These are basic principles in each of us. Now, we have been able to
maintain the Monroe Doctrine by simply showing our teeth, but whether we
could maintain it in the future without an armed force sufficient to
give it sanction I think is doubtful, and for that reason the Monroe
Doctrine has undergone quite a number of modifications which I do not
need to explain here.
But this basic principle of ours that from Patagonia to the Mexican
frontier we will suffer no armed nation of Europe to make permanent
settlement and endanger our peace is exactly the same sort of principle
that the German holds when he says, "We must have the strongest army,"
and the same which the Englishman holds when he says, "We must have the
strongest fleet."
I want it distinctly understood that I am not a partisan. I am not pro
this or pro that or pro anything except pro-American, and the principal
impulse I have in trying to clarify my mind is my hope that there may be
an end to these hysterical exhibitions of partisanship, in which
(throughout this neutral nation) men indulge who still hold too
strongly, as I think, to the glory, honor, dignity, and traditions of
the lands of their origin.
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