good faith will bleed to death, unless some among them have the intelligence to trace their national ills to their appropriate causes, and the candid courage to advocate the necessary remedial measures. At some point in the process, disinterested patriotism and good faith must be reënforced by intellectual insight. A people are saved many costly perversions, in case the official schoolmasters are wise, and the pupils neither truant nor insubordinate; but if the lessons are foolishly phrased, or the pupils refuse to learn, the school will never regain its proper disciplinary value until new teachers have arisen, who understand both the error and its consequences, and who can exercise an effective authority over their pupils.

The mutual loyalty and responsibility, consequently, embodied and inculcated in a national school, depends for its efficient expression upon the amount of insight and intelligence which it involves. The process of national education means, not only a discipline of the popular will, but training in ability to draw inferences from the national experience, so that the national consciousness will gradually acquire an edifying state of mind towards its present and its future problems. Those problems are always closely allied to the problems which have been more or less completely solved during the national history; and the body of practical lessons which can be inferred from that history is the best possible preparation for present and future emergencies. Such history requires close and exact reading. The national experience is always strangely mixed. Even the successes of our own past, such as the Federal organization, contain much dubious matter, demanding the most scrupulous disentanglement. Even the worst enemies of our national integrity, such as the Southern planters, offer in some respects an edifying political example to a disinterested democracy. Nations do not have to make serious mistakes in order to learn valuable lessons. Every national action, no matter how trivial, which is scrutinized with candor, may contribute to the stock of national intellectual discipline the result of which should be to form a constantly more coherent whole out of the several elements in the national composition out of the social and economic conditions, the stock of national opinions, and the essential national ideal. And it is this essential national ideal

which makes it undesirable for the national consciousness to dwell too much on the past or to depend too much upon the lessons of experience alone. The great experience given to a democratic nation must be just an incorrigible but patient attempt to realize its democratic idealan attempt which must mold history as well as hang upon its lessons. The function of the patriotic political intelligence in relation to the fulfillment of the national Promise must be to devise means for its redemption means which have their relations to the past, their suitability to the occasion, and their contribution towards a step in advance. The work is both critical, experimental, and purposeful. Mistakes will be made, and their effects either corrected or turned to good account. Successes will be achieved, and their effects must be coolly appraised and carefully discriminated. The task will never be entirely achieved, but the tedious and laborious advance will for every generation be a triumphant affirmation of the nationalized democratic ideal as the one really adequate political and social principle.

CHAPTER X

I

A NATIONAL FOREIGN POLICY

THE logic of a national democratic ideal and the responsibilities

of a national career in the world involve a number of very definite consequences in respect to American foreign policy. They involve, in fact, a conception of the place of a democratic nation in relation to the other civilized nations, different from that which has hitherto prevailed in this country. Because of their geographical situation and their democratic institutions, Americans have claimed and still claim a large degree of national aloofness and independence; but such a claim could have been better defended several generations ago than it can to-day. Unquestionably the geographical situation of the United States must always have a decisive effect upon the nature of its policy in foreign affairs; and undoubtedly no course of action in respect to other nations can be national without serving the interests of democracy. But precisely because an American foreign policy must be candidly and vigorously national, it will gradually bring with it an increasingly complicated group of international ties and duties. The American nation, just in so far as it believes in its nationality and is ready to become more of a nation, must assume a more definite and a more responsible place in the international system. It will have an increasingly important and an increasingly specific part to play in the political affairs of the world; and, in spite of "old-fashioned democratic" scruples and prejudices, the will to play that part for all it is worth will constitute a beneficial and a necessary stimulus to the better realization of the Promise of our domestic life.

A genuinely national policy must, of course, be based upon a correct understanding of the national interest in relation to those of its neighbors and associates. That American policy did obtain

such a foundation during the early years of American history is to be traced to the sound political judgment of Washington and Hamilton. Jefferson and the Republicans did their best for a while to persuade the American democracy to follow the dangerous course of the French democracy, and to base its international policy not upon the firm ground of national interest, but on the treacherous sands of international democratic propagandism. After a period of hesitation, the American people, with their usual good sense in the face of a practical emergency, rallied to the principles subsequently contained in Washington's Farewell Address; and the Jeffersonian Republicans, when they came into control of the Federal government, took over this conception of American national policy together with the rest of the Federalist outfit. But like the rest of the Federalist organization and ideas, the national foreign policy was emasculated by the expression it received at the hands of the Republicans. The conduct of American foreign affairs during the first fifteen years of the century are an illustration of the ills which may befall a democracy during a critical international period, when its foreign policy is managed by a party of anti-national patriots.

After 1815 the foreign policy of the United States was determined by a strict adherence to the principles enunciated in Washington's Farewell Address. The adherence was more in the letter than in the spirit, and the ordinary popular interpretation, which prevails until the present day, cannot be granted undivided approval; but so far as its immediate problems were concerned, American foreign policy did not, on the whole, go astray. The United States kept resolutely clear of European entanglements, and did not participate in international councils, except when the rights of neutrals were under discussion; and this persistent neutrality was precisely the course which was needed in order to confirm the international position of the country as well as to leave the road clear for its own national development. But certain consequences were at an early date deduced from a neutral policy which require more careful examination. During the presidency of Monroe the systematic isolation of the United States in respect to Europe was developed, so far as the two Americas were concerned, into a more positive doctrine. It was proclaimed

that abstention on the part of the United States from European affairs should be accompanied by a corresponding abstention by the European Powers from aggressive action in the two Americas. What our government proposed to do was to divide sharply the democratic political system of the Americas from the monarchical and aristocratic political system of Europe. The European system, based as it was upon royalist legitimacy and privileges, and denying as it did popular political rights, was declared to be inimical in spirit and in effect to the American democratic state.

The Monroe Doctrine has been accepted in this form ever since as an indisputable corollary of the Farewell Address. The American people and politicians cherish it as a priceless political heirloom. It is considered to be the equivalent of the Declaration of Independence in the field of foreign affairs; and it arouses an analogous volume and fury of conviction. Neither is this conviction merely the property of Fourth-of-July Americans. Our gravest publicists usually contribute to the Doctrine a no less emphatic adherence; and not very many years ago one of the most enlightened of American statesmen asserted that American foreign policy as a whole could be sufficiently summed up in the phrase, "The Monroe Doctrine and the Golden Rule." Does the Monroe Doctrine, as stated above, deserve such uncompromising adherence? Is it an adequate expression of the national interest of the American democracy in the field of foreign affairs?

At the time the Monroe Doctrine was originally proclaimed, it did unquestionably express a valid national interest of the American democracy. It was the American retort to the policy of the Holy Alliance which sought to erect the counter-revolutionary principles into an international system, and which suppressed, so far as possible, all nationalist or democratic agitation. The Spanish-American colonies had been winning their independence from Spain; and there was a fear, not entirely ill-founded, that the Alliance would apply its anti-democratic international policy to the case of Spain's revolted colonies. Obviously the United States, both as a democracy and as a democracy which had won its independence by means of a revolutionary war, could not admit the right of any combination of European states to suppress