Excepting the Spanish, Americans and Britons are the most numerous foreign elements in Mexico. It is they who threaten to control the basic industries. If the victors of the European war, one of them "mistress of the seas," and another a next-door neighbor, find it difficult to make a colony of Mexico, how can defeated Germany hope to do it?
The persons responsible for the fiction that Mexico would like to become a colony of Germany are the same who are responsible for the fiction that Mexico would like to become a colony of the United States. There is not a particle of serious evidence in favor of either.
7.
THE MONROE DOCTRINE ARGUMENT
The danger from England is far more nearly real. British capitalists want the same kind of a government in Mexico as American capitalists do, and they are quite willing that we shall undertake the expense of establishing it. One of the most shopworn of interventionist arguments is that if we do not take military action to "straighten out" Mexico England will do so, thereby infringing the Monroe Doctrine and precipitating a crisis with ourselves.
This may be accepted as a possibility. The British Government has repeatedly proven itself capable of exactly the kind of an aggression that an expedition "to protect British lives and property" in Mexico would involve. But the military difficulties of a British conquest, by reason of distance, would be infinitely greater than the difficulties in the way of an American conquest. That is perhaps the reason why England is quite willing for America to "attend to her interests" there. Why not wait and see if England would consider it practicable to enter upon a war of conquest upon Mexico before entering upon such an enterprise on England's behalf ourselves?
Assuming that England would consider it practicable to take military action in Mexico, does it follow that we would be justified in entering upon a war of conquest simply to prevent some other nation from entering upon a war of conquest? Would the presence of England in Mexico be a menace to the United States? Is Canada a menace?
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