t no sanction should
be given to the practice among European governments of using armed force
to collect private claims. Opponents of President Roosevelt's policy,
and they were neither few nor insignificant, urged that such matters
should be referred to the Hague Court or to special international
commissions for arbitration. To this the answer was made that the United
States could not surrender any question coming under the terms of the
Monroe Doctrine to the decision of an international tribunal. The
position of the administration was very clearly stated by President
Roosevelt himself. "The country," he said, "would certainly decline to
go to war to prevent a foreign government from collecting a just debt;
on the other hand, it is very inadvisable to permit any foreign power to
take possession, even temporarily, of the customs houses of an American
republic in order to enforce the payment of its obligations; for such a
temporary occupation might turn into a permanent occupation. The only
escape from these alternatives may at any time be that we must
ourselves undertake to bring about some arrangement by which so much as
possible of a just obligation shall be paid." The Monroe Doctrine was
negative. It denied to European powers a certain liberty of operation in
this hemisphere. The positive obligations resulting from its application
by the United States were points now emphasized and developed.

=The Hague Conference.=--The controversies over Latin-American relations
and his part in bringing the Russo-Japanese War to a close naturally
made a deep impression upon Roosevelt, turning his mind in the direction
of the peaceful settlement of international disputes. The subject was
moreover in the air. As if conscious of impending calamity, the
statesmen of the Old World, to all outward signs at least, seemed
searching for a way to reduce armaments and avoid the bloody and costly
trial of international causes by the ancient process of battle. It was
the Czar, Nicholas II, fated to die in one of the terrible holocausts
which he helped to bring upon mankind, who summoned the delegates of the
nations in the first Hague Peace Conference in 1899. The conference did
nothing to reduce military burdens or avoid wars but it did recognize
the right of friendly nations to offer the services of mediation to
countries at war and did establish a Court at the Hague for the
arbitration of international disputes.

Encouraged by this experime