THE MONROE DOCTRINE 421 



sidered and that the grounds of the conclusion arrived at should 

 be fully and frankly stated. 



That there are circumstances under which a nation may justly 

 interpose in a controversy to which two or more other nations are 

 the direct and immediate parties is an admitted canon of inter- 

 national law. The doctrine is ordinarily expressed in terms of 

 the most general character and is perhaps incapable of more spe- 

 cific statement. It is declared in substance that a nation may 

 avail itself of this right whenever what is done or proposed by 

 any of the parties primarily concerned is a serious and direct 

 menace to its own integrity, tranquillity, or welfare. The propri- 

 ety of the rule when applied in good faith will not be questioned 

 in any quarter. On the other hand, it is an inevitable though 

 unfortunate consequence of the wide scope of the rule that it has 

 only too often been made a cloak for schemes of wanton spoliation 

 and aggrandizement. We are concerned at this time, however, 

 not so much with the general rule as with a form of it which is 

 peculiarly and distinctively American. Washington, in the sol- 

 emn admonitions of the Farewell Address, explicitly warned his 

 countrymen against entanglements with the politics or the con- 

 troversies of European powers. 



" Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none 

 or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in fre- 

 quent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign 

 to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us 

 to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissi- 

 tudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions 

 of her friendships or enmities. Our detached and distant situa- 

 tion invites and enables us to pursue a different course." 



During the administration of President Monroe this doctrine 

 of the Farewell Address was first considered in all its aspects 

 and with a view to all its practical consequences. The Farewell 

 Address, while it took America out of the field of European poli- 

 tics, was silent as to the part Europe might be permitted to play 

 in America. Doubtless it was thought the latest addition to the 

 family of nations should not make haste to prescribe rules for the 

 guidance of its older members, and the expediency and propriety 

 of serving the powers of Europe with notice of a complete and 

 distinctive American policy excluding them from interference 

 with American political affairs might well seem dubious to a 

 generation to whom the French alliance, with its manifold advan- 

 tages to the cause of American independence, was fresh in mind. 



