The Cordova daily times., 1921-04-12
SOWING SEEDS
 OF DISTRUST
 AGAINST !. s.
BY COL. WINFIELD JONES

to ratify the Colombian treaty, by which this country is to pay Colombia $15, 100000 for the loss of Panama and the canal zone This is the opinion of former Secretary of State Colby.
 Another reason is the persistent and long continued propaganda of Flu ropean exporters and importers in Latin America, against the United States and American business men. These European trade rivals for many years have been sowing the seeds of distrust against the United States in all of pan-America through word of mouth, trade circulars, and wherever possible in the press of those coun- tries. The propaganda has been sue cessful because the American gov ernment and American business men have been asleep on the job, and have allowed the hostile propaganda to continue unchecked for many years with no effort to overcome this cam paign, which is mainly a delft one of insinuation and villification. Tn Mexi- co, Central and South America the Germans before the great war were particularly active in this campaign against the United States. Mean while the American exporters slept blissfully on, indifferent to the wles of the foreigners, and in addition to this indifference to their own in- tereStS aided the cause of their Euro pean trade rivals south of Panama by poor packing of their goods. re fusal to extend long time credits to trade practices which are at total variance with the method of doing business in pan-America. Business in South and Central America is always done on long time credits, and fail l ure to make provision of this kind has greatly handicapped American ex- porters, probably even more so than the hostile propaganda campaign con ducted by their trade rivals
 Still another reason for the anti American feeling in South and Gen. tral America is the jealousy of the 1 little pan-American republics for the wealth, size, and power of Uncle l Sam. Mixed with this jealousy is a fear that the United States has ter ritorial designs on it's smaller neigh 1 bors in the western hemisphere No suspicion could be worse founded and without any real basis of fact because the United States in it's whole history has never given the slightest iudica- tion of imperialism It cannot be ldenied that our occupation of Haiti, and the Mexican embroglio during the Wilson administration gave some cause for this feeling in pan-America, though of course Americans know that their country has not the slight est intention to grab any territory of our southern .neighbors, now or thereafter.
 ! All these reasons, however, have been a great drawback to the exten- sion of American trade in panAmeri- ca and the accumulation of profits in the pockets of the American busi- ness man.
 The pan-American nations could not exist as independent republics long without the protection of the ! Monroe Doctrine. If there was no Monroe Doctrine greedy European na- tions would long ago have invaded and annexed some of the South and Central American republics and in fact practically absorbed all of pan America just as Africa has been parcelled out among the predatory and imperialistic nations. Even with the Monroe Doctrine a living force Napoleon the Little, with MaXimilian, tried to set it at naught with the disastrous Mexican imperial scheme The pan-American republic know well it is the protection of this Doctrine l that allows them to live safe from Euopean, and indeed from Japanese aggression, yet they are not grateful and the bulk of the populations and most of the leading statesmen of that part of the western hemisphere cordially hate, or at any rate dislike ! the United States.
 There will have to be a vast and concerted effort made by the Harding administration to overcome this situ- ation if the United States is to get her share of the constantly growing trade of pan-America. A beginning has already been made, though few noticed it at the time, by the exten- sion of some of the American press services to South and Central America No better agency to over- | aOOoa tho dic1ilyo of A For