A FRENCH VIEW OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY.
De Moira a Roosevelt, 1823-1905. Marquis do Barrel- Montferrat. Avec une Preface de M. le Comte d'Haussonville, de l'Academie Francaise. (Plon-Nourrit et Cie., Paris.)—This is an acute and interesting study of the development of the foreign policy of the United States during the past eighty years. It is written with much point, and occasionally with a severity almost passing into cynicism. Thus in commenting on the coolness, so disappointing to the great South American patriot Bolivar, with which the United States, three years after the enunciation of the Monroe doctrine, treated the Pan-American Congress at Panama, we find M. de Barral-Montferrat indulging in the following double-edged apostrophe :—" Ah ! les cit-oyens des Etats-Unis avaient en beau secouer is joug de la Grande-Bretagne, us n'en etaient pas moms restes de vrais et pratiques Anglais, prets mettre leurs principes au service de leurs interets ; mais non A sacrifier leurs interets A lours prinoipes." It will not, we hope, be regarded as a symptom of undue irritation at the British share of this Gallic castigation if we remind the learned author that Canning, though no doubt entirely sympathetic with, if he did not actually suggest, the declaration of American policy known as the Monroe doctrine, was never a Whig, and that the Whigs never, as M. de BarraNkfontferrat seems to think, came into power with him. Of Mr. Roosevelt our author does not write cynically, but he looks upon him as constituting, with his combination of "cold resolution and mystic enthusiasm, of dreaming and of calcula- tion, of sincerity and of illusion," a serious danger to the peace of the world ; and he gives reason for the view that there has been a good deal of anxiety among the South American States as to the role of tutor, with a fertile, as well as Protector, which the President, as he reads his declarations, has assumed for the United States in their regard. It cannot be denied that the logical developments of the Monroe doctrine which Mr. Roosevelt has enunciated have their dangers ; but the President is doubt- less fully alive to them, and, as we trust, is firmly resolved to restrain the external activities of the United States within the limits set by a regard both for justice and for the tranquillity of the world.
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