Chapter III
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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."