ret the doctrine as the right of
the United States to control South America politically and exploit it
industrially. The downward path to such an interpretation is easy. To
secure an inside track in Latin America we need only look askance upon
concessions to Europeans and with benevolence upon concessions to
Americans. We can place obstacles in the way of foreign corporations
recovering damages for injuries suffered, while we aid American
companies to secure redress. We can make our ministers to Latin
America "business agents" of exporters and big banking concerns. Such
a policy would mean economic and eventually political control, the much
feared _conquista pacifica_.

If we embark upon such a policy we shall earn the hatred both of Europe
and of Latin America. Hitherto the Monroe Doctrine has been safe from
serious attack by Europe because England with her preponderant
sea-power has been commercially the chief benefactor, and the other
nations believed that, for the time being at least, South America was
held open for joint exploitation. Moreover, Europe had nearer problems
in the disposition of Balkan territory and in the partition of Africa
and sections of Asia. So long as European nations were not ready to
divide up Latin America, or so long as they believed that it would
remain independent and thus open to the commerce of all, the temptation
to fight for a slice of the great continent, though alluring, was not
sufficiently powerful to overcome the sense of the peril of such an
undertaking. For Germany to seek to conquer a part of Brazil would
have been to add all the American nations to her already long list of
enemies. But this tolerance of the Monroe Doctrine is conditioned upon
our playing {208} the part of a guardian and not of a conqueror. We
can neither monopolise Latin America industrially nor rule it
politically (which might involve the same result) without trenching
upon the common patrimony of Europe. To secure the inside track means
therefore either to fight all Europe, which is impossible, or to share
the booty with one or two allied powers, like England and France, and
thus to enter into all the complications and dangers of European
politics. A Pan-Americanism of this sort would involve us in the next
Balkan imbroglio or the next quarrel over the Persian Gulf, and our
peace would be at the mercy of any little monarch who struck the first
blow at one of our allies.

In Latin America itse