A complete and thorough study of the question should embrace the following points:

A. The Pan-American idea: its inception, and its development up to the present time.

B. The need of an international Pan-American understanding that shall create the desire for Pan-American conciliation.

C. The promotion of Pan-American conciliation leading to the promulgation of an international Pan-American policy of coöperation in all affairs of the Americas.

Under “A” we have to consider: The movement for political emancipation in the Americas; the early and subsequent attempts to establish unions, leagues and federations among the republics; the attitude of the political leaders in America toward closer relations; the conditions obtaining in the several sections of America, and their influence for or against the realization of the ideals upon which the commonwealths were established; the congresses, conferences, and meetings of every nature, held in the Americas to promote Pan-American policies; the evolution of the Pan-American idea since Bolivar and Henry Clay, through Blaine up to the present day.

The Monroe Doctrine has been the subject of much discussion by American and European publicists, and their estimates have been widely different, ranging from those who consider it the principle which has maintained the territorial integrity of this continent for nearly a century to those who deny to it any real influence in the preservation of the nations which emerged into independent life during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Both concepts are, in my judgment, exaggerated. To accept the first judgment would be to ignore and to forget the failure of the United States to assert the doctrine on three different occasions when it was flagrantly violated: the occupation of the Falkland Islands by Great Britain in 1843, islands which were regarded by the Argentine Republic as national property; the military intervention of France in the Republics of the River Platte in 1838, an intervention repeated in conjunction with Great Britain in 1845; and the occupation of the Chincha Islands by Spain in 1865. The attitude of the government of the United States is readily explained when one recalls the fact that the Monroe Doctrine had not become a real factor in world politics until the naval and military strength of the United States had given to that country the position of a great power. Before that time the doctrine was nothing more than a happy formulation of an aspiration deeply felt by the American nations which had on several occasions prior to the celebrated message of 1823 proclaimed the same idea.

In the history of every country, the transitional period between two stages of economic development has been marked by new problems and intricate readjustments of the economic life and machinery. The United States is now passing through the transitional period from a nation whose interests have been largely centered within its own borders to one stepping out into the arena of world competition. For the past twenty years, practically every business change has been a change toward greater and greater production totals. The nation must muster its trained thinkers to reorganize the financial and industrial machinery, as well as to remold the thought of the people in order that the rapid growth of commerce and the necessary readjustments may be facilitated. The development of foreign markets makes imperative a vastly-expanded financial machinery, not alone to offer all possible trade and banking facilities to the international merchants, but to present stable channels through which investment capital may flow to borrowing countries.

When the sixty-third congress was called in extraordinary session on April 7, 1913, it was the first time since 1895 that both branches of congress and the executive had been under Democratic control. For nearly two decades the policies of the nation had been shaped and directed by the Republicans. Now after many years the minority had become the majority, and a Democratic President sat in the White House. In the congressional elections of 1910, dissatisfaction with the Payne-Aldrich tariff and the growing friction between the conservative and progressive wings of the Republican party had given the Democrats a net gain of 56 seats in the house of representatives, and control of that body by a majority of 66 votes. The senate during the sixty-second congress, however, still remained Republican by a majority of 10 votes. In 1912 the three-cornered presidential contest had resulted in the election of Wilson by an unprecedented electoral vote, although he did not have a majority of the popular vote cast. The schism in the ranks of the Republican party and the drift that had set in toward the Democratic ticket had increased the Democratic representation in the lower branch of congress to 290, while the Republican representation had fallen to 145, including 18 Progressives who did not go into the Republican caucus and who could not always be counted on to vote with the minority. In the senate the Democrats had gained enough seats to give them a majority of 6, a net gain of 16 seats over their membership in the sixty-second congress.

The woman suffrage movement in Great Britain has rendered a service for political science of which even its adherents are often unaware. It has brought to a most searching test the prevailing constitutional theory.

In these days of psycho-analysis of the individual there should be also some psycho-analysis of political institutions. Political theory, like the pious formulas with which we drape the nudity of our real desires and aspirations, is often at bottom what might be called a highly intellectualized excuse. Political theory is an afterthought: a justification or explanation of the desires and aspirations of the dominant economic and social group. The “divine right of kings” is now a hollow pretension to us. But it was as much a reality to the aristocracy, whose power is explained and excused, as are our own instinctive personal excuses. The “natural rights of man” have proven hardly more substantial,—the great excuse in which the rising commercial classes have ever covered their designs against the aristocracy. And now, at last, in the theory that “labor creates all wealth,” we find the embryo excuse for a growing threat of the working class.