The Two Americas

...There is one consideration, however, that The Commonweal feels constrained to advance, not with any suggestion that it Is being overlooked in the programs that men of good will are drawing up, but simply because no evidence transpires in the press report of the proceedings, at Philadelphia or Washington, that it enters into their calculations at all...

...It is the often declared and established policy of this government to use its resources, not to burden them, but to assist them...

...But there is no doubt that it is lying closer every year to their imagination...

...History, indeed, presents few such stimulating and puzzling pictures as this of two continents, bound, in the natural course of events, to influence one another profoundly, yet proceeding for centuries in their development under racial, religious and political influences where every element of division) is present...

...During the closing years of a long and honored diplomatic career, the late Don Julio Betancourt, representative at Washington from the Republic of Colombia, had sought to familiarize the American public with the idea, and to outline a working scheme...

...For the weakness of the famous doctrine lies in the fact that, while universally accepted, it has never been defined for the enlightenment of the countries who are its beneficiaries...

...In one form or another, the taking Into council of Catholic feeling on the subject appears, to us at least, inevitable...

...the secular aspect of most of the South American constitutions, which were the belated offspring of the revolutionary ideal in Europe...

...The immediate aim," says Mr...

...The Calvary which the ancient Church In Mexico is| being suffered...

...But it is by no means the novelty that It then seemed to many...

...That phase of the Monroe Doctrine which called for periodical assertion seems to be over and, so far as the furthest political vision can reach, over indefinitely...

...In God's providence, to tread...

...One was very evident in the brave notice, given the world at a period when material means for enforcing it were scanty, that European claims on the allegiance of peoples south of the Rio Grande, no matter how plausibly supported by ancient charters and ancient prescriptive rights, had come to an end...

...Held as a resolute and nation-wide conviction, and backed by the force that can render conviction irresistible, it is not easy to imagine any nation or group of nations that would question it today...

...In the place of honor due it on all counts there is the unequivocal declaration of the President himself, made the other day before the PanAmerican Union, that "our associates . . . all stand on an absolute equality with us...

...Rather notably the New York Times recently devoted two long articles to the growth in South America of a spirit o^ nationalism whose impetus has been precisely the peril inherent in a doctrine so vague and ill-defined...

...There is the work of such bodies as the American Academy of Political and Social Science which are making "constructive proposals for solving problems arising between the United States and Latin America" their goal, and which at Philadelphia recently suggested an "Inter-American Commission of Enquiry and Conciliation," which might become in time an effective substitute for the League of Nations or the Court of Arbitration at The Hague, altogether free of the objections and entanglements that would almost certainly arise from having contentious American matter thrashed out in Europe...

...In any effort to put the relations between the two Americas on a footing that no future accident shall disturb, the corporate machinery of the Catholic Church on earth, dedicated by its Supreme Head in his first encyclical to the cause of peace, suggests itself as the most natural solvent for mutual misunderstandings, and the body of Catholic clergy and laity on both continents as Its most natural spokesmen...

...What might be called premonitory flashes of a common destiny have not been absent...

...Despatches that do not attract much attention from the lay press, but which Catholic newspapers and reviews see every month (the confession of faith made by the Brazilian President at the time of his inauguration, the recent triumph of the Catholic party in Guatemala, the papal festivities held in February in Bolivia with the cooperation of all the civic authorities, are only a few of these) tell another story...

...At uneven intervals (in 1848 in Yucatan, in 1853 in Cuba, in 1866 in Mexico, in 1895 in Venezuela) they have never failed to appear in response to any challenge of a doctrine that has come to be the settled and recognized principle of America's foreign policy...

...Mingled with the satisfaction with which it is regarded by all patriotic Americans is a growing feeling in many thoughtful quarters, for which the word apprehension is hardly too strong, that some unforeseen incident is quite possible which might call for its belated clarification in terms that would be anything but acceptable to nations south of the Isthmus of Panama...

...Nationalism," concludes Mr...

...To leave It out of the question while accepting at face value the many activities whereby Protestant missionary effort, thinly veiled behind a program of social betterment, is holding up to "backward" South America salvation through material progress at the price of an abandonment of its traditional spiritual loyalties, is only to invite the resentment and dispersal of effort that insures failure...

...not to control them, but to cooperate with them...

...Against forebodings in South America, there is a great deal to set that should allay fear and remove misunderstanding...

...Scott Mowrer, in his' article on Pan-Latinism as a World Force, "is to save Central America from the menace of 'Anglo-Saxon imperialism.' " Now, making all allowance for the skill of special writers in dressing up their conclusions and giving an appearance of crisis to what may prove to be a chronic grievance, the picture is sufficiently disquieting...

...Earle K. James, after a survey of monographs on the question by six authors in Buenos Aires and Mexico, "is rampant—nationalism bom of growing self-consciousness fertilized by the fear of the colossus of the North...

...One thing that has followed on post-war arrangements, made with scant regard to what this country would like to see, has been a new and more intense concentration on problems and opportunities lying nearer home, and which are not disturbed by political legacies dating back to days when American wishes and American ideals had not yet been formulated...

...If, at the moment Europe is handing in its whole-hearted adhesion to the Monroe Doctrine, half of the continent affected can be plausibly shown as turning its face to Europe and seeking, in the League of Nations or elsewhere, some moral support that will not leave it unchampioned in a day of trial, it behooves all North Americans, who seek the peaceful and equitable solution of a geographical problem, to search their hearts, and see whether, in the shape they have allowed their protection to take, some lack of sympathy or understanding has not permitted an implied menace to lurk...

...This is by no means to say that the problems and difficulties associated with it are at an end...

...We would prefer to term it a fervent hope that whatever is done to clarify our relations with Spanish or Portuguese America will take into account the fact that throughout the southern half of our continent one faith and| one only holds the imagination of the immense majority of its people...

...A very interesting monograph might be written on the varying fashion in which, at various times, relations between South and North America have presented themselves to our people...

...The idea of a great Pan-American Catholic Congress, to meet in the United States, was suggested very clearly in an Interview given by Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago to visiting prelates from South America at the time of the Eucharistic Congress...

...Sometimes they have been the answer to no more than a suspicion that the doctrine conceivably, and under the pressure of special circumstances, might be tested...

...and, we would add, the slanders of many free-thinking and materialistic Ibero-Americans, who are attracted to Protestantism by the very elements in It that are most antagonistic to spiritually-minded Protestants in Europe and the United States, are obscuring from the general mind the great truth that South America was, is, and is likely to remain, a Catholic continent...

...One result of the great war has been a new concern with countries that were not upheaved by it...