If we think it necessary to maintain the Monroe Doctrine against England (which we have not always done) we must find some other way of doing it than by aggression upon our weaker neighbors.
There is nothing about the Monroe Doctrine that would justify us in perpetrating an aggression upon any Latin American neighbor in order to prevent some other country from perpetrating an aggression upon it, or in order to compel it to observe so-called international obligations.
There is, however, a policy, popular in Big Business circles and in Democratic and Republican Party camps, which masquerades under the name of the Monroe Doctrine, sometimes termed the "new" Monroe Doctrine, which would commit America to such a course.
"We want Mexico." That is the kernel of the matter, and it comes out, at times, in just those words. Which reduces the whole argument to a money-making proposition. "We approve of the "new" Monroe Doctrine; we want to control Mexico because it would mean money in our pockets."
This argument depends for its favor upon a mental confusion as to the application of the pronoun "we." If We conquered Mexico, a horde of political job-hunters would settle into soft nests; naval and military officers would receive promotion; army and navy contractors would wax fat; existing American holdings would increase in value; opportunities for profit-making enterprises would multiply.
But what would all this mean to the vast majority of the American people?
8.
OIL WELL PATRIOTISM
I take the following from the testimony of E. L. Doheny, a leading spirit of the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico, and the largest producer of Mexican oil—Senate Foreign Relations Sub-Committee Hearing on Mexican Affairs, Page 254, September 11, 1919:
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