Page 170 - The Interest of America in Sea Power Present and Future

American Naval Power. 151

advance some other name for them. It is not
necessary to attribute finality to the Monroe
doctrine, any more than to any other political
dogma, in order to deprecate the application of
the phrase to propositions that override or tran-
scend it. We should beware of being misled
by names, and especially where such error may
induce a popular belief that a foreign state is
outraging wilfully a principle to the defence of
which the country is committed. We have been
committed to the Monroe doctrine itself, not
perhaps by any such formal assumption of obli-
gations as cannot be evaded, but by certain
precedents, and by a general attitude, upon the
whole consistently maintained, from which we
cannot recede silently without risk of national
mortification. If seriously challenged, as in
Mexico by the third Napoleon, we should
hardly decline to emulate the sentiments so
nobly expressed by the British government,
when, in response to the emperors of Russia
and France, it declined to abandon the strug-
gling Spanish patriots to the government set
over them by Napoleon : " To Spain his Maj-
esty is not bound by any formal instrument;
but his Majesty has, in the face of the world,