gradual growing up of powerful States in the temperate zone of the
extreme South. The situation there, and the evolution of our own power,
make it perhaps even now fair to consider the question of regarding as
optional in any given case the assertion by us of the Monroe Doctrine
much below the equator, let us say, beyond which it may possibly be
doubtful whether we have nowadays much reason for special interest.

But, even so, our relations to South America and our obligations under
the Monroe Doctrine, in spite of the blessed fortifications of the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, leave us where it is tempting fate to be
without a navy of the first magnitude, and a big merchant marine. We
have seen what happened to Belgium and Luxemburg. We have seen how even
some of the most enlightened nations can still make force their god.
Nations learn slowly, and there are perhaps some new big ones coming on,
like China.

If the war is a fight to a finish, and the Allies triumph, we can
imagine Russia, with its teeming millions of people, occupied for a
while in the Near East; Japan consolidating her position in the Far
East, an increasingly powerful neighbor to us in the Philippines, the
Hawaiian Islands, and the Pacific Ocean; France still a great power; and
England as a world power of uncomfortably ubiquitous strength, able to
challenge the Monroe Doctrine at will.

Or, let us suppose that Germany should triumph and that German
emigration should swarm into the Caribbean countries, or into Brazil or
some other country where there is already a large German colony--elated,
triumphant Germans, not Germans disgusted by a disastrous war. Would
Germany be likely to heed the Monroe Doctrine, or would it be only
another "scrap of paper"?

In the present stage of civilization the safety of America should not be
left dependent upon the forbearance of any power that may emerge
dangerously strong from the war or that may otherwise arise. The
obligations and rights of our Latin-American relations, under the Monroe
Doctrine and otherwise, like our security and our efficiency as a force
for peace and good in the world, demand a big navy, a merchant marine,
and the self-discipline and safeguard of adequate military preparedness.
The need of these and of a diplomacy of intelligent self-interest,
continuity, and intense nationalism is the lesson brought home to us by
the European war in its effects upon our Latin-American relations as
well as upo