446 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



upon Great Britain's acceptance of arbitration, to institute 

 an ex parte commission to determine British rights and 

 to dictate the course she was to follow in the settlement 

 of this dispute, was as much an effront as peremptorily 

 to order the British Government to withdraw its pretensions 

 from Venezuelan territory. In either case the United States 

 assumed a high degree of authority which Great Britain 

 refused to acknowledge ; in either case, war was a possible 

 outcome. In short, therefore, the opponents of the admin- 

 istration policy held simply that the United States was not 

 threatened in any way by British advances in Venezuela, and 

 therefore the circumstances in the case did not justify the 

 country in going to the extremity of a war with England. 



Those who defended the stand taken by the administra- 

 tion asserted that while the occupation of a portion of Ven- 

 ezuela by Great Britain did not in itself endanger American 

 interests, it violated a well-established policy of the American 

 people. This cardinal principle of American diplomacy had 

 been so long revered it should be maintained at all hazards. 

 To abandon the Monroe Doctrine at that particular time 

 would be to open the entire South American continent to the 

 rapacious and land-hungered nations of Europe. 



After all is said on both sides of the controversy there is 

 but one point which merits serious consideration. That one 

 point determines the applicability of the doctrine in every 

 case, that is, the safety of the United States. 



Self-defence is an essential principle of existence. It is 

 a law of nature that no rules of society can accurately define. 

 Because the Monroe Doctrine was an invocation of this 

 great principle of which Mr. Monroe was in no wise the 

 author, because it came opportunely, because it was so ably 

 expressed, because it met with enthusiastic approval at the 

 time, it has lived and obtained a permanence in American 

 politics as though it were a principle purely American and 

 of American discovery. In reality it is only a special or a 

 new name for a principle of life that is as old as the existence 

 of man. The new name has supplanted the old in the Ameri- 



