6.
THE JAPANESE AND GERMAN BUGABOOS
Is intervention defensible, then, on grounds of national self-interest?
In this connection the German and Japanese perils and the Monroe Doctrine are the first to bob up.
In the half dozen years before the United States became a military ally of Japan a long series of newspaper hoaxes, in which the Japanese were represented as plotting for economic and political subjugation of Mexico, was perpetrated upon the American public. We heard of huge economic concessions, land colonization on a large scale, naval bases, secret alliances, the shipping of Japanese soldiers to Mexico, the recruiting of Japanese in the Mexican army, Japanese military plans for an attack upon America from Mexican territory.
Reports of this character were invariably utilized to engender distrust and hatred of Mexico and to manufacture sentiment in favor of grabbing that country "before it is too late." Few of the newspapers which circulated them would now attempt to maintain that they were anything but lies.
For three years past we have had a similar propaganda with Germany represented as the Peril. The purpose is obviously the same, and the stories are equally without a foundation of fact. The National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico itself openly stands sponsor for a series of "revelations" by a former military spy, Altendorf. The veracity of Altendorf's employers, and of the interventionist press in general, may be guaged by a few quotations from articles which were recently given wide publicity.
"Within a very few years, if they are permitted to carry out the plans they have formulated and are now executing as rapidly as they can, the Germans will have absolute economic, political, and military control of Latin-America with headquarters in Mexico. Then they will be ready to attempt once more the realization of their dream of world conquest."
"Dr. Altendorf asserted that Carranza had been bitterly disappointed by the failure of the plan to invade the United States in 1918, when he20
