If so, this will tend gradually toward increased production and
purchasing power, as well as toward a leavening of social, political,
and economic conditions of life.
If the war were indecisive or left all the combatants more or less
prostrated, peaceful immigration might give a big impulse to the
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.
Pages:
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354