The Evening Missourian. [volume] (Columbia, Mo.) 1917-1920, 1919-05-17
SPIRIT OF MONROE
RULES CONFERENCE
So Says Paris Editor Who
Believes Famous Doctrine
and League Conflict.
QUOTES JEFFERSON
Paper Declares Europe. Is
Justified in Mixing in
American Affairs.
By WILLIAM PHILIP sIMMs

NUnlted iress stan COrresponuent)
PARIS, May 17-Stephen Lausanne
editor of lie Matin" considers that il
will be impossible ever to reconcile
the Monroe Doctrine with the idea OF
a League of Nations. He said in LIE
Matin:
"If things continue to go as they
are going now Monroe will finish the
biggest figure in the Peace Confer
ence At present his is the only fig
ure before which everybody bows.
who was Monroe?
Monroe was born in a carpenter
shop and as time went on, engaged in
most all the trades. He was colonel,
lawyer, merchant, judge, ambassador.
Secretary of State. In 1917 he became
President of the United States.
About that time a political tempest
was blowing strong in the Old World.
United under the name Of the Holy
Alliance the European governments
talked of nothing less than the estab-
lishment of an absolutism, first in Eu-
rope, then in America.
Monroe saw storm-clouds coming
his way and called bis old friend,
Thomas Jefferson, philosopher and
friend of the French Philosophers
d'Alembert and Condorcet, to a con-
sultation Whereupon Jefferson wrote:
America, both North and South,
has interests absolutely distinct from
those of Europe and which belong to
her alone. II is necessary, therefore,
to establish the principles of system
which shall keep these interests sep
arate from those of the Old World.
While the latter is trying to make it.
self the home of despotism, our hemi-
sphere is trying to make itself the
land of Liberty
Monroe found the suggestion good,
so on December 2, 1923, in an address
to Congress at Washington, he put the
idea into slightly different words. He
said:
"'Our politics has always consisted,
and always should consist, in taking
no part in European wars. Also we
have always abstained from interven- |
ing in the affairs of the colonies or de- |
tendencies of European nations and /
we shall continue so to do. But for |
those which have won their independ- |
ence and obtained recognition as
state, we cannot but consider as an act |
hostile to the United States any inter-
vention having for object the oppres-
sion or control in any manner what
ever, of the destinies of these same
There it was! 1t was donel A
new doctrine was born.
Now is this doctrine of Monroe viO-
lated by the League of Nations pro-
ject?
ut seems to me monumentally para
doxical and a trif1e infantile to pre-
tend the contrary.
when the Executive Council of the
League of Nations fixes the reason
able limits of the armament of Peru
when it shall demand information
the naval program of
Brazil (Art 8 of the Covenant; when
it shall tell Argentine what shall be
the measure of the contribution to
the armed forces to protect the sig
natures of the social Covenant (Art.
16); when it shall demand the imme-
diate registration of the treaty be-
tween the United States and Canada
at the seat of the League, it will con-
troll, whether it wills or no, the des-
tinies of America And when the
American States shall be obliged to
take hand in every war or menace
of war in Europe Cart. III, they will
necessarily fall afoul of the funda-
principle laid down by Monroe
which was that Americans should nev- |
er take part in a European war.
"If the League takes in the world, [
then Europe must mix in the affairs of !
America. If only Europe is included,
then America will violate of necessity
her own doctrine by intermixing in
the affairs of Europe"