for the purpose of
preventing European intervention, but American intervention always
awaited the threat of immediate action on the part of some European
power. President Roosevelt concluded that it would be wiser to
restrain the reckless conduct of the smaller American republics before
disorders or public debts should reach a point which gave European
powers an excuse for intervening. In a message to Congress in 1904 he
laid down this new doctrine, which soon became famous as the Big Stick
policy. He said: "If a nation shows that it knows how to act with
reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if
it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference
from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which
results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in
America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some
civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the
United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States,
however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence,
to the exercise of an international police power." In other words,
since we could not permit European powers to restrain or punish
American states in cases of wrongdoing, we must ourselves undertake
that task. As long as the Monroe Doctrine was merely a policy of
benevolent protection which Latin-American states could invoke after
their unwise or evil conduct had brought European powers to the point
of demanding just retribution, it was regarded with favor and no
objection was raised to it; but the Roosevelt doctrine, that if we were
to continue to protect Latin-American states against European
intervention, we had a right to demand that they should refrain from
conduct which was likely to provoke such intervention, was quite a
different thing, and raised a storm of criticism and opposition.

The Roosevelt application of the Monroe Doctrine was undoubtedly a
perfectly logical step. It was endorsed by the Taft administration and
further extended by the Wilson administration and made one of our most
important policies in regard to the zone of the Caribbean. President
Roosevelt was right in drawing the conclusion that we had arrived at a
point where we had either to abandon the Monroe Doctrine or to extend
its application so as to cover the constantly increasing number of
disputes arising from the reckless creation of public d