According to Mr. S. W. Boggs, geographer of the State Department, the concept in the mind of President Monroe "evidently related to the New World as distinguished from the Old World, and there appears to have been no thought at that time of laying down a pair of meridians, placed diametrically opposite each other, on one side of which one policy was to be followed and on the other side of which an entirely different policy was to be followed." The limits of the hemisphere, he says, "are defined neither by nature nor by common agreement."
Obviously, from the standpoint of defence, the hemisphere means what it is decided it should mean and what the American countries can do to support their own definition. Beyond question, it takes in the two American Con-linens and appertaining island the West Indies, and by the agreement concluded by Secretary Kuli and Minister de Kaufmann it how means Greenland beyond any question. It is when the more outlying land areas are considered that the term becomes elastic. And the lines of demarcation might conceivably swing back and forth to some extent in accord with national and hemispheric policies and the fortunes of the European war.
Although there never has been asserted an intention to define the limits of the hemisphere through the drawing of a safety line round the Americas similar to that drawn shortly after the outbreak of the European war, nevertheless that line has served as a convenient one in considering problems of hemispheric defence.
The line was drawn at an average distance of 300 miles from the coasts, from Cape Horn fo the Canadian boundary. The intention was to keep the war at that distance from American shores and there has been a-disposition to hold that line in view when the American republics have considered the joint programme of security that they should adopt for the safety of the Western Hemisphere. At the same time it is recognized that naval and air power extends from the Americas far beyond that boundary.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.