impertinence, and all the more so as America is lacking the means to enforce its application."19
This perpetual opposition of Germany to the Monroe Doctrine as well as its continual defiance of it was best delineated in an article printed at the beginning of this century by the Journal of Commerce in answer to the German claim that the Monroe Doctrine was "an empty pretension." The purport of that message is so fraught with vigor and truth, its every word so fresh and alive and currently apropos, that it deserves quotation here in full.
"The last German professor (Mommsen) to fall foul of the Monroe Doctrine seems to show the usual Teutonic incapacity to understand what it means. He assumes that this 'empty pretension' on the part of the United States is to control the destiny of the South American nations, and to keep Europeans out of them. He cannot see that the United States seeks no predominance, but only objects to European predominance. The German mind fails to see that our policy is to leave South American countries independent, to develop on their own lines; and all we ask of Europe is that it shall leave them
—61—
