THE MONROE DOCTRINE 429 



They realize that had France and Great Britain held important 

 South American possessions to work from and to benefit, the 

 temptation to destroy the predominance of the Great Republic in 

 this hemisphere by furthering its dismemberment might have 

 been irresistible. From that grave peril they have been saved in ,/ 

 the past and may be saved again iii the future through the opera- 

 tion of the sure but silent force of the doctrine proclaimed by 

 President Monroe. To abandon it, on the other hand, disregard- 

 ing both the logic of the situation and the facts of our past expe- 

 rience, would be to renounce a policy which has proved both an 

 easy defence against foreign aggression and a prolific source of 

 internal progress and prosperity. 



There is, then, a doctrine of American public law, well founded 

 in principle and abundantly sanctioned by precedent, which 

 -entitles and requires the United States to treat as an injury to 

 itself the forcible assumption by an European power of political 

 control over an American state. The application of the doctrine 

 to the boundary dispute between Great Britain and Venezuela * 

 remains to be made and presents no real difficulty. Though the 

 dispute relates to a boundary line, yet, as it is between states, it 

 necessarily imports political control to be lost by one party and 

 gained by the other. The political control at stake, too, is of no 

 mean importance, but concerns a domain of great extent the 

 British claim, it will be remembered, apparently expanded in two 

 years some 33,000 square miles and, if it also directly involves 

 the command of the mouth of the Orinoco, is of immense conse- 

 quence in connection with the whole river navigation of the 

 interior of South America. It has been intimated, indeed, that 

 in respect of these South American possessions Great Britain is 

 herself an American state like any other, so that a controversy 

 between her and Venezuela is to be settled between themselves 

 :as if it were between Venezuela and Brazil or between Venezuela 

 and Colombia, and does not call for or justify United States 

 Intervention. If this view be tenable at all, the logical sequence . 

 is plain. 



Great Britain as a South American state is to be entirely differ- 

 entiated from Great Britain generally, and if the boundary ques- 

 tion cannot be settled otherwise than by force, British Guiana, 

 "with her own independent resources and not those of the British 

 Empire, should be left to settle the matter with Venezuela an 

 "arrangement which very possibly Venezuela might not object to. 

 But the proposition that an European power with an American 

 dependency is for the purposes of the Monroe doctrine to be 

 classed not as an European but as an American state will not 



