in the smaller countries of the tropics that have so large a percentage of illiteracy and so small a percentage of Caucasian people, there is urgent need of more general knowledge in this 'country, of educating the American people to the facts and eliminating the harmful effects of insidious and selfish propaganda. March 1, 1928. LAMAR T. BEMAN. vi Collings, Harry T. Billions of Our Capital In- vested in Latin America...... Current History 21 Munro, Dana G. The Basis of American Inter- vention in the Caribbean......Current History 85 McLean, George P. Intervention Often Necessary Coolidge, Calvin. The Intervention in Nicaragua: Lenroot, Irvine L. Confiscation of American Property in Mexico......Congressional Record 131 BRIEFS RESOLVED: That the United States should continue its present policy of intervening when necessary in the Latin American republics. INTRODUCTION I. The meaning of the question A. Intervention is the forcible interference by one country in the affairs of another. 1. Force, actual or potential, is necessary to make it a case of intervention. B. The Latin American republics are the independent nations to the south of the United States. 1. They do not include the colonies or dependencies of any European nation. 2. They do include the islands of Cuba and Haiti. II. The importance of the question A. Intervention, when necessary to protect the lives or property of American citizens, particularly in the smaller and more backward countries of the Caribbean, has become the established policy of the United States. 1. The United States has intervened in the affairs of some other country on more than a hundred different occasions. 2. At the present time (1928) the United States is maintaining such interventions by force of arms in Haiti and Nicaragua. 3. Some of these interventions have lasted for quite a number of years, the pres ent intervention in Haiti having been begun in 1915. 4. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have instituted and have conducted interventions, so that this question is not a party issue. B. In Latin America this policy has been made the ground of an extensive and hostile propaganda against the United States. 1. Much of this propaganda emanates from European nations, most of whom have themselves often intervened in the affairs of other countries, frequently using intervention to secure a sphere of influence or to reduce an independent nation to a dependency or a colony ruled permanently by themselves, and most of whom have sanctioned intervention by the United States by notifying the United States, when revolutions broke out in the Latin American countries, that they looked to this country to protect their in terests. a. Some of the Latin nations of Europe, especially France and Spain, have used this hostile propaganda in an effort to regain their own prestige in Latin America. b. Great Britain and Germany have used it to advance their own commercial and financial in terests. c. Some of this hostility is Soviet propaganda that emanates from |