EVENING SESSION

NEW YORK CITY, THURSDAY, January 19, 1912.

The Association convened in Carnegie Hall, Fiftyseventh street and Seventh avenue, at 8.30 o'clock, for the purpose of listening to an address by Hon. Philander Chase Knox, Secretary of State of the United States, on The Monroe Doctrine and some incidental obligations in the zone of the Caribbean."

The President:

Gentlemen of the Bar, ladies and gentlemen, before any of us were born the relation between the United States and the countries of South America about the Caribbean were recognized as being of vital and paramount interest to the welfare, the peace and the prosperity of our country. The multitude of questions as to what the law of nations and the instinct of self-preservation and the consistency of American policy with the political principles which we profess permit and require in the exercise of the great power of this vast and rich and powerful country enlisted the best thought of the greatest statesmen of our history. After we have all passed away in the nature of things our children will be discussing similar questions arising from the same vital relations, questions equally important to our welfare, peace and prosperity. We are to be addressed to-night upon this great historical subject by one who has worthily borne the titular rank of the leader of the American Bar, as the Attorney General of the United States, and who now directs and controls the actions of our republic in its foreign relations. I have the honor to present to you the Honorable Secretary of State of the United States. (Applause.)

Hon. Philander C. Knox delivered the annual address as follows:

THE MONROE DOCTRINE AND SOME INCIDENTAL OBLIGATIONS IN THE ZONE

OF THE CARIBBEAN

GENTLEMEN.-When I was invited to address this distinguished gathering of lawyers, I was very glad to act on the suggestion that I speak to you on the subject of the two highly important conventions now awaiting the advice and consent of the Senate as the co-ordinate branch

of the executive treaty-making power. I refer to the conventions negotiated during the year just passed between the United States and Honduras and between the United States and Nicaragua, both with the object of assisting those two Republics to work out their own best interests and to achieve prosperity through their own efforts.

Before commending to your attention these two conventions I wish to make clear the important fact in their favor that they respond to, and indeed actually evidence, one element of a policy initially adopted by us for our guidance in international affairs almost a century ago, and since then repeatedly announced and carried out by successive administrations of all political shades and beliefs. Involving thus a question of international policy, the conventions deserve the more attention because of their relations to the abstract principles of international law.

Contiguous countries, or those approximate by reason of being parts of one of the earth's great geographical subdivisions, sustain natural and inevitable relations toward each other, out of which arise certain political

correlations to be asserted from time to time as the safety, welfare, and progress of the group as a whole, or that of its members, may require. One of these relations involves the necessity of being mindful of the activities of other States and the preservation among them of an existing stable status, "whether," as Phillimore says, "by preventing the aggressions and conquests of any one power, or by taking care that, out of the new order of things produced by internal revolutions, no existing power acquires an aggrandizement that may menace the liberties of the rest of the world."

This relation and the necessities arising out of it are doubtless as old as human government and seem certainly to have become an avowed and conscious policy so soon as there existed in the world great states in rivalry for supremacy. For example, Hiero, King of Syracuse, though an ally of Rome, sent aid to Carthage during the war of the Auxiliaries; and Polybius asserts that the King justified his course as necessary

"both in order to retain his dominions in Sicily, and to preserve the Roman friendship, that Carthage should be safe; lest by its fall the remaining power should be able, without let or hindrance, to execute every purpose and undertaking."

Modern nations have found it necessary to invoke and enforce the same principle, and our own Government very early in its history adopted it when it pronounced the Monroe Doctrine, the first assertion of which was based on purely selfish motives, namely, that this country's safety and peace depended upon the exclusion of American soil as a field for further European colonization.

The founders of our Government (observers of the strifes, turmoils, and rivalry among the countries of