Huerta as President; and from that day to this the ruler of Mexico must needs present to Washington a certificate of moral character, if relations are to be cordial and normal-as they certainly are not to-day between the two contiguous Republics.

Cuba has always interested the United States as the strategic key of the Caribbean Sea. Immediately after the acquisition by conquest of Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, an offer of 20,000,000l. was made to Spain for the Pearl of the Antilles.' In 1898 Cuba, together with the islands of Puerto Rico and Guam, and the vast Asiatic Archipelago of the Philippines, passed into America's possession as a result of a very easy war against a decrepit European Power, who thus parted with the last fragments of her world-empire. In due time Cuba was restored to 'a sort of' sovereignty which the Havana 'Carteles' now describes as that of 'an economic colony of the United States.' The Cuban port of Guantánamo is the chief naval base in the Caribbean of the U.S. Fleet. The Platt Amendment to Cuba's Constitution gives America power to intervene at any time. And when I was in Havana, the U.S. Ambassador there-General Enoch Crowder-held the peculiar position which is occupied by the British Political Officer in one of the Indian Native States. Thus he could and did act as censor morum of the President's list of Ministers. If General Crowder thought fit to veto a nomination, Don Alfredo Zayas had to find another man. And lastly, by far the greater number of Cuba's sugar-'centrals' are in the hands of American capital. Cuba, in short, has far less 'sovereignty' than the Irish Free State.

The Negro Republic of Haiti claims to be 'Sovereign,' too; it is the only French-speaking State in the LatinAmerican constellation. Twelve years ago American marines were landed at Port au Prince; the Haitian Parliament was swept away, and a Receiver of Customs installed; the present incumbent is Dr Cumberland, who previously acted in a financial capacity in Peru. In Haiti I found a cultured little negro, Louis Borno-as titular President. But the real ruler of this potentially rich and beautiful State to-day is the U.S. High Commissioner, General John Russell, whom I first met in the Washington State Department.

In the neighbouring Republic of Santo Domingomulatto in colour, and Spanish in speech-I found Mr William Pulliam installed as Receiver-General. Here also was a nominal President; but neither General Horacio Vasquez nor his Ministers can touch a dollar of their nation's money without the consent of Mr Pulliam -as able and high-minded an official as the new American Empire possesses. In Managua (Nicaragua) I found U.S. Marines, bluejackets and aeroplanes 'supervising the Presidential diction of yet another Sovereign Republic. And in Panama-which President Roosevelt 'detached' from Colombia that he might dig the longdeferred Ditch' for America's greater glory and his own-I found American troops quelling a city turmoil in a little Republic which is now quite clearly the new 'Southern Frontier' of the United States.

It is now too late for Panama to protest to the League of Nations, as she has been doing of late through her official pleader, Don Eusebio A. Morales, a former Foreign Minister. She made the bargain with Mr Roosevelt, and must needs abide by it. 'I took Panama,' the wielder of America's 'Big Stick' told the University of California after he left the White House, and I talked about it afterwards'! No American historian defends that episode. The motherland of Colombia demanded an indemnity, and an apology for the bogus ' revolution' that gave America the Canal Zone. Sixteen years later it fell to Senator Cabot Lodge, of the Foreign Relations Committee, to award the outraged Colombia $25,000,000, adding 'regrets'-but specifying that this money was to be used in public works with all contracts therefor to be placed with firms in the United States.

I cannot stay to quote in full Roosevelt's own account of that cynical plot. The interests of the American people demanded it,' he owned. I had the power to do it and I did it'! But to round off the matter, let me quote the testimony of Mr James Du Bois, who was U.S. Minister in Bogotà (Colombia) during Mr Taft's administration: 'I say-and can prove it—that a handful of men who were to be the direct beneficiaries of the "revolution" conceived it; and not a hundredth part of the inhabitants of the Isthmus knew of the revolt, until an American officer, in the uniform of the United

States Army, raised the flag of the new Republic!' It is a mistake to suppose that such a code and such methods as these pass unchallenged by the American intellectuals. On the contrary, criticism is trenchant and free, as will be seen in the 'Study of the Monroe Doctrine,' written by Prof. David Y. Thomas, of the University of Kansas, who has said:

'We overturned Governments in Santo Domingo and Haiti and set up military Governments of our own. The Central American Court of Justice (composed of all five States), which was largely an instrument of our own creation, we helped to overturn when it gave a decision contrary to our desires and supposed interests. We recognised Carranza (of Mexico) but refused to recognise Obregon, a finer type of man, until he had yielded to the demands of the Bondholders, and to part of the demands of the Oil-men. One excuse for this interference was that, as under the Monroe Doctrine we would not allow European interference, we must police these countries and see that they meet their international obligations-according to our standards. In other words, we must play the rôle of Big Brother with a Big Stick.

'State Secretary Hughes laid claim to an "unhampered right of self-defence" in justification of our Caribbean policy -especially with reference to the Panama Canal. Reduced to its last analysis, such a doctrine is of a piece with the doctrine of "natural boundaries" of Louis XIV, and that of "Might makes Right" of Wilhelm II of Germany.

'If we must keep the Cuban finances straight, and buy the Virgin Islands to protect the Canal, may not England with equal right say that she must have Nicaragua and Porto Rico for the defence of Jamaica and British Guiana? We have a Treaty with Nicaragua for another Canal. Does not the safety of that Canal call for the possession of Jamaica and British Honduras ?

'If this nation really believes that it should have an "unhampered right of self-defence "-which can be easily stretched to justify going after whatever it wants, especially if held by a weak Power, by merely labelling it "for defence -then it is not strange that we refused to enter the League of Nations. Neither should we for a moment consider accepting the International Court of Justice. Rather should we enter with feverish haste upon a programme for building an Air Fleet, and scrap the Treaty for the Limitation of Naval Armaments as soon as possible,'

Such are the home-truths, as a University Professor expounds them in the Core of the Continent.' Meanwhile the consolidation of America's Empire goes on under the ægis of the State Department, and other Washington bureaux. These make use of their own Press in intelligent ways, feeding newspapers and magazines with tendencious 'stories,' speeches and statements, as well as facts and figures prepared well in advance, and sent out in typescript with the 'release'date clearly marked, and warnings about premature publication.

As for the twenty Latin-American Republics, these depend largely for news upon the Associated Press and United Press of New York. And all editors south of the Mexican Border know how well these powerful agencies serve the political interests of the United States. There is also the cinema-monopoly: this is likewise used as a propaganda, both at home and abroad. I could not escape it, even in remote Cuzco of the Inca Emperors. I found it in lofty La Paz, the capital of Bolivia at 12,500 feet; it faced me in Ouro Preto, the quaint old Toledo' of Brazil, and even in little Diamantina at the back of beyond in Mines Geraes, where half-breeds wash the Brazilian desert sands for diamonds and gold. And in the town of Huancayo, of the Peruvian Andes at 11,000 feet, I saw an American film displayed showing all the marvels of giant machines -especially those for making and grading roads.

Then U.S. Ambassadors, Ministers, and Consuls in the 'Empty Continent' are instructed in the new Imperial trend and drift. And lastly, there is that singular institution, the Pan-American Union. Over a century ago the Liberator, Simón Bolívar, proposed to the new Republics a Union for their common protection. It failed through intrigues and factions, just as the lesser Central American Union of 1895 broke up in mutual antagonism between the five States involved.

Forty years previously the American adventurer, William Walker of Tennessee, financed by the late Cornelius Vanderbilt, landed in Nicaragua with fifty-six men hoping to annex a domain of 175,000 square miles. But after a brief and lurid career, Walker came to an inglorious and tragic end.

Soon the United States took a hand officially in this ideal of Iberian Union. Andrew Carnegie built a beautiful palace in Washington for Pan-American meetings to be devoted to the development of commerce, friendly intercourse, good understanding, and the preservation of Peace among the countries.' It is supported by quotas from each of the twenty-one Republics. Its affairs are directed by a North American Director elected by the governing Board, whose exofficio head is the U.S. State Secretary, and whose members are the Ambassadors and Ministers of the Latin-American States residing in Washington. Periodic Conferences are held in Rio, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Mexico, and other cities; but these gatherings have long since trailed off into mere academic discussions— if, indeed, they have not left exasperation in the minds of responsible Iberian statesmen and thinkers.

I shall deal with this phase presently, only recording here the words of the veteran Chilean statesman, Dr Marcial Martinez, after Mr Roosevelt had uttered the usual sonorous platitudes in the Great Hall of the University of Chile:

...

'My frankly-stated opinion is that the Monroe Doctrine has lived out its time, and ceased to exist. . . . Clear and definite statement is ever preferable to the vagueness, uncertainty, and anomalies to which the lapsed Monroe tenets lent themselves. . . . The eminent Mr Roosevelt has often spoken of "confidence." But confidence-like religious faith -can be no matter of agreements, nor of decrees, nor of contracts, unless it be a palpable fact, sprung from reciprocal experience, from individual conviction and personal con science.

'What is of real value,' said Dr Martinez in conclusion, 'are cordial and effective demonstrations of unequivocal good faith; of probity and disinterestedness in political and commercial relations, which conduce to the result for which we all hope, instead of mere words that evaporate into nothingness.'

I think it better to let this sagacious mind express the true feeling of the Twenty Republics than quote the caustic, and even furious, denunciation which reached me from Presidents and Ministers, poets and novelists, and the Iberian Intelligentsia in general, all the way