The United States does not fear political aggression by Europe against the Western Hemisphere. On the contrary, the aggression to-day is largely economic, and the struggle for the markets and the investment opportunities of Latin America is being waged by the capitalists of every great industrial nation, including the United States. 2. _Latin America_ Four of the Latin American countries, viewed from the standpoint of population and of immediately available assets, rank far ahead of the remainder of Latin America. Mexico, with a population in 1914-1915 of 15,502,000, had an annual government revenue of $72,687,000. The population of Brazil is 27,474,000. The annual revenue (1919) is $183,615,000. Argentine, with a population of 8,284,000, reported annual revenues of $159,000,000 (1918); and Chile, with a population of 3,870,000, had an annual revenue of $77,964,000 (1917). These four states rank in political and economic importance close to Canada. Great Britain holds a number of strategic positions in the West Indies. Other nations have minor possessions in Latin America. None of these possessions, however, is of considerable economic or political importance. There remain Bolivia, Uruguay, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela, and the Central American states. The most populous of these countries is Peru (5,800,000 persons). All of the Central American states combined have a population of less than 6,000,000. The annual revenues of Uruguay (population 1,407,000) are $30,453,000 (1918-19). The combined government revenues of all Central America are less than twenty-five millions. (_Statistical Abstract of the U. S._, 1919, p. 826ff.) Compared with the hundred million population of the United States; its estimated wealth (1918) of 250 billions; and its federal revenues of a billion and a half in 1916, the Latin American republics cut a very small figure indeed. The United States, bristling with economic surplus and armed with the Monroe Doctrine, as accepted and interpreted in the League Covenant, is free to turn her attention to the rich opportunities offered by the undeveloped territory stretching from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn. What is there to hinder her movements in this direction? Nothing but the limitation on her own needs and the adherence to her own public policies. This vast area, containing approximately nine million square miles (three times the area of continental United States), has a population of only a little over seventy millions. The entire government revenues of the territory are in the neighborhood of six hundred million, but so widely scattered are the people, so sharp are their nationalistic differences, and so completely have they failed to build up anything like an effective league to protect their common interests, that skillful maneuvering on the part of American economic and political interests should meet with no effectual or thoroughgoing opposition.