AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN

The Inevitable Result of Uncle Sam's Pussy-footing in the Caribbean Sea

HOWARD C. HILLEGAS

IF you will look at the map of the Caribbean region and note the location of the eastern end of the Panama Canal, you will see why Uncle Sam has been so busy the last few years shopping for territory in that district. You may not have realized it, but the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea are as important in their effect upon the commerce of the world as the Mediterranean. The countries which border on the Mediterranean are old and developed; the countries which will be influenced by the. commerce that flows through the American Mediterranean have natural resources of surpassing greatness.

For the next fifty years, while the remainder of mankind will be paying off its war debts, North and South America will be attracting the attention of hundreds of thousands of newcomers,, eager to escape the grinding taxes of the countries now at war. Every acre of mountain and plain will be developed.

THE commerce that will flow through the American Mediterranean will surpass imagination. As the leading nation of the Western Hemisphere, as the owner of the Panama Canal, and the prospective Nicaraguan Canal, as the promulgator of the Monroe Doctrine, the United States must obtain and must retain exclusive and absolute control of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. If we control these seas, our greatest river and the heart of our country will be as safe from invasion as the British Isles are to-day through the full British control of the English Channel.

IF our present policy with regard to the West Indies and Central America is continued, it will mean that the United States soon will have control of these inland seas. The map shows that there are only four practicable gatewavs from the Atlantic to the Gulf and the Caribbean. With the control of Haiti, the Dominican Republic and the Danish West Indies, our navy can close these gateways and ought to lie able to hold at bay the greatest fleet in the world. So long as we retain control of the two seas, so long will the Monroe Doctrine be virile. Once we lose control, then the power that rules these seas will lie able to take any Central or South American country it chooses to conquer.

"THE people of the United States have yet in mind," wrote Richard Olney, "that France seized upon the apparent opportunity of our civil war to set up a monarchy in the adjoining state of Mexico. They realize that had France and Great Britain held important South American possessions to work from and benefit, the temptation to destroy the predominance of the Great Republic in this hemisphere by furthering its dismemberment might have been irresistible. From that grave peril they have been saved and may be saved again in the future through the operation of the sure but silent force of the doctrine proclaimed by President Monroe."

TO-DAY there remains only one power that has shown any inclination to gain a preponderance of interest in the Caribbean. That nation is Great Britain. Germany's well laid plans in that region have gone awry. Johgnt Bull will be very bullish when this war ends. He will use the alliances which he has formed and he may use them against the United States. Britannia now rules the waves even inside the three-mile limit. When the war ends and she sees that Columbia has thrown her arms around the Caribbean, there will be a whaling or a gnashing of teeth.

The "average American," of whom selfconfessedly there are one hundred million in the United States, reads the European war news in the papers, which he could edit fifty times better himself if he were not so busy with the plumbing or the grocery business, and remarks to his hyphenate wife:

"Isn't this war getting terrible? Pretty soon Germany will have all the territory in Europe."

Perhaps she isn't that kind of a hyphenate wife, and then he says Russia, France, Italy or Great Britain. Then he drops the paper, hurries away to his shop to mark up his copper goods or his sugar or his cabbage or his steel or oil stock, because, you know, it is next to impossible to get these things from Europe since the Kaiser has commandeered all that kind of stuff for the use of his troops or because the British have blockaded the United States by means of a blacklist so that it is impossible to obtain any more of that kind of goods by the mails.

IF the "average American" had read his morning paper a little more closely since the beginning of this land-grabbing episode in Europe, Asia, Africa and Ireland, he might have seen tucked away in odd corners, surrounded by pure advertisements of impure foods and drinks, a great deal of startling information relating almost wholly to his own country, wholly to his own Uncle Sam, so far as the active side of the news is concerned, but variously divided among the small nations of this hemisphere, so far as the passive side of the operation is concerned. The good "average American" would have learned that there is scarcely any little black-faced or other republic, whose shores are washed by the Caribbean, or any island of those Southern seas not occupied by Great Britain or France, that has not received some sort of attention from his Uncle Sam, usually of the big stick variety. If, as I have said, he had read his morning paper a little more closely, he would have noticed some such innocuous headlines as these:

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United States to buy Danish West Indies. United States marines seize Haiti.

United States marines control Managua: Nicaraguan President held in office by orders from Washington. United States marines shoot down last rebel in Dominican Republic: Caperton supreme on Island now. United States will annex Republic of Panama if insurrection menaces Canal.

United States to establish protectorate over Haiti. United States troops dash two hundred miles into Mexico to capture Villa.

One hundred thousand State troops sent to border;

strict blockade of whole country is declared. United States will intervene if Castro and Hernandez attempt an insurrection in Venezuela.

United States capitalists, backed by Government, obtain all oil concessions in Colombia.

United States gets Nicaraguan Canal route; Costa Rica protests and will get it back of the alimentary canal. United States interests acquire all oil concessions in Honduras, Guatemala and Costa Rica.

United States to establish two-year protectorate over the Dominican Republic.

NATURALLY enough the "average American" paid no attention to these newspaper articles after the headlines had warned him that the despatches under them contained no information about a new movie thriller, an increase in the price of gasoline or automobile tires or how self-possessed the minister's son was when, in a loud and determined voice, he pleaded "not guilty" to the charge that he had murdered the dazzlingly beautiful shop girl on the way home from the swaggerest ball of the year in Squirreltown, Ill.. The "average American's" interest in his country's foreign affairs is usually limited to backing up President Wilson when President Wilson is backing up. If, however, he had carefully noted all these headlines upon which this, our 1916, thesis is built, he would probably have forgotten that the peace-loving, too-proud-to-fight, not an inch of foreign territory-by-conquest Woodrow Wilson is president—he would have ejaculated: "Well, your Uncle Sam is going some!"

AND, indeed, your Uncle Samuel has been progressing at such a rate since the nations of Europe have become too much interested in their own affairs to meddle in those of others that they are beginning to grumble. They say he is not playing the land-grabbing game according to Hoyle or the Marquis of Queensbury. Germany thinks—she is too busy to say it—that Uncle Sam played a mean trick when he won Haiti from the Kaiser for a ten years' trial marriage. Germany points especially to the fact that the. Kaiser was confined to his home at that time as a result of an unprovoked attack by a band of ruffians who objected to his playful ways. Great Britain, which at this hour (4 P.M., August twenty-sixth) still includes Ireland, does not like this purchasing of the Danish West Indies any better than she did in 1865 and 1902, when she deftly blocked similar proceedings and made us believe that Germany did it. Presently, when the Cabinet gets its chairs and tables turned up and obtains an inkwell to take the place of the one that escaped from the right hand of Lloyd George and was stopped on the west front of the countenance of John Redmond—I say, as soon as John Bull has a day off he will call up Uncle Sam on their private wire. (My delicatessen dealer assures me that I can take his .word for it and say without fear of Hughes' contradiction that there is a private wire between London and Washington.)

THEN John Bull will say to him: "Now, Sammy, old top, just lay off on that West Indies game of yours for a few weeks until my little French girl and I come back from a drive we are going to take from Soissons to Berlin. As soon as I can leave the girl in charge of a big Russian friend of mine so that a rough ill-bred German who has been trying to force his attentions on her cannot reach her, I shall have a long, confidential talk with you about the Open Door in China. Japan told me something the other day that you might want to know. Now don't be in a hurry with that project of yours of sealing up the Gulf of Mexico. Remember, I'm your only true friend. I realize that because we have been fortifying Bermuda, Jamaica and our West India islands pretty heavily you have .been suspicious of me, but can't you take a joke? Now, why not delay this project of gobbling up all the countries around the Gulf and Caribbean until I return from France, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Salonika Meanwhile I'll tell you this—and I'll back it up with all my Irish and colonial troops against the armies of the whole world—I think that the Monroe Doctrine contains some of the most magnificent examples of the English language that have sprung from the brain of man since the days of Magna Charta!"

FRANCE will not care what Uncle Samuel does in the region washed by the waters of the Gulf. She is dolce far niente as well as a bas, not to mention n'est-ce-pas, as far as Mexico is concerned. She remembers that she monkeyed with the Monroe Doctrine when Uncle Samuel was busy presiding over his dis-United States. Also she recalls those immortal words of Maximilian as he was being led to a solid stone wall that stopped every bullet that his body failed to stop: "This surely is going to be a powerful lesson to me."

SPAIN for several centuries talked so loudly all over the Gulf of Mexico that she lost her voice. She will make no protest if the United States should transform her late lamented Cuba's Platt Amendment into rubber and stretch it from Havana over the Rio Grande and then southward to Tierra del Fuego. Portugal, which had the run of the Gulf until her devoted colonies forced her to take it on the run, is not likely to prevent the United States from buying any Caribbean real estate. But nowadays you cannot tell what these little countries may do. Look at Belgium. And see what gentle little Serbia started all by herself!

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WE have in the foregoing paragraphs decided that Great Britain is the only nation that may abject to our plan of sealing up the Gulf of Mexico so that nobody can reach the Panama Canal unless they have our permission or beat us in the fight that will follow if they try to go there without our O.K. kissed on their brow. Having decided all this and taking it from an unprejudiced Englishman I know that the Germans never will be able to take the command of the sea from the British and put themselves (i.e., the Germans) in the'position of forcing Uncle Sam to say "raus mit" instead of the same thing in his native language to somebody else (viz., the British), we shall now discover what our Uncle Sam is trying to do with the Seven Sisters who live in heavily mortgaged bungalows fronting on the Gulf and the Caribbean.

There are more than seven charming creatures resident on the shores of the Spanish Main, but since the day of the U.S.S. Maine, Cuba and Porto Rico may be said to be taking their Sunday night dinners at Uncle Sam's house, while Haiti and the Dominican Republic never ieave their verandas unless RearAdmiral Pond is there to escort them wherever he wants them to go. And now the fascinating Danish triplets, St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix, are coming to join the family party. Of course, there remains the danger that some jealous rival in Europe may borrow $25,000,000 from the National City Bank, the Guaranty Trust or some American munitions broker and rig the Rigsdag .before our pay envelope can be read and passed by the British censor. That heroic villain, if he is as alert as usual, will suspect that any letter and check from President Wilson, that great friend of Germany, to the King of Denmark, who is known to have some subjects who have .been in Berlin on a dark night, will be proof that the two are plotting to seize Canada and annex it to Greenland.

THE seven sisters now engaged in holding out their tongues to Dr. Wilson, who for three years has been looking after the fine practice established by that world-renowned practitioner, old Dr. Monroe, are as fine a covey of quail as Uncle Sam ever flushed. I say this with due respect to the sensibilities of Louisiana, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Alaska, Hawaii and the Philippines, who were pretty frizzy-looking sisters when by hook, crook or check) book he lured them away from their unhappy homes. Mexico is the big sister of the seven, with a dowry big enough to be seen from as far away as Japan and not too close to be overlooked by Germany and Great Britain. Then comes fair Guatemala, prosperous and independent; Honduras, gold in her lap and under her feet; Nicaragua, once conquered and ruled by an American and now willing to take almost any kind of an order from the Administration at Washington which keeps American marines constantly at Managua to prevent the loving friends of the Chief of State from hugging him to death; Costa Rica, plump as the bananas she showers upon our street corners and ready to be united with us as soon as the United Fruit Company publishes the bans; Colombia, in a bit of a huff, but willing to let Panama be Panama or bygones or anything else if she gets five millions so she can have her honor mended; Panama, she who eloped and who since then has been acting so shamefully that one day she may find she has been protectorated into the U.S.A. with the same neatness and despatch which characterized her leap into the Mrs. class of nations. Then, finally, comes the pet of the family—winsome, coy, lovable, retiring Venezuela, which for three consecutive minutes has had the same President who, hasn't had foreign war ships bombarding her harbors since all those obnoxious, bill-collecting machines have adopted the watchful waiting policy somewhere near the British Channel. She is ashamed to tell what she would do if Uncle Sam should come along and offer her any kind of figures with a dollar mark preceding them. Of course, little Salvador and British Honduras are on the map, too, but the former faces the Pacific only and the latter is of such little account that Great Britain will pay her way into the Monroe Doctrine movies any time Washington is prepared to adopt an abandoned .baby.

THE "average American" may wonder why the United States is so solicitous over the welfare of the seven sisters when President Wilson and others before him have stated that none of their territory will be taken by conquest. Like milady, of Fifth a Venue, taking the arm of her escort—it's not being done these days. The conquering business is not so good as it used to be. In best Wall Street circles they nowadays quietly buy control and freeze out minority stockholders. If they cannot buy control, they inject trouble into the corporation and, presto! there is a receivership, which is just another name for a protectorate. If a receiver does not own the corporation at the end of ten years he must be so exceptionally honest that he never came to the attention of any court.

IN the opinion of persons familiar with political conditions in Central and South America, the recently acquired or the prospective control by the United States of the four great keys to the American Mediterranean immeasurably strengthens the Monroe Doctrine. Every one of the seventeen republics from Mexico to Cape Horn will feel a greater security. The earth hunger of the European nations, as evidenced prior to the war in the fierce strife for Africa and China, led a South American statesman to assert that if it were not for the Monroe Doctrine Argentina, Brazil and Chile alone of all the countries of South America, with all their marvelous wealth and climate, could remain out of Europe's clutches ten years. With the strengthening of the Monroe Doctrine by the closing to all foreign powers of the Gulf and the Caribbean and the notice to the neighboring unstable republics that they must cease being international nuisances there ought to be a new era of international affairs in this Hemisphere.

WHETHER Great Britain or any coalition of powers will attempt to dispute the American mastery of the Carribean remains to be seen. Certain it is that the American Caribbean policy is the most important step that the American government has taken since the acquisition of the territory west of the Mississippi. The popular Prophet of Oyster Bay may claim to have founded this policy when he paved the way for us to annex Panama by inducing her to run away from home, and then putting her up in a separate establishment. Perhaps this is the Wilson policy, too. Certain it is that the United States has added a clause to the Monroe Doctrine that the Caribbean must be American.

And some day—prophets say it will come in ten years—America must fight to show the remainder of the world that the Caribbean will remain American.