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 Those, I said, and not propaganda, were the real reasons for the feeling in the United States 
 
towards Germany. So far as trade relations were concerned, the Minister must know that
 
so long as Germany pursued her present autarchic policy and indulged in every form of 
 
discrimination against us, there was no opportunity offered the United States for improved
 
trade with Germany.
 
          With regard to the Minister's reference to the desirability of having Ambassadors in Berlin 
 
and Washington, I would be careful to report to the President the Minister's observations, but I 
 
wanted to make it clear that my Government had every confidence in Mr. Kirk, the American 
 
Charge d'Affaires. (Here the Minister interjected that he had only "good reports of Mr. Kirk, but 
 
that he had been referring to the rank of the representation, and not to the individual. )
 
          I further desired to refer to the Minister's reference to the Monroe Doctrine, for it seemed 
 
very clear that the Minister was laboring under a misapprehension as to the nature of that policy. 
 
Many years ago, I was quite willing to admit, the Monroe Doctrine had been occasionally 
 
misinterpreted by earlier administrations in the United States as entitling the United States to 
 
exercise some form of hegemony in the Western Hemisphere or to interfere in one way  or 
 
another in the affairs of our neighbors. But the Doctrine had never in  reality been other than a 
 
unilateral declaration by the United States that it would not permit any non-American power to 
 
exercise any kind of sway, military or political, within the Western Hemisphere.  It had never 
 
implied the exclusion by the United States of non-American powers from having the same trade 
 
relations with the other American Republics such as