104 THE CLASS STRUGGLE EDITORIALS 105 The American Government, in April 1918, through Ambassador Fletcher, threatened the Mexican Government with action should it continue to impose control upon foreign capital. This apparently was unsuccessful and armed intervention is being proposed in place of diplomatic intervention.
Why to protect capital, to insure profits, to make Mexico safe for American Imperialism, and then the world! All this, of course, is in the approved style of German Imperialism; but instead of stigmatizing our imperialists as being proGerman, they stigmatize Mexico. As a fact, all Imperialism, in one way or another, pursues the policy of the former predatory Germany.
The organizations of American Imperialism are making elaborate plans for imperialistic conquests, and using the government as an instrument of Imperialism which means, ultimately, the blood of the American proletariat in new wars to make the world safe for. In a recent issue of The Nation, William Kies, vice president of the American International Corporation, a characteristic instrument of American Imperialism, says that our bankers should be free to make both political and non political loans, and describes political loans as loans carrying with them port or harbor concessions with powers of administration and the collection of charges; the granting of large areas of land for purposes of exploitation with complete power of control and government; the giving of franchises for the construction of important and strategic railways, conferring upon the lender complete control in the management and administration; and the granting of monopolistic privileges of various kinds.
This is Imperialism; this is precisely the policy pursued by the European nations that provoked the recent war; this is the policy characteristic of American Capitalism, and not the words of democracy perfervidly uttered by President Wilson.
Thus is the policy each imperialistic nation will pursue, provoking new antagonisms and new wars.
But this is not all. While our peace delegates Woodrow Wilson and his secretarial staff speak beautifully about self determination of peoples in Europe, there is not even a murmur concerning self determination for the peoples of Central America and the Caribbeans, prostrate under the iron heel of American Imperialism; instead, there is an ag.
gressive campaign to impose American determination upon Mexico. Colombia, Nicaragua, Haiti, Santa Domingo to say nothing of the Philippines are all vassals of American Capital, their policy and destiny determined at Washington, These are the deeds of Imperialism that mock the words of democracy.
They speak much of the League of Nations of free peoples. but why not free the peoples of Central America, the Caribbeans and the Philippines? They speak inuch of a League of Nations, merging the national interest into the international but has it been proposed that the United States shall abandon the Monroe Doctrine?
The Monroe Doctrine is the assertion of the suj macy of the national interests of the United States on the American continents; it is an implied and often actual threat to the independence of the American republics; it is the characteristic continental expression of our Imperialism. Its abandonment is a necessary requirement of any real League of Nations; but its abandonment would mean the abandonment of Imperialism and that would mean the end of Capitalism and the coming of Socialism. But then, the League of Nations is not what it pretends to be: words do not always mean what they appear to mean; and the function of a League of Nations would be to preserve Capitalism, and to clean out such plague spots as revolutionary Russia and Germany, or, in a different sense, Mexico, No, the Golden Age is not here: it may be an age of golden words, but that is all. It is an age of Imperialism ascendant and Socialism conquering. Mexico, Central America and the Caribbeans will be the American skeleton at the feast of peace. The intervention of the Socialist proletariat is necessary رو