Dollar Diplomacy Outdone.

New York Times 100 years ago today, July 21, 1913:
    The policy adopted by the Administration in regard to Nicaragua, which is, presumably, to be applied in time to all the other Central American States, is commendable, and will be generally approved if it is successfully put in practice. But it outdoes the so-called dollar diplomacy of previous Administrations and opens an entirely new chapter in the history of our foreign relations. We cannot fairly cite as a precedent for the virtual establishment of an American protectorate in Nicaragua our action in regard to Cuba. We took that island from Spain, which had sadly misgoverned it and ill-treated its people, by force of arms, and helped its inhabitants to establish a republic, stepping in once afterward to settle disturbances when their scheme of self-government threatened to fail. Such a protectorate over Cuba as the Platt amendment secured was inevitable.
    Nicaragua, however, has long been an independent republic; we have not been called upon to free its people from the misrule of another nation. A brand-new plan to settle the hitherto troublesome question of how to preserve peace in the neighborhood of the Panama Canal has been hit upon by President Wilson and the State Department, and, as we have said, it deserves and will receive approval if the Administration is able to make it effective. Treaties with both Nicaragua and Honduras, which President Taft and Secretary Knox urged the Senate to ratify, were cast aside on the ground that they savored of dollar diplomacy. In comparison with the proposed Bryan treaty with Nicaragua they more nearly resemble ten-cent diplomacy. They provided merely that the United States should supervise and protect the collection of customs revenues in the two republics, in order to assure the payment of interest on money required to refund their national debts which American financiers were willing to lend. Under the proposed Nicaraguan treaty that State should be able to borrow actually needed money as easily as any State of the Union.
    Why not? She will be pledged not to declare war without the consent of the United States; to make no treaties with foreign Governments that would tend to destroy her independence or give those Governments a foothold on her soil; and to contract no unwarranted public debt, while the United States is granted the right to intervene at any time for the protection of "life or property." All this is newly imposed on the original draft of the treaty, prepared like the two rejected ones in President Taft's Administration, which provided merely that for a payment of $3,000,000 the United States should have the exclusive right to build a canal across Nicaragua, a ninety-nine years' lease of a naval base in Fonseca Gulf and two small islands in the Caribbean.
    It is understood that Nicaragua, under its present intelligent Government, is anxious for the ratification of this revised treaty, and we hope this is true. No doubt, in that case, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Honduras will be equally willing to accept similar treaties in course of time. If all goes well we shall soon see the dawn of a new era in our Latin American relations, but it will be due to a cheerful acceptance and amplification by President Wilson's Administration of the much-condemned dollar diplomacy of his predecessors. At present there are signs of some hostility among Central Americans. Honduras and San Salvador, at least, do not take kindly to the new idea, and it is said that both of those States would now be inclined to reject treaties similar to that proposed with Nicaragua. But diplomacy is always a matter of patience and tact. Of the ultimate success of the policy which the treaty reveals there can he no serious doubt, because all Central Americans will learn in time that it does not constitute an "invasion" of Central America by the United States. This sort of thing, however, cannot be done overnight.