THE NORTH AMERICAN PERIL
The policy of the United States--The Monroe doctrine: its various
aspects--Greatness and decadence of the United States--The two
Americas, Latin and Anglo-Saxon.
To save themselves from Yankee imperialism the American democracies
would almost accept a German alliance, or the aid of Japanese arms;
everywhere the Americans of the North are feared. In the Antilles
and in Central America hostility against the Anglo-Saxon invaders
assumes the character of a Latin crusade. Do the United States
deserve this hatred? Are they not, as their diplomatists preach, the
elder brothers, generous and protecting? And is not protection their
proper vocation in a continent rent by anarchy?
We must define the different aspects of their activities in South
America; a summary examination of their influence could not fail to
be unjust. They have conquered new territories, but they have upheld
the independence of feeble States; they aspire to the hegemony of the
Latin continent, but this ambition has prevented numerous and
grievous conflicts between South American nations. The moral
pressure of the United States makes itself felt everywhere; the
imperialist and maternal Republic intervenes in all the internal
conflicts of the Spanish-speaking democracies. It excites or
suppresses revolutions; it fulfils a high vocation of culture. It
{299} uses or abuses a privilege which cannot be gainsaid. The
better to protect the Ibero-Americans, it has proudly raised its
Pillars of Hercules against the ambition of the Old World.
Sometimes this influence becomes a monopoly, and the United States
take possession of the markets of the South. They aim at making a
trust of the South American republics, the supreme dream of their
multi-millionaire _conquistadors_. Alberdi has said that there they
are the "Puerto Cabello" of the new America; that is to say, that
they aim, after the Spanish fashion, at isolating the southern
continent and becoming its exclusive purveyors of ideas and
industries.
Their supremacy was excellent when it was a matter of basing the
independence of twenty republics of uncertain future upon a solid
foundation. The neo-Saxons did not then intervene in the wars of the
South; they remained neutral and observed the peace which Washington
had advocated. They proclaimed the autonomy of the continent, and
contributed to conserve the originality of Southern America by
forbidding the formation of colonies in its empty territories, and by
defending the republican and democratic States against reactionary
Europe.
But who will deliver the Ibero-Americans from the excess of this
influence? _Quis custodiet custodem?_ An irresponsible supremacy is
perilous.
Naturally, in the relations of the United States and the nations of
the South actions do not always correspond with words; the art of
oratory is lavish with a fraternal idealism, but strong wills enforce
their imperialistic ambitions. Although fully attentive to the
fair-sounding promises of the North, the statesmen of the South
refuse to believe in the friendship of the Yankees; being perturbed
by the memory of ancient and recent conquests, these peoples perhaps
exaggerate the danger which might come from the {300} North. A blind
confidence and an excessive timidity are equally futile.
In 1906, at the conference of Rio de Janeiro, Secretary Root, in the
presence of assembled America, was the lay prophet of the new gospel.
"We do not wish," he said, "to win victories, we desire no territory
but our own, nor a sovereignty more extensive than that which we
desire to retain over ourselves. We consider that the independence
and the equal rights of the smallest and weakest members of the
family of nations deserve as much respect as those of the great
empires. We pretend to no right, privilege, or power that we do not
freely concede to each one of the American Republics." This was the
solemn declaration of a Puritan politician; Mr. Root continues the
noble tradition of Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton.
Ten years earlier another secretary, Mr. Olney, declared to Lord
Salisbury that the great Anglo-Saxon Republic was practically
sovereign--paramount was his word--on the American continent, and
that its fiat was law in affairs which called for its intervention.
Which is the truth: the imperialistic declarations of Mr. Olney or
the idealism of Mr. Root?
Against the policy of respect for Latin liberties are ranged the
instincts of a triumphant plutocracy. The centre of North American
life is passing from Boston to Chicago; the citadel of the ideal
gives way to the material progress of the great porcine metropolis.
There is a conflict of dissimilar currents of morality. The Puritan
tradition of New England seems useless in the struggle of the Far
West; the conquest of the desert demands another morality; the
morality of conflict, aggression, and success. The trusts raise
their heads above the impotent clamour of the weak. The conflict
between the new-comers is tumultuous and brutal; as in the time of
imperial {301} Rome, the latter-day republicans are becoming aware of
their defeat by a new caste, animated by an impetuous love of
conflict. It is the struggle between idealism and plutocracy,
between the tradition of the Pilgrim Fathers and the morality of Wall
Street; the patricians of the Senate and the bosses of Tammany Hall.
The great historical parties are divided; while the democrats do not
forget the ideal of Washington and Lincoln, the republicans think
only of imperialism.
Will a generous _élite_ succeed in withstanding this racial tendency?
Perhaps, but nothing can check the onward march of the United States.
Their imperialism is an unavoidable phenomenon.
The nation which was peopled by nine millions of men in 1820 now
numbers eighty millions--an immense demographic power; in the space
of ten years, from 1890 to 1900, this population increased by
one-fifth. By virtue of its iron, wheat, oil, and cotton, and its
victorious industrialism, the democracy aspires to a world-wide
significance of destiny; the consciousness of its powers is creating
fresh international duties. Yankee pride increases with the endless
multiplication of wealth and population, and the patriotic sentiment
has reached such an intensity that it has become transformed into
imperialism.
The United States buy the products they themselves lack from the
tropical nations. To rule in these fertile zones would to them
appear the geographical ideal of a northern people. Do not their
industries demand new outlets in America and Asia? So to the old
mystic ambition are added the necessities of utilitarian progress.
An industrial nation, the States preach a practical Christianity to
the older continents, to Europe, and to lands yet barbarous, as to
South America; they profess a doctrine of aggressive idealism, a
strange fusion of economic tendencies and Puritan fervour. The
Christian Republic imposes {302} its tutelage upon inferior races,
and so prepares them for self-government.
This utilitarian and mystical expansion is opposed to the primitive
simplicity of the Monroe doctrine. In 1823, to counter the political
methods of the Holy Alliance, President Monroe upheld the republican
integrity of the ancient Spanish colonies. The celebrated message
declared that there were no free territories in America, thus
condemning in advance any projected establishment of European
colonies upon the unoccupied continent of America, and that the
United States limited their political action to the New World, and
renounced all intervention in the disputes of Europe.
At the close of the last century the political absolutism of the Holy
Alliance was only a memory; democracy is progressing, even in the
heart of the most despotic of monarchies, and France is republican.
Europe, after the tragic adventure of the Mexican Empire, abandoned
her expeditions of conquest. The United States, forgetting their
initial isolation, intervened in the politics of the world; they
defended the integrity of China, took part in the conference of
Algeciras, and maintained peace in the East. Like the character in
Terence, nothing in the world leaves them unconcerned. The two bases
of the Monroe doctrine, the absolutism of Europe and the isolation of
the United States, exist no longer, but the Monroe doctrine persists
indefinitely. "If," says Mr. Coolidge, professor of political law at
the University of Harvard, "if, by his principles, the American finds
himself drawn to conclusions which do not please him, he ordinarily
revolts, forsakes his promises, and jumps to conclusions that suit
him better." To the logic of the Latins Americans and Englishmen
oppose utility, common sense, instinct.
The Monroe doctrine has undergone an essential transformation; it has
passed successively from the {303} defensive to intervention and
thence to the offensive. From a theory which condemned any change of
political _régime_ among the new democracies under European pressure,
and which forbade all acquisitions of territory, or the transfer of
power from a weak to a strong nation, there arose the Polk doctrine,
which, in 1845, decreed the annexation of Texas for fear of foreign
intervention. In 1870 President Grant demanded the seizure of San
Domingo as a measure of national protection, a new corollary of the
Monroe doctrine. President Johnson was anxious to see his country in
possession of Cuba in the name of the "laws of political gravitation
which throw small States into the gullets of the great powers." In
1895 Secretary of State Olney, at the time of the trouble between
England and Venezuela, declared that the United States were in fact
sovereign in America. From Monroe to Olney the defensive doctrine
has gradually changed to a moral tutelage.
If theories change, frontiers change no less. The northern Republic
has been the beneficiary of an incessant territorial expansion: in
1813 it acquired Louisiana; in 1819, Florida; in 1845 and 1850,
Texas; the Mexican provinces in 1848 and 1852; and Alaska in 1858.
The annexation of Hawaii took place in 1898. In the same year Porto
Rico, the Philippines, Guam, and one of the Marianne Islands, passed,
by the Treaty of Paris, into the hands of the United States. They
obtained the Samoan Islands in 1890, wished to buy the Danish West
Indies in 1902, and planted their imperialistic standard at Panama in
1903.
Interventions have become more frequent with the expansion of
frontiers. The United States have recently intervened in the
territory of Acre, there to found a republic of rubber gatherers; at
Panama, there to develop a province and construct a canal; in Cuba,
under cover of the Platt amendment, to {304} maintain order in the
interior; in San Domingo, to support the civilising revolution and
overthrow the tyrants; in Venezuela, and in Central America, to
enforce upon these nations, torn by intestine disorders, the
political and financial tutelage of the imperial democracy. In
Guatemala and Honduras the loans concluded with the monarchs of North
American finance have reduced the people to a new slavery.
Supervision of the customs and the dispatch of pacificatory squadrons
to defend the interests of the Anglo-Saxon have enforced peace and
tranquillity: such are the means employed. The _New York American_
announces that Mr. Pierpont Morgan proposes to encompass the finances
of Latin America by a vast network of Yankee banks. Chicago
merchants and Wall Street financiers created the Meat Trust in the
Argentine. The United States offer millions for the purpose of
converting into Yankee loans the moneys raised in London during the
last century by the Latin American States; they wish to obtain a
monopoly of credit. It has even been announced, although the news
hardly appears probable, that a North American syndicate wished to
buy enormous belts of land in Guatemala, where the English tongue is
the obligatory language. The fortification of the Panama Canal, and
the possible acquisition of the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific, are
fresh manifestations of imperialistic progress.
The Monroe doctrine takes an aggressive form with Mr. Roosevelt, the
politician of the "big stick," and intervention _à outrance_.
Roosevelt is conscious of his sacred mission; he wants a powerful
army, and a navy majestically sailing the two oceans. His ambitions
find an unlooked-for commentary in a book by Mr. Archibald Coolidge,
the Harvard professor, upon the United States as a world-power. He
therein shows the origin of the disquietude of the South Americans
before the Northern peril: "When two {305} contiguous States," he
writes, "are separated by a long line of frontiers and one of the two
rapidly increases, full of youth and vigour, while the other
possesses, together with a small population, rich and desirable
territories, and is troubled by continual revolutions which exhaust
and weaken it, the first will inevitably encroach upon the second,
just as water will always seek to regain its own level."
He recognises the fact that the progress accomplished by the United
States is not of a nature to tranquillise the South American; "that
the Yankee believes that his southern neighbours are trivial and
childish peoples, and above all incapable of maintaining a proper
self-government." He thinks the example of Cuba, liberated "from the
rule of Spain, but not from internal troubles, will render the
American of the States sceptical as to the aptitude of the
Latin-American populations of mixed blood to govern themselves
without disorder," and recognises that the "pacific penetration" of
Mexico by American capital constitutes a possible menace to the
independence of that Republic, were the death of Diaz to lead to its
original state of anarchy and disturb the peace which the
millionaires of the North desire to see untroubled.
Warnings, advice, distrust, invasion of capital, plans of financial
hegemony--all these justify the anxiety of the southern peoples.
The people of the United States have always desired a _Zollverein_, a
fiscal union of all the Republics; they wish to gather into their
imperial hands the commerce of the South, the produce of the tropics.
The unity of the German Empire was born of a _Zollverein_ or customs
union, and perhaps in the future the same means will create that
eternal empire of which the patriotism of Mr. Chamberlain used to
dream. The United States, according to candid Professor Coolidge,
are, in respect of Latin {306} America, in a position analogous to
that of Russia in respect of the nations of the _Zollverein_: their
population is greater and more imposing. "History shows us," he
writes, "that when feeble states and powerful states are closely
associated the independence of the weak states runs certain
risks."[1] The Yankee ideal, then, is fatally contrary to
Latin-American independence.
For geographical reasons, and on account of its very inferiority,
South America cannot dispense with the influence of the Anglo-Saxon
North, with its exuberant wealth and its industries. South America
has need of capital, of enterprising men, of bold explorers, and
these the United States supply in abundance. The defence of the
South should consist in avoiding the establishment of privileges or
monopolies, whether in favour of North Americans or Europeans.
It is essential to understand not only the foundations of North
American greatness, but also the weaknesses of the Anglo-Saxon
democracy, in order to escape from the dangers of excessive imitation.
The Anglo-Saxons of America have created an admirable democracy upon
a prodigious expanse of territory. A caravan of races has pitched
its tents from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and has watered the
desert with its impetuous blood. Dutch, French, Anglo-Saxons, and
Germans, people of all sects, Quakers, Presbyterians, Catholics,
Puritans, all have mingled their creeds in a single multiform nation.
At the contact of new soil men have felt the pride of creation and of
living. Initiative, self-assertion, self-reliance, audacity, love of
adventure, all the forms of the victorious will are united in this
Republic of energy. A triumphant optimism quickens the rhythm of
life; an immense impulse of creation builds cities in the wilderness,
and founds new {307} plutocracies amidst the whirlpool of the
markets. Workshops, factories, banks; the obscure unrest of Wall
Street; the architectural insolence of the skyscraper; the
many-coloured, material West; all mingle perpetually in the wild,
uncouth hymn which testifies the desperate battle of will and
destiny, of generation against death. Poets have exalted the
greatness of America. Hear Walt Whitman, the bard of this advancing
democracy:--
"Long, too long, America....
For who except myself has yet conceived
What your children _en masse_ really are?
They will make the most splendid race the sun
Ever shone upon,"
he cries, in his free rhythms.
"O mother of a mighty race!"
said Bryant, celebrating the glories of North America, and the
fastidious Whittier would have the United States excel the Old World
on its own ground:
"And cast in some diviner mould
Lest the new cycle shame the old."
They have reconciled equality with liberty, in manners and in law.
Fair play, the identical chances which the Republic offers her
citizens, in creating schools, in fostering the advance of self-made
men in society, constitutes the firmest foundation of the life of a
republic. Equity and equality prevail above the eager onrush of her
citizens; equality in industrial struggles against monopolies;
equality in the churches in place of intolerance; equality in school
instead of the privileges created by wealth. This persistent
exaltation of liberty matches the sentiment of social discipline.
The Germanic sense of {308} organisation is added to the Anglo-Saxon
individualism; associations multiply and become a gigantic network
spread over the entire face of the country; clubs, leagues, societies
of co-operation and production and philanthropic institutions.
But this civilisation, in which men of strong vitality win wealth,
invent machines, create new cities, and profess a Christianity full
of energy and accomplishment, has not the majesty of a harmonious
structure. It is the violent work of a people of various origin,
which has not yet been ennobled by the _patina_ of tradition and
time. In the cities which restless workers hastily raise on barren
soil, one can as yet perceive no definitive unity. Race antagonism
disturbs North America; the negroes swarm in the South; Japanese and
Orientals aspire to the conquest of the West. Neo-Saxon civilisation
is still seeking its final form, and in the meantime it is piling up
wealth amid the prevailing indiscipline. "We find in the United
States," says M. André Chevrillon, "a political system, but not a
social organisation." The admirable traditions of Hamilton and
Jefferson have been subjected to the onslaught of new influences, the
progress of plutocracy, the corruption of the administrative
functions, the dissolution of parties, the abuse of the power of
monopolies. The axis of the great nation is becoming displaced
towards the West, and each step in advance marks the triumph of
vulgarity.
An octopus of a city, New York, might be taken as the symbol of this
extraordinary nation; it displays the vertigo, the audacity, and all
the lack of proportion that characterise American life. Near the
poverty of the Ghetto and the disturbing spectacle of Chinatown you
may admire the wealth of Fifth Avenue and the marble palaces which
plagiarise the architecture of the Tuscan cities. Opposite the
obscure crowds of emigrants herded in the docks you will see the
refined luxury of the plutocratic {309} hotels, and facing the
majestic buildings of Broadway, the houses of the parallel avenues,
which are like the temporary booths of a provincial fair. Confusion,
uproar, instability--these are the striking characteristics of the
North American democracy. Neither irony nor grace nor scepticism,
gifts of the old civilisations, can make way against the plebeian
brutality, the excessive optimism, the violent individualism of the
people.
All these things contribute to the triumph of mediocrity; the
multitude of primary schools, the vices of utilitarianism, the cult
of the average citizen, the transatlantic M. Homais, and the tyranny
of opinion noted by Tocqueville; and in this vulgarity, which is
devoid of traditions and has no leading aristocracy, a return to the
primitive type of the redskin, which has already been noted by close
observers, is threatening the proud democracy. From the excessive
tension of wills, from the elementary state of culture, from the
perpetual unrest of life, from the harshness of the industrial
struggle, anarchy and violence will be born in the future. In a
hundred years men will seek in vain for the "American soul," the
"genius of America," elsewhere than in the indisciplined force or the
violence which ignores moral laws.
Among the Anglo-Saxon nations individualism finds its limits in the
existence of a stable home; it may also struggle against the State,
according to the formula consecrated by Spencer, "the man versus the
State." It defends its jealous autonomy from excessive legislation,
from the intervention of the Government in economic conflicts or the
life of the family. And it is precisely the family spirit which is
becoming enfeebled in North America, under the pressure of new social
conditions. The birth-rate is diminishing, and the homes of foreign
immigrants are contributing busily to the formation of the new
generations; the native stock inheriting good racial {310} traditions
would seem to be submerged more and more by the new human tide. A
North American official writes that "the decrease in the birth-rate
will lead to a complete change in the social system of the
Republic."[2] From this will result the abandonment of the
traditional austerity of the race, and the old notions of sacrifice
and duty. The descendants of alien races will constitute the nation
of the future. The national heritage is threatened by the invasion
of Slavs and Orientals, and the fecundity of the negroes; a painful
anxiety weighs upon the destinies of the race.
The family is unstable, and divorces are increasing at an
extraordinary rate. Between 1870 and 1905 the population doubled;
during the same period the divorces increased sixfold and the
marriages decreased. There is no fixity in the elements of variety,
and the causes of this state of transition will not disappear, as
they are intimately allied with the development of the industrial
civilisation which has brought with it a new ideal of happiness. By
emancipating men and women from the old moral principles it has
modified sexual morality; by accelerating social progress it has
brought an additional bitterness into the social mêlée, a greater
egoism into human conflict.
Excessive and heterogeneous immigration prevents any final
crystallisation; in the last ten years 8,515,000 strangers have
entered into the great hospitable Union. They came from Germany,
Ireland, Russia, or Southern Italy. It is calculated that the United
States are able to assimilate 150,000 to 200,000 immigrants each
year, but they certainly cannot welcome such an overwhelming host
without anxiety.
Criminality increases; the elaboration of a {311} common type among
these men of different origin is proceeding more slowly. Doubtless
beneath the shelter of the political federation of the various States
a confused agglomeration of races is forming itself, and this
justifies the query of Professor Ripley: "The Americans of the
North," he says, "have witnessed the disappearance of the Indians and
the buffalo, but can they be certain to-day that the Anglo-Saxons
will survive them?"
In seeking to imitate the United States we should not forget that the
civilisation of the peoples of the North presents these symptoms of
decadence.
Europe offers the Latin-American democracies what the latter demand
of Anglo-Saxon America, which was formed in the school of Europe. We
find the practical spirit, industrialism, and political liberty in
England; organisation and education in Germany; and in France
inventive genius, culture, wealth, great universities, and democracy.
From these ruling peoples the new Latin world must indirectly receive
the legacy of Western civilisation.
Essential points of difference separate the two Americas.
Differences of language and therefore of spirit; the difference
between Spanish Catholicism and the multiform Protestantism of the
Anglo-Saxons; between the Yankee individualism and the omnipotence of
the State natural to the nations of the South. In their origin, as
in their race, we find fundamental antagonisms; the evolution of the
North is slow and obedient to the lessons of time, to the influences
of custom; the history of the southern peoples is full of
revolutions, rich with dreams of an unattainable perfection.
The people of the United States hate the half-breed, and the impure
marriages of whites and blacks which take place in Southern homes; no
manifestation of Pan-Americanism could suffice to destroy the racial
prejudice as it exists north of Mexico. The {312} half-breeds and
their descendants govern the Ibero-American democracies, and the
Republic of English and German origin entertains for the men of the
tropics the same contempt which they feel for the slaves of Virginia
whom Lincoln liberated.
In its friendship for them there will always be disdain; in their
progress, a conquest; in their policy, a desire of hegemony. It is
the fatality of blood, stronger than political affinities or
geographical alliances.
Instead of dreaming of an impossible fusion the Neo-Latin peoples
should conserve the traditions which are proper to them. The
development of the European influences which enrich and improve them,
the purging of the nation from the stain of miscegenation, and
immigration of a kind calculated to form centres of resistance
against any possibilities of conquest, are the various aspects of
this Latin Americanism.[3]
[1] The United States as World-Power.
[2] _Race Improvement in the United States_. Academy of Political
and Social Science, Philadelphia, 1909, pp. 70-1 _et seq_.
[3] The Mexican sociologist, F. Bulnes, writes in his book, _L'Avenir
des nations Hispano-Americaines_: "It is more than probable that by
1980 the United States will hold a population of 250,000,000
inhabitants. They will then scarcely be sufficient for the needs of
this population, and will no longer be able to supply the world with
the vast quantity of cereals which they supply to-day. They will
therefore have to choose between a recourse to the methods of
intensive culture and the conquest of the extra-tropical lands of
Latin America, which are fitted, by their conditions, to the easy and
inexpensive production of excellent cereals."
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