Page:Mexico under Carranza.djvu/199

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MEXICO UNDER CARRANZA
183

to do anything for the protection of the nationals of these two countries furnishes no very striking evidence of our inclination and capacity to discharge the duty of maintaining orderly government in the Americas, which we have sometimes accepted as a corollary of the Monroe Doctrine.

Citizens are urged by the Government to help extend our foreign commerce. No argument should be needed to prove that in order to develop commerce with a foreign country our citizens must acquire business enterprises there. Every successful commercial nation has followed that policy. The two peoples that have been most successful in developing foreign commerce in the last half century are the English and the Germans. In the case of both the most prominent factor in their success has been the acquisition or creation of business enterprises abroad. Germany's activity in this direction is shown by the fact that the alien property custodian has taken possession of German investments in the United States valued at more than eight hundred million dollars.

The attitude of the American Government, as exemplified in its dealing with Mexican affairs, is that its citizens perpetrate a great wrong against any country with which they try to develop commerce unless they expatriate