United States Control of Santo Domingo Finances
By L. A. S.
A VERY interesting and important utterance has just come from the United States government through the Department of State. It is a statement of the government’s reasons for assuming charge of the finances of Santo Domingo, at the invitation of the Dominican government, and administering them for the benefit of foreign powers presenting claims against that country. The controlling consideration moving the United States to this course of action is set forth in the following paragraph of this statement:— The government of the United States having been explicitly, repeatedly, and emphatically informed by more than one of the great powers that it ought either to try to evolve some order out of the financial chaos in the Dominican republic or assent to certain European creditors of that republic doing this and to the administration of the Dominican custom-houses by them, supported by their war-ships, has deemed it advisable, in view of the unfortunate financial conditions in Santo Domingo, which for the last ten years have been rapidly growing worse, to accept the invitation of the Dominican government, and therefore representatives of this government and of Santo Domingo have signed a memorandum of a proposed agreement looking to the American control of the fiscal affairs, upon the request and with the consent of the Dominican government. The United States proposes to guarantee the territorial integrity of the Dominican republic. This is viewed by the New York Sun as being “perhaps the most important declaration of American policy respecting the Western continent in its relations to Europe that has appeared since the Monroe doctrine itself was first promulgated,” for reasons which the Sun thus states:— First, because it recognizes, at least in part, the force of the traditional foreign position and demand with regard to the responsibility of the United States for the behavior of the republics whose territorial integrity is safeguarded by the Monroe doctrine. Secondly, because the official statement indicates that the inconvenience and cost of such responsibility, at least in the case of Santo Domingo, have been weighed carefully against the dangers of a great foreign war resulting from a denial of the principle; and thus that the decision of the administration is based on the philosophy of enlightened selfishness and on high considerations of national expediency. Thirdly, because the new program, with its implied new interpretation of responsibility under the Monroe doctrine, involves a radical departure from previous practise, and constitutes for all future time a precedent, the far-reaching importance of which can not be blinked. This “novel and unusual relation which it is proposed that the United States shall bear to a neighboring sovereign republic,” observes the Sun, “can be effectuated constitutionally only in the form of a treaty between the two governments.” It will, however, remain to be seen whether the Constitution, in case the neighboring republic should be averse to such a treaty, will be allowed to stand in the way of “high considerations of national expediency.” Thus in this hemisphere, as well as upon the further side of the Pacific, this nation is being drawn into “world politics,” away from its former position of neutrality marked out by Washington, and away from those principles and traditions recognized as distinctively American. We are in a time when great events are unfolding with startling rapidity.