Page:Dramatic Moments in American Diplomacy (1918).djvu/148

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128
DRAMATIC MOMENTS

day. And to a great body of our chosen representatives in Congress assembled these things are as strange as the Koran.

If the foregoing plain statement of the diplomatic correspondence, the opinion of the promulgators, and the immediate historical causes of Monroe's famous message have any meaning whatever, it is this: That practically the whole world intended to attack this continent; that for lack of a navy we could not possibly have prevented it; that a common ideal and sense of justice led the English to bring their peerless fleet to our defence. And subsequent history shows that they have ever since kept that fleet at our disposal for this same purpose. And it is now quite plain to even the sceptical Solon that, although they have lacked naval force for major hostilities in America, the forces of despotism, thwarted by Canning and Monroe, have ever since been gaining instead of losing the will and power to strike.

The final and arch enemy of these forces is the United States. We are the cradle and cas-