710.11/434
The Acting Secretary of
State to the Salvadoran Minister (Sol)
Washington, February 26,
1920.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the
receipt of the note Number 752 dated December 14, 1919 from Señor Don
Juan Franco Paredes, Minister of Foreign
Affairs of Salvador in which the Minister of Foreign Affairs requests
this Government to set forth its interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine
because of the bearing which such interpretation might have on the
attitude of the Government of Salvador toward the Covenant of the League
of Nations.
In reply I have the honor to inform you that the views of this government
with reference to the Monroe Doctrine were set forth in the address of
the President of the United States to the Second Pan American Scientific
Congress, copy of the pertinent portions of which I beg to attach
herewith.
Accept [etc.]
[Enclosure]
Extract from the Address of President Wilson,
Delivered January 6, 1916, before the Second Pan American
Scientific Congress85
The Monroe doctrine was proclaimed by the United States on her own
authority. It always has been maintained, and always will be
maintained, upon her own responsibility. But the Monroe doctrine
demanded merely that European Governments should not attempt to
extend their political systems to this side of the Atlantic. It did
not disclose the use which the United States intended to make of her
power on this side of the Atlantic. It was a hand held up in
warning, but there was no promise in it of what America was going to
do with the implied and partial protectorate which she apparently
was trying to set up on this side of the water; and I believe you
will sustain me in the statement that it has been fears and
suspicions on this score which have hitherto prevented the greater
intimacy and confidence and trust between the Americas. The States
of America have not been certain what the United States would do
with her power. That doubt must be removed. And latterly there has
been a very frank interchange of views between the authorities in
Washington and those who represented the other States of this
hemisphere, an interchange of views charming and hopeful, because
based upon an increasingly sure appreciation of the spirit in which
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they were undertaken.
These gentlemen have seen that if America is to come into her own,
into her legitimate own, in a world of peace and order, she must
establish the foundations of amity so that no one will hereafter
doubt them.
I hope and I believe that this can be accomplished. These conferences
have enabled me to foresee how it will be accomplished. It will be
accomplished in the first place by the States of America uniting in
guaranteeing to each other absolutely political independence and
territorial integrity. In the second place, and as a necessary
corollary to that, guaranteeing the agreement to settle all pending
boundary disputes as soon as possible and by amicable process; by
agreeing that all disputes among themselves, should they unhappily
arise, will be handled by patient, impartial investigation, and
settled by arbitration; and the agreement necessary to the peace of
the Americas, that no State of either continent will permit
revolutionary expeditions against another State to be fitted out on
its territory, and that they will prohibit the exportation of the
munitions of war for the purpose of supplying revolutionists against
neighboring Governments.
