Yet it is always to be remembered that in the background are the United States of America, possessing resources and wealth greater than any other country in the universe." "And it must also be remembered," Selingman proclaimed, in a tone of ponderous conviction, "that she possesses no adequate means of guarding them, that she is not a military nation, that she has not the strength to enforce the carrying out of the Monroe Doctrine.

Things were all very well for her before the days of wireless telegraphy, of aeroplanes and airships, of super-dreadnoughts, and cruisers with the speed of express trains.

She was too far away to be concerned in European turmoils.
To-day science is annihilating distance.

America, leaving out of account altogether her military impotence, would need a fleet three times her present strength to enforce the Monroe Doctrine for the remainder--not of this century but of this decade." Then the bombshell fell.

A strange voice suddenly intervened, a voice whose American accent seemed more marked than usual.