The increasing industrial, social, and financial bonds might not have any serious political consequences, provided the several South American states were possessed of stable governments, orderly political traditions, and a political standing under definite treaties similar to that of the smaller European states.  But such is not the case.  The alien investment in South America may involve all sorts of political complications which would give European or Asiatic Powers a justifiable right under the law of nations to interfere.  Up to the present time, as we have seen, such interference has promised to be too costly; but the time may well come when the advantages of interference will more than counterbalance the dangers of a forcible protest.  Moreover, in case such a protest were made, it might not come from any single European Power.  A general European interest would be involved.  The United States might well find her policy of America for the Americans result in an attempt on the part of a European coalition to bring about a really effectual isolation.  We might find ourselves involved in a war against a substantially united Europe.  Such a danger seems sufficiently remote at present; but in the long run a policy which carries isolation too far is bound to provoke justifiable attempts to break it down.  If Europe and the Americas are as much divided in political interest as the Monroe Doctrine seems to assert, the time will inevitably arrive when the two divergent political systems must meet and fight; and plenty of occasions for such a conflict will arise, as soon as the policy of isolation begins to conflict with the establishment of that political relation between Europe and South America demanded by fundamental economic and social interests.  Thus under certain remote but entirely possible conditions, the Doctrine as now proclaimed and practiced might justify Europe in seeking to break it down by reasons at least as valid as those of our own country in proclaiming it.

But if the Monroe Doctrine could only be maintained by a war of this kind, or a succession of wars, it would defeat the very purpose which it is supposed to accomplish.  It would embroil the United States and the two American continents in continual trouble with Europe; and it would either have to be abandoned or else would carry with it incessant and enormous expenditures for military and naval purposes.  The United States would have to become a predominantly military power, armed to the teeth, to resist or forestall European attack; and our country would have to accept these consequences, for the express purpose of keeping the Americas unsullied by the complications of European politics.  Obviously there is a contradiction in such a situation.  The United States could fight with some show of reason a single European Power, like France in 1865, which undertook a policy of American territorial aggrandizement; but if it were obliged to fight a considerable portion of Europe for the