansion and not any invasion of America itself. When the imperative demands of the civilized world for food, raw materials, and trade become acute, Mexicans and the rest of these hopeless races will be subjected to stable government, productivity, and an industrial life. Vast tracts of the fairest portions of the earth, rich in crops and metals, will not and should not be left indefinitely in the hands of worthless peoples, who will never utilize them. It is another case of the American Indians. Call it ruthless if you will, but it is the march of civilization. Buell of Harvard is right when he says, "Some self-styled moralists assert that a native population is warranted, in the name of 'sovereignty,' in locking up from the rest of the world resources placed in its possession by an accident of nature, not because it needs these resources for its own use, but merely because it is ignorant of or indifferent to their value. It is a queer sort of morality which would thus deify a tribe of cannibals who may have themselves conquered these resources from their 'original' owners. Should such a standard be ethically, sound, it could not possibly be respected by a practical world, parts of which are already confronted by fear of starvation."1 Bryce says that Plato and

Aristotle would have described the present Central and South American republics "as forms of tyranny, i.e. illegal despotisms resting on military force."1 Professor Usher of Washington University summarizes correctly the situation when he says, "The population of Mexico is in the neighborhood of fourteen millions; the legal electorate was, some years ago, about eighty thousand, and was intended to comprise every individual intelligent enough to be able to vote. Under such circumstances democratic rule by the numerical majority becomes an impossibility. However desirable, it cannot be achieved for some generations. The United States wisely suppressed the recent revolution in Hayti, and had previously interfered in the affairs of San Domingo, of Cuba, and of Porto Rico. The literal truth is that these people do not wish to carry on that type of government which we call democratic, or to maintain that sort of order which we consider indispensable, or to educate themselves or their children in our methods of economic and social life. If left to themselves, they will be a century hence approximately what they are now. Individuals here and there will separate themselves from the mass, migrate to the United States or to Europe, and display perhaps distinguished ability. They will not do it upon that soil or in that environment. It is the latter we must change. Settled long before the United States, these countries have developed so slowly as scarcely to have progressed at all, and present a contrast to the enlightened and progressive communities in South America, which is indeed striking. That sort of tutelage they do require, which the South Americans reject with scorn." 2 I agree with Roosevelt when he says, "We will not permanently be permitted to render ourselves impotent in the face of possible aggression and at the same time try to forbid other nations from righting wrongs which we are too weak, too timid, or too shortsighted ourselves to right. In the end foreign nations will assuredly take issue with the Wilson-Bryan theory, which is that America can adopt as her permanent policy the shirking of

national duty by this country, combined with a protest against any other country doing the duty which we have shirked. Either we shall have to abandon the Monroe Doctrine and let other nations restore order in Mexico, and then deprive us of any right to speak in behalf of any people of the Western Hemisphere, or else we must in good faith ourselves undertake the task and bring peace, and order, and prosperity to Mexico, as by our wise intervention it was brought to Cuba." 1

CHAPTER XXXV

WORSHIP OF THE DOLLAR

THIS is Europe's taunt Europe living in a glass house Europe which is becoming sterile except in scientific, materialistic, and diplomatic achievements. America did worship the dollar because a great continent was being developed and capital was scarce and had to be borrowed from Europe. Dollars were needed and needed badly. Men were plentiful at home and from abroad, but cash was scarce. But now that money is plentiful and cheap, the dollar is not worshiped. Americans are spenders, not misers. They spend for luxuries and to build up industries. They who accumulate fortunes may never outgrow habits of saving, but their children do the spending; they distribute their fortunes often by speculation-nature's mode of transferring wealth to competent hands. There being no titles to hand down and support, distribution of fortunes is easy. Rarely does an American family continue prominent for three generations. Nor have the Americans any ambition to "found" a family in the European sense. "In a country like England," says Professor Taussig of Harvard, "the founding of a 'family' is a common aim; the transmission to children of a sum sufficient to enable them to take their place among the leisure-class idlers, association or matrimonial alliance with the gentry and aristocracy, eventually, if there be money enough and some address, a knighthood or even a peerage. In all modern communities the worship of 'society,' perhaps the most ubiquitous phase of the deep-rooted and universal love of distinction, contributes powerfully to accumulation." All this helps to explain why Ameri

1