Montezuma, Tripoli & Beyond

(See front cover)

From the halls of Montezuma

To the shores of Tripoli

We fight our country's battles

On the land as on the sea;

First to fight for right and freedom

And to keep our honor clean

We are proud to claim the title

Of United States Marine.

The U. S. Marine Corps does not sing Christmas carols. When it is Christmas in the Marine Corps, "the toughest soldiers in the world" on foreign duty sometimes startle the natives by dressing a Christmas tree under the tropic sun, or--as in Nicaragua last year--by knocking together a make-believe chimney out of packing boxes, filling the "hearth" with tinsel for fire, and hanging up their biggest socks to be stuffed with joke presents. But hardboiled fighting men on the outer marches of the U. S. Empire have little use for hymns of peace. More likely are they to drown out anything suggestive of home or homesickness with their corps anthem, "From the Halls of Montezuma," a song of many unprintable versions.

With Christmas at hand, a picture of the world distribution of U. S. Marines was published last week in the annual report of the No.1 U. S. Marine, Major General Wendell Gushing Neville. In Nicaragua were 1,800, in Haiti 887,* in the Virgin Islands 111, in Guam 572, Philippines 215, Hawaii 395, Shanghai 1,049 Peking 486, not to count the men aboard Navy ships around the world.

For General Neville, of course, it was to be a Christmas spent at home. But no Marine better typifies the service than the present Corps Commandant. A fighting Virginian, aged 59, he was graduated from Annapolis in 1890. He helped capture Guantanamo Bay in the Spanish War and relieve Peking in the Boxer Uprising. He served as a provincial military governor in the Philippines, won the Congressional Medal of Honor in the seizure of Vera Cruz. Through Belleau Wood he led the Fourth Marine Brigade to Soissons, St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne, then on to the Rhine and Coblentz. After 39 years of almost continuous and always victorious fighting, General Neville, familiarly known as "Whispering Buck," still possesses the most powerful drill-voice in the service.

Less and less do Marine-manned outposts demark a U. S. Empire upon which the sun never sets. They are but the military manifestation of that empire and for every Marine spending Christmas away from home this year there are more U. S. civilians abroad than ever before. From countless U. S. homes this month have gone forth Christmas boxes and bundles to countless far-flung civilian Jacks. Toms, Ikes, Petes. The year had been generous at home but many a son could not be present to share its holiday rewards. When other U. S. citizens were turning homeward for the year's greatest family celebration, Jack was converting heathen on Luzon, Tom was selling Standard Oil up the Yangtze, Ike was with National City Bank at Bombay, Pete was peddling vacuum cleaners out of Stockholm--all manifesting the U. S. Empire invisible.

Visible Empire. The seeds of empire, sown the last decade of the last century, first sprouted in 1893 when 160 U. S. Marines were landed for a Hawaiian "revolution." Later the islands were annexed to put their sugar production inside the U. S. tariff wall. The Spanish War added Porto Rico, the Philippines and Guam as imperial outposts, gave the U. S. a protectorate over Cuba. From the 1902 revolution in Panama the U. S. got land for the canal, laid the foundation for U. S. dominion over the Caribbean. Theodore Roosevelt, if not an imperialist, was a master empire-builder; he enlarged the Monroe Doctrine, took over the collection of the Dominican customs. The sphere of U. S. influence in the Caribbean widened; other powers were shut out as the U. S. undertook the job of policing this new domain. National defense dictated the purchase from Denmark of the Virgin Islands for 25 million dollars in 1917, to give the U. S. military control over the portals of the Caribbean and hence the Panama Canal.

The Navy. To hold this empire the navy maintains for its fighting fleets large stations at Guantanamo Bay (leased from Cuba under a treaty), at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, at Cavite near Manila, small ones at St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, at Guam, Panama, Samoa and Olongapo. Policing the Caribbean is the Special Service Squadron under Rear Admiral Edward Hale Campbell. On its beat along the China coast moves the Asiatic fleet of two cruisers, 19 destroyers, auxiliary vessels, gunboats on the Yangtze River.

The Army. To bulwark its empire the U. S. has posted 14,228 Army officers and men in Hawaii, 8,784 in the Canal Zone, 5,770 (exclusive of the Scouts) in the Philippines, 1,012 at Tientsin, China. One hundred and fifty U. S. Army engineers are spending Christmas surveying a new canal route across Nicaragua.

Invisible Empire. Far beyond these visible outlines extends the invisible empire of the Dollar. Ten billion dollars, in full battle array, are yearly fighting the pound sterling, the franc, the guilder, the mark for supremacy.

Diplomats. The field generals in this spread of economic empire are U. S. diplomatic representatives, whose prime task is to keep the gates of trade peacefully open. The 13 U. S. ambassadors and 28 U. S. ministers are aided by 457 U. S. consuls, trained to report trade opportunities, to note and remove new and old obstacles to foreign commerce.

Trade Scouts. To open up new commercial fields abroad in which the Dollar may grow and thrive is the duty of the Department of Commerce's trade scouts--56 men in two classes, commercial attaches and trade commissioners. At Washington their reports are assembled and presented in a periodical pamphlet called What the World Wants. There it may be found this week that Rosario, Argentina, will buy buggy wheels; that Nottingham, England, wants battery chargers; Lagos, Nigeria, needs canned fish and lump sugar. Other world wants noted in the latest bulletins: kitchen sinks at Bordeaux; machines to make banana flour at Lourengo Marquez. Portuguese East Africa; fertilizer grinders at Batavia; sneakers and sporting wear at Mukden; fountain pens at Calcutta; corsets at Berlin; oilcloth at Cairo.

It is into such world markets that President Herbert Hoover wants Big U. S. Business to spread itself as a means of overcoming the stockmarket slump. For eight years as Secretary of Commerce he built up the foreign trade service which today periodically supplies exporters with a year-round Christmas list, a list of potential buying orders. His trade scouts flash into Washington such reports as U. S. Assistant Trade Commissioner Douglas Cook's last week from Berlin warning U. S. clockmakers of a merger in the cuckoo clock industry in the Black Forest.

That the work of trade scouts is highly successful is evidenced by the Department of Commerce's annual report made public last week. U. S. foreign trade increased over last year. Five and one-quarter million dollars worth of U. S. goods were exported, of which almost half was in finished manufactured articles. The U. S. now has the greatest export trade in the world. Most significant development: While exports to Europe increased only 8% over the pre-war average, to the rest of the world--especially South America, Asia and Africa--they have increased 265%.

Empire Builders. Last week if U. S. citizens in Russia were sad because the Soviet had just prohibited the cutting or display of Christmas trees, they could take heart when they learned that Gillette Safety Razor Co. had been granted a concession to build a plant in Russia with U. S. capital to supply safety razors and blades, at a profit, to shaggy Soviets and smooth tourists alike. It was the first large U. S. concession in Russia since the collapse of the Harriman manganese enterprise. Noted also was the fact that representatives of General Motors were dickering with Soviet officials for a similar privilege.

Automobile makers lead in foreign plants. Henry Ford has 25 foreign factories and assembly plants reaching from Alexandria to Yokohama, from Helsingfors to Lima. So potent is this influence that the League of Nations has thought it worth while to undertake for him a survey so that he may pay his workmen in foreign lands the local equivalent of his wages in the U. S. General Motors has 19 processing plants and five warehouses scattered from Warsaw to Sao Paulo, from Madrid to Batavia.

Advertisers. Americans abroad, even at Christmas time, do not feel so very far away from home when they peruse foreign newspapers and see in them advertisements of commodities familiar to every U. S. citizen. The U. S. agency doing the largest foreign business: J. Walter Thompson Co. with 15 overseas branches from Bombay to Sao Paulo, from Port Elizabeth to Warsaw. Products advertised: Coca Cola, General Motors (foreign), Goodrich Tires, Odorono, I. T. & T., et al.

Bankers. Behind this widespread network of U. S. trade stands an equally widespread system of U. S. banks doing an international business. Through them --leaders are Morgan, Chase National, Guaranty Trust--are sucked up the billions of dollars of U. S. money for loans to foreign countries which pay for purchase from the U. S. Most famed of U. S. financial colonizers: National City Bank of New York, with 22 branches in as many countries. Particularly potent is this bank in the Caribbean area, where it has entered the investment field (sugar in Cuba, railroads in Haiti).

Tourists. The U. S. had a favorable trade balance (exports over imports) of more than a billion dollars last year. This asset was liquidated by the spendings abroad of U. S. tourists who, in national economic effect, had a free trip over and back. When the stockmarket crashed, its effect was felt even in Switzerland where resort bookings for U. S. tourists were heavily cancelled, U. S. children withdrawn from Swiss schools.

Cinema. An endless tape bound round and round the world is the U. S. cinema film. Last week Londoners flocked to see Masks of the Devil while Paris and Berlin gaped simultaneously at The Broadway Melody. In the French chamber arose Deputy Gaston Gerard last week to exclaim: "In the domain of the cinema we have become virtual tributaries to American productions. Americans already hail [the talkies] as a vehicle for spreading the English language over the world. It is an immense and implacable effort for intellectual colonization that threatens us."

At the Moulin Rouge in Paris, police quelled a riot of Frenchmen incensed at the discovery that they had paid good francs to see The Fox Movietone Follies-- in English.

Missionaries. Christmas spirit was, of course, zealously upheld in many a foreign land by 12,283 U. S. missionaries--8,363 in Asia, 2,160 in Latin America, 1,689 m Africa, 71 in Australia and Oceanica.

Ships. Though U. S. shipping is below normal, two services are noteworthy: United Fruit, most potent and most peaceful colonizer in the Caribbean; Dollar Line, only round-the-world service on a regular bi-weekly schedule.

Raw Material. Biggest quest: Rubber. Blocked in the Philippines by adverse land laws, Harvey Firestone is pushing forward with new plantations in Liberia; Henry Ford has six thousand square miles for rubber production in Brazil; the U. S. Rubber Co.'s plantations in Sumatra and Malaya have grown from 14,000 acres to 135,000 acres in 18 years of production.

Imperial U. S. Not by military force but by economic power does the U. S. exert its imperial will. By shutting off loans to lagging debtors it forced settlement of the War Debts. Its agents administer the finances of Bolivia, Salvador, Liberia, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Santo Domingo. U. S. Citizen Seymour Parker Gilbert holds the purse strings of German Reparations as formulated by U. S. Citizens Charles Gates Dawes and Owen D. Young.

*After disturbances a fortnight ago Haiti was last week quiescent. Political organizations asked President Hoover to supply U. S. supervision for the April elections, as was done last year in Nicaragua. Arrests were only for violation of the 9 p. m. curfew under martial law. President Borno's daughter Madeleine was ceremoniously taken to wife by Daniel Brun, architect. Additional Marines dispatched aboard the U. S. S. Wright were diverted to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, while the U. S. House of Representatives moved to give President Hoover the investigating commission he had asked for (TIME, Dec. 16).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.