292 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



policy of the United States as wholly beyond the public law 

 or the requirements of national self-defence. 



In respect to colonization, all authorities seem to agree that 

 territory, unoccupied and belonging to no one, may be appro- 

 priated and held by any nation when its subjects enter it 

 with the intention of remaining. So far as the Monroe Doc- 

 trine relates to colonization, the question at once arises 

 was there any territory properly res nullius, or belonging to 

 no one, in either of the American continents when President 

 Monroe issued his edict against colonization in 1823 ? If 

 not, the interdict was useless ; if there were territory capable 

 of appropriation at that time, the declaration, under the inter- 

 national code, was clearly illegal. It proposed a third requi- 

 site to the right of colonization, to wit; the consent of the 

 United States. No amount of argument can reconcile the 

 proposition with the public law, nor can any considerations 

 of self-defence invest it with strict legal authority. If such 

 were the case, the United States would be justified in seizing 

 Canada, and Great Britain would be wrong in seeking to 

 defend a colony that threatened the United States with a 

 contiguous boundary line of three thousand miles. 

 *" Now, to what length a nation may go in throwing off its 

 obligations to respect the sovereignty of its neighbors on the 

 score of self-preservation, or even of protection or immunity 

 against less serious attack, is a question of politics rather 

 than of law. In the nature of things there can be no exact 

 and ascertainable measure of danger or of security ; it is 

 manifestly difficult to say at just what point one may bid 

 another come no nearer. 



Bearing in mind, then, that forcible intervention in the 



affairs of other nations is excusable only when committed in 



self-defence and when the danger is real, imminent, and di- 



' rect, not speculative and contingent, and only when the 



interference is itself actually necessary, and is kept within 



the limited bounds authorized by the circumstances of the 



case, and, furthermore, when the interference is not resorted 



to with a view of aggression or spoliation, then, and from 



such standpoint only, can the so-called " legal aspects " of 



