150 IN THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE-XV 



in accent, manner, and garb, who was announced as the 

 charge d affaires of Haiti. He was evidently under deep 

 concern, and was soon in the midst of a somewhat impas 

 sioned statement of his business. 



It appeared that his government, like so many which 

 had preceded it, after a joyous career of proclamations, 

 revolutions, throat-cutting, confiscation, paper money, and 

 loans, public and private, had at last met a check, and that 

 in this instance the check had come in the shape of a 

 German frigate which had dropped into the harbor of 

 Port-au-Prince, run out its guns, and demanded redress 

 of injuries and payment of debts to Germany and German 

 subjects; and the charge, after dwelling upon the enor 

 mity of such a demand, pointed out the duty of the United 

 States to oblige Germany to desist, in short, to assert 

 the Monroe Doctrine as he understood it. 



The young diplomatist s statement interested me much ; 

 it brought back vividly to my mind the days when, as a 

 commissioner from the United States, I landed at Port-au- 

 Prince, observed the wreck and ruin caused by a recent 

 revolution, experienced the beauties of a paper-money 

 system carried out so logically that a market-basket full 

 of currency was needed to buy a market-basket full of 

 vegetables, visited the tombs of the presidents from which 

 the bodies of their occupants had been torn and scattered, 

 saw the ring to which President Salnave had recently been 

 tied when the supporters of his successor had murdered 

 him, and mused over the ruins of the presidential mansion, 

 which had been torn in pieces by bombs from a patriotic 

 vessel. My heart naturally warmed toward the represen 

 tative of so much glory, and it seemed sad to quench his 

 oratorical fire and fervor with a cold statement of fact. 

 But my duty was plain: I assured him that neither the 

 President whose name the famous &quot;Doctrine&quot; bears, 

 nor the Secretary of State who devised it, nor the Ameri 

 can people behind them, had any idea of protecting our 

 sister republics in such conduct as that of which the Ger 

 mans complained ; and I concluded by fervently exhorting 



