ing out an ambiguous word and substituting one about which there could be no misunderstanding. While the Hague court has not measured up to the hopes of its friends in all respects, it has far surpassed the expectations of its enemies. A great discouragement to many of its friends was the fact that some of the powers which had participated in the conference of 1899 were soon engaged in wars, but it should be remembered that the questions involved in the Boer War of 1899-1902, and in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, were not of such a character as to admit of judicial determination, and were quite beyond the scope and intent of the convention which created the court. The first conference left many questions unsettled and expressed the hope that future gatherings would continue the work. In October, 1904, President Roosevelt proposed a second conference,' and while favorable replies were received from most of the powers, Russia declined to take part during the continuance of the war with Japan. After the close of that war, the Russian government took the matter up and issued invitations for a meeting during the summer of 1906, which at the suggestion of the United States was postponed so as not to interfere with the meeting of the Pan-American Conference at Rio Janeiro already arranged. June 15, 1907, was finally set for the meeting of the second conference at The Hague, and the South American republics were in 1 Foreign Relations, 1904, p. 10. vited, so that it might be in the fullest sense a world conference.' Although this body did not decree disarmament, or even place a limit on military and naval expenditures, nevertheless it reaffirmed the principle of international arbitration, took stepslooking to the establishment of an international prize court, defined more clearly the rights and duties of neutrals, and adopted new rules relating to warfare on land and sea. Disarmament is an ideal to be dreamed of; arbitration is a practical method of avoiding war, capable of indefinite extension. Apart from other considerations, international congresses have a most beneficial influence in making the leading men of the world acquainted with one another, and thereby removing national prejudice and establishing lines of pacification. Am. Journal of Int. Law, I., 431-440. CHAPTER XV THE MONROE DOCTRINE AND WORLD POLITICS (1895-1902) OME one has remarked that there is a latent SOME tendency in the human mind to define a thing in order to avoid the necessity of understanding it. This is strikingly illustrated in the case of the Monroe Doctrine. Certain writers have undertaken to determine precisely what President Monroe and John Quincy Adams had in mind when the message of 1823 was being prepared, and to apply this standard to all subsequent appeals to the principle.1 Such a method would relegate the Monroe Doctrine to the realm of past issues, possessing merely an historical interest; for the international situation of 1823 can never be reproduced, and hence the demand for the application of President Monroe's celebrated declaration, with the precise meaning he gave it, can never again arise. But the public policy of a state develops just as the law of a state develops; and with the lapse of years the Monroe Doctrine has been modified to meet changing conditions, and has become 'On the original Monroe Doctrine, see Turner, New West (Am. Nation, XIV.), chap. xii. more widely extended in its application than its authors ever contemplated. President Roosevelt expressed this idea very aptly when he said in 1905: "If we had refused to apply the Doctrine to changing conditions it would now be completely outworn, it would not meet any of the needs of the present day, and indeed would probably by this time have sunk into complete oblivion. It is useful at home, and is meeting with recognition abroad because we have adapted our application of it to meet the growing and changing needs of the Hemisphere. When we announce a policy, such as the Monroe Doctrine, we thereby commit ourselves to the consequences of the policy, and those consequences from time to time alter." 1 Of the various appeals that have been made to the Monroe Doctrine since its first enunciation, some may be regarded as unwarranted extensions and others as natural developments of the original declaration. Owing to wide divergences of opinion as to whether this principle was really involved in certain specific cases, and the tendency that politicians have shown at times to juggle with it, critics have called it the "will-o'-the-wisp of American politics," and have applied the term Pseudo-Monroeism to some of its later applications; but in spite of all such attacks, it stands to-day as "the cardinal principle of American foreign policy." The various phases of development through which 1 Foreign Relations, 1905, p. xxxiii. the Monroe Doctrine has passed need not here be discussed. Understanding by it the broad principle that American interests are unalterably opposed to the establishment of new European colonies in America, or the interference of European powers in the political concerns of the independent states of this continent, it is safe to assert that it has received the almost unanimous sanction of American statesmen of all shades of political belief since its enunciation. The nearest approach to its abandonment was in President Grant's administration, when Secretary Hamilton Fish made an unsuccessful attempt to get the powers of Europe to co-operate with the United States, or at least to acquiesce, in a settlement of the Cuban question.1 The failure of Secretaries Blaine and Frelinghuysen, a few years later, to oust England from the joint control of the isthmian canal, which had been conceded to her by the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, on the ground that the expanded interests of the United States had operated to annul that agreement,2 tended to bring the Monroe Doctrine into further disrepute, but it was suddenly revived and rehabilitated in a most striking and sensational way by President Cleveland in the Venezuelan affair. The most striking feature of this case was that 1 Latané, Dipl. Relations of the U. S. and Spanish America, 163-173. 'Sparks, National Development (Am. Nation, XXIII.), chap xiii. VOL. XXV.-17 |