well surrounded by British possessions; Germany, with her Kaiser Wilhelmsland and the myriad minor islands flung out between Hawaii and the Philippines; the United States, with the Philippines, situated conveniently near both the Dutch East Indies and the coast of China, and with Hawaii and Guam on the way to the Philippines, and with Samoa south of the equator on the way to Australasia, and with the Panama Canal, and a long stretch of California, Oregon and Washington exposed to the Pacific; and, most important of all, Great Britain, with her island-continent colony of Australia to preserve as a white man's land, besides New Zealand and countless strategic outposts scattered all over the southern Pacific, and with Singapore commanding the Straits of Malacca, which may not unfairly be called the Suez Canal of Asia, the Panama Canal of the West Pacific. But during the first quarter of the century, while Japan and Great Britain increased their holdings, Russia was deprived of Port Arthur and by Bolshevism rendered temporarily a zero in Pacific world-politics; Germany was driven out of the lists, and France counted for little. That left the British Empire, Japan, and the United States as the chief rivals. With their rivalry, primarily, the Washington Conference1 of 1921-2 had to deal. The list of powers invited is not without interest. Russia and Germany were excluded; United States, Great Britain, Japan, France, and Italy were present as the five chief naval powers, and China, Holland, Portugal, and Belgium figured in the background.

The most striking feature of the Washington Conference was the adoption of the 5-5-3 ratio as a limitation on the capital ships of Great Britain, United States, and Japan, respectively, that is, acceptance on Britain's part of nominal equality with the United States, and on Japan's part, of marked inferiority. Whether the fighting strength of the three navies would be in reality exactly 5:5:3 is not of much moment in this discussion. Too much depends, in actual warfare, on chance and strategy and weather and the temperament of commanders, to make such ratios any accurate basis for predicting the outcome of a struggle at sea. However, without some marked change in methods of warfare, the ratio would mean at least that Japan would find offensive operations against California or Australia beyond her 'The best account is Buell, The Washington Conference.

strength, and, on the other hand, neither the United States nor England, single-handed, would have enough capital ships lightly to risk an attack on Japan. More significant was the termination of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, and the appearance, in its stead, of a tacit cooperation that amounted almost to an entente between Britain and America as regards the Pacific. This Anglo-American cooperation was probably of greater significance than the "Four-Power Pact" signed at Washington, providing that Great Britain, France, Japan and the United States would respect each other's insular possessions, and "communicate with one another fully and frankly in order to arrive at an understanding as to the most efficient measures to be taken" if these possessions were threatened by the aggression of any other power, and that they would hold a joint conference if any controversy should develop among themselves arising out of any Pacific question. Nominally, the Washington Conference substituted a Four-Power Pact for the Anglo-Japanese alliance; practically, it revealed an Anglo-American entente.

Japan's position was less weakened, however, than the foregoing paragraph might seem to imply. In the Five-Power Naval Limitation Treaty article nineteen provided that no new fortifications, and no increase of existing fortifications, should be undertaken by the United States, Japan or Great Britain, in their possessions in the Pacific, with certain exceptions. As regards the United States, the American coast, the Panama Canal, the Aleutian Islands, and Hawaii were excluded. In the case of Great Britain, the coasts of Canada, Australia and New Zealand were excluded, and posessions west of 110° E.-which would mean Singapore, where the British planned to create a great naval base. As regards Japan, the agreement applied to the Kurile Islands, the Bonin Islands, Amami-Oshima, the Loochoo Islands, Formosa and the Pescadores, and any future acquisitions. This meant that Japan would be unable to establish any formidable base of operations near the Philippines, the American coast, or British Australasia; it meant likewise that neither Great Britain nor the United States would have a fortified advanced base, of any importance, for aggressive action against Japan.

The British obviously intended, at the time, to make Singapore their chief naval station for the defense of Australasia and

India, in accordance with an investigation made by Admiral Viscount Jellicoe in 1919; but later the Macdonald Labor Cabinet announced that to promote world peace and disarm suspicion (chiefly in Japan and Holland) it would refrain from carrying out the plans for the fortification of Singapore. But the Labor Cabinet fell,

As for the United States, the interesting fact was disclosed that notwithstanding the stress which had been laid, in years past, on the importance of Samoa, Guam and the Philippines as naval bases, none of these had been adequately fortified; and the non-fortification agreement would rob them of much of their naval value. This is all the more interesting if considered in connection with the fact that the acquisition of the Philippines contributed much to create animosity and suspicion between the United States and Japan. The Philippines were in Japanese eyes a naval outpost which could be of use only against Japan, in offensive rather than defensive operations. On the other hand, American strategists and "tablecloth strategists" (if we may use that description for the amateurs who draw naval "triangles and quadrangles" on tablecloths in postprandial discussions of possible wars) learned to look on Japan as a potential menace to the Philippines. Naval bases do not always give the comfort of added security; in this case the acquisition of an admirable base simply lessened both security and comfort.

When all is said, strategic imperialism in the Pacific from 1875 to 1925 was the by-product of a certain stage of technical development in navigation and telegraphy. Warships carrying a limited quantity of fuel required coaling stations, and cables required landings. The substitution of oil for coal as fuel of warships and passenger vessels made a slight change, increasing the cruising radius and demanding the establishment of oil tanks at Hawaii and other naval bases alongside of coal depots. But further technical inventions in shipbuilding, or marked progress in aviation, or the development of radio, may easily alter the whole strategic situation in the Pacific, and deprive much-prized islands of their strategic value. Moreover, the present balance of power and the problem of mastery will be greatly altered as China comes of age, and Siberia grows populous, and Canada and Australia develop into strong white nations.

Considered merely as commercial markets and sources of raw

material, most of the islands of the Pacific are far less worth striving for than Africa and Asia. The smaller islands are negligible as markets, and produce little save coconuts, exported in the commercial form of copra for margarine and oil factories in the United States or Europe. Some of the small islands also have valuable deposits of phosphate, which is much in demand as a fertilizer. Among the larger islands, Australia, the Dutch East Indies, New Zealand, the Philippines, and Hawaii stand out, in the order named, as considerable markets for manufactured goods; it should be noted, however, that Australia and New Zealand are beginning to convert their own raw materials into manufactures. These two white colonies are important producers of wool and wheat and hides; the Dutch Indies supply

large amount of sugar and smaller quantities of rubber, coffee, petroleum; from the Philippines the entire supply of abaca or Manila hemp is derived; and Hawaii is important for sugar and fruit. Almost without exception, the larger tropical islands (this excludes New Zealand and Australia) are suited in soil and climate to plantation products such as cotton, rubber, coffee, tea, sugar, rice, tobacco, and fruits, but only the Dutch islands and the Philippines have anything like an adequate native labor supply, and the others must follow the example of Hawaii and Fiji in importing Asiatic laborers, if they are to weigh heavily in the scales of world production.

This reflection leads finally to the race problem. With the exception of the Malays in the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines, the native races of the Pacific islands have tended to wither at the touch of imperialism: they have succumbed to European diseases and to drink; they have proved ill-fitted for arduous plantation labor. The native Tasmanians are extinct; the aboriginal Australian blackfellows have been driven, largely, into the otherwise unoccupied interior; the Maoris of New Zealand have been displaced, though not exterminated, by the whites; the Fijians and Hawaiians have been swamped by Asiatic labor. The tendency thus far has been toward the replacement of natives by Asiatics in the tropical islands, and the reservation of the temperate lands of Australia and New Zealand for the white race. Perhaps the Pacific north of Capricorn will after all prove to be but a fringe of Asia and its problem but a phase of the question of the awakening Far East.

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CHAPTER XVI

THE POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES TOWARD LATIN AMERICA

THE MONROE DOCTRINE AND IMPERIALISM

In the smaller countries of Latin America,1 writes an American publicist, "controlled by our soldiers, our bankers, and our oil kings, we are developing our Irelands, our Egypts and our Indias." The Latin-American policy of the United States"dollar diplomacy, with its combination of bonds and battleships" is essentially imperialist, so he believes, and "means the destruction of our nation just as surely as it meant the destruction of Egypt and Rome and Spain and Germany and all the other nations who came to measure their greatness by their material possessions rather than by their passion for justice and by the number of their friendly neighbors." 2

Contrast this with the ringing words of Charles Evans Hughes, then Secretary of State, in his Bar Association Address in August 1923:

We are aiming not to exploit, but to aid; not to subvert, but to help in laying the foundations for sound, stable, and independent government. Our interest does not lie in controlling foreign peoples; that would be a policy of mischief and disaster. Our interest is in having prosperous, peaceful, and law-abiding neighbors, with whom we can cooperate to mutual advantage.'

In other words, the United States is anything but imperialistic. Roundly Secretary Hughes condemned, in another address (at Amherst, June 18, 1924), those "writers who apparently make it their business to develop antagonism and to spread among the 'No attempt is made in this chapter to cover the possessions of Great Britain and other European powers in the Americas. Their development is pertinent to any study of the general effects of colonization, but as older colonies they may perhaps be omitted from this study of recent imperialist world-politics.

'Samuel Guy Inman in The Atlantic Monthly, July, 1924.

3 Reprinted, along with many other documents on the Monroe Doctrine, in Alvarez, The Monroe Doctrine (Carnegie Endowment, 1924).