NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE President's Message was read to Congress on December 2nd. It was not very log, and though it contained some striking sentences, it had been to a great extent anticipated by President Roosevelt's recent speeches. It begins by a statement that the period of "unbounded prosperity" still continues. " Never before has material well-being been so diffused among the people." The "events of the past four years have decided that the place of the United States must be great among the nations." They "have deliberately made their own certain foreign policies demanding the possession of st first-class Navy," and there should be no halt in its construc- tion. The Isthmian Canal, for example, would without an adequate Navy be merely a hostage to any Power of superior strength, while it would be worse than idle to assert the Monroe doctrine unless it were intended to back it up. No independent nation in America need have the slightest fear of aggression from the United States, but the complexity of international relations renders the proper policing of the world imperative, and each independent State must maintain order within its own borders and discharge its just obliga- tions to foreigners. At present there seems not the slightest chance of trouble with a foreign Power. In other words, the Republic will protect American States, but they must not behave as Venezuela has recently done. There is a sufficiently lofty tone in the President's utterance, but there is nothing aggressive in it.
Previous page
