Cuban Intrepidity

Voice of the United States

ment and a brutal soldiery. But there is abundant proof of their devotion, their ability, and their bravery in the fact that for three years they fought more than 200,000 Spanish troops so successfully as to prove to the world that they could not be subjugated. This Iwas while their homes were laid in ashes and their wives and children were starving.

Such was the situation in Cuba when the Republic of the United States lifted up its voice among the nations and declared that the oppressed island at its doors should go free.

America's Foreign Policy

Non-Interference

CHAPTER III

Rescue by the United States

Twot

'WO declarations by two presidents of the United States, in regard to the foreign policy which our Government ought to follow, have been so generally accepted by the people as to gain about as much force as a provision in the Constitution. One of these is against our meddling in the affairs of foreign nations, and the other is against allowing them to meddle in our affairs.

In the most important suggestion of his " Farewell Address "-and the only one which is commonly remembered President Washington impressively recommended that we entirely abstain from interfering in European affairs. This advice has been uniformly followed. Even under severe temptation we have never gone further into any foreign issue than to protect our own independence and to insure the development of free institutions upon this Western Continent.

While, on several occasions in the past, our navy has been sent into foreign waters to enforce certain demands of the United States, those demands have always been made necessary by some menace to our interests or by some defiance of the legitimate authority of the United States. Until Commodore Dewey sailed from Hong Kong for Manila, no vessel of the

Washington's Advice

Monroe Doctrine

United States ever went over seas upon a warlike errand which was not inseparably associated with American rights. The doctrine that we should mind. our own business, and that our business was all within the bounds of the Western Continent, has been thoroughly fixed in the thought of the people, and as firmly established in the diplomatic policy of the Government. The last words of Washington to this effect have always been regarded as very wise and entirely sacred.

President Monroe, in 1823, connected his name with the converse of this doctrine, that we should not permit European nations to interfere in our affairs, or to extend monarchical rule, or to offer any menace to democratic government upon this hemisphere.

It may be interesting to recall how this "Monroe Doctrine" came to be announced. It must be remembered that it was the efforts of Spain to reclaim her South American colonies that called it forth. Following the Napoleonic wars there was formed among the leading European nations an alliance for self-protection. It was called the "Holy Alliance," though it was anything but holy. It was not so much for resistance against other powers as to protect its members against internal rebellions. It consisted of a joining of forces by the kings to prevent the progress of the people towards the management of their own affairs. England at first approved, but soon repudiated the whole arrangement.

It was the attempts of Spain to bring the guns of

Monroe's Warning to Europe

Change of Policy

these allied powers to bear upon her revolted colonies in South America that led President Monroe to declare that while the United States would not interfere with any existing dependencies of any European state, yet the United States would consider it an unfriendly act, and treat it as such, for any European power to interfere with any American Government which had declared and maintained its independence and had been so recognized by the United States. In words full of meaning and bristling with spirit he said: “It is due to candor that we should declare to the Allied Powers that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety."

So it had become a traditional and fundamental doctrine in this country that we should avoid all foreign entanglements; that we should not meddle with the affairs of foreign nations, even with the affairs of their American colonies; and that, on the other hand, we should not allow them to extend their monarchical systems on this side of the Atlantic.

The decision of our Government to intervene in behalf of Cuba was, accordingly, a complete departure from traditional understandings. Some of the foremost constitutional lawyers were opposed to it. The step was disapproved by a large proportion of the professional and business people of the country: it was forced by the masses. It was the impulses of human sympathy and righteous indignation setting aside the long-standing principles of national policy.