THE MONROE, DOCTRINE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume L, Issue 15398, 5 September 1913, Page 7

THE MONROE, DOCTRINE.

APPROVAL BY DEMOCRATS.

"REPUBLICAN EGYPTS."

Times-Sydney Sun Special Cable.

London, September 3. The Washington correspondent of the Times points out that Mr. Bryan's Nicaraguan plan marks the conversion of the Democrats to acceptance of the Monroe doctrine.

" This, Mr. Bryan boils down into a declaration of his intention to try to turn the Caribbean into an American sea, and an affirmation of the right to make the Caribbean republics American Egypts whenever the peace of the neighbourhood demands." TEXT OF FAMOUS MESSAGE. The Monroe doctrine was enunciated in the following words in President Monroe's Message to Congress. December 2, 1823 : — In the discussions to which this interest has given rise, and in the arrangements by which they may terminate, the occasion has been deemed proper for asserting, as a principle in which rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have 'assumed and maintain, are! henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonisation by any European Power. . . . We owe it, therefore, to candour and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those Powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European Power we have not interfered, and shall not interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintain it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them or controlling in any other manner their destiny by any European Power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the" United States." President Roosevelt, in a speech in 1902 upon the results of the Spanish-American War, eaid "The Monroe doctrine is simply a statement of our; very firm belief that the nations now existing on this continent must be left to work out their own destinies among themselves, and that this continent is no longer to be regarded' as the colonising ground of any European Power. The one Power on the continent that can make the power effective is, of course, ourselves; for, in {he world as it is. a nation which advances a given doctrine likely to interfere in any way with other nations must possess the power to back it up if it wishes the doctrine to be respected."