In the course of the debate over this settlement, a number of interesting questions arose.  It was pertinently asked whether the American navy should be used to help creditors collect their debts anywhere in Latin-America.  It was suggested also that no sanction should be given to the practice among European governments of using armed force to collect private claims.  Opponents of President Roosevelt’s policy, and they were neither few nor insignificant, urged that such matters should be referred to the Hague Court or to special international commissions for arbitration.  To this the answer was made that the United States could not surrender any question coming under the terms of the Monroe Doctrine to the decision of an international tribunal.  The position of the administration was very clearly stated by President Roosevelt himself.  “The country,” he said, “would certainly decline to go to war to prevent a foreign government from collecting a just debt; on the other hand, it is very inadvisable to permit any foreign power to take possession, even temporarily, of the customs houses of an American republic in order to enforce the payment of its obligations; for such a temporary occupation might turn into a permanent occupation.  The only escape from these alternatives may at any time be that we must ourselves undertake to bring about some arrangement by which so much as possible of a just obligation shall be paid.”  The Monroe Doctrine was negative.  It denied to European powers a certain liberty of operation in this hemisphere.  The positive obligations resulting from its application by the United States were points now emphasized and developed.

=The Hague Conference.=—­The controversies over Latin-American relations and his part in bringing the Russo-Japanese War to a close naturally made a deep impression upon Roosevelt, turning his mind in the direction of the peaceful settlement of international disputes.  The subject was moreover in the air.  As if conscious of impending calamity, the statesmen of the Old World, to all outward signs at least, seemed searching for a way to reduce armaments and avoid the bloody and costly trial of international causes by the ancient process of battle.  It was the Czar, Nicholas II, fated to die in one of the terrible holocausts which he helped to bring upon mankind, who summoned the delegates of the nations in the first Hague Peace Conference in 1899.  The conference did nothing to reduce military burdens or avoid wars but it did recognize the right of friendly nations to offer the services of mediation to countries at war and did establish a Court at the Hague for the arbitration of international disputes.

Encouraged by this experiment, feeble as it was, President Roosevelt in 1904 proposed a second conference, yielding to the Czar the honor of issuing the call.  At this great international assembly, held at the Hague in 1907, the representatives of the United States proposed a plan for the compulsory arbitration of certain matters of international dispute.  This was rejected with contempt by Germany.  Reduction of armaments, likewise proposed in the conference, was again deferred.  In fact, nothing was accomplished beyond agreement upon certain rules for the conduct of “civilized warfare,” casting a somewhat lurid light upon the “pacific” intentions of most of the powers assembled.