This was immediately taken by Congress to mean war in case England did not agree to arbitrate. Mr. Rhodes has described the effect on the country: The message made a profound sensation. Congress at once gave the President the authority that he asked for. The press and the public mainly supported his positions, although there were some notable exceptions. The message was sent to Congress on Tuesday. On Friday the stock market reached the verge of panic with the result that Wall Street and certain large business interests condemned the message in terms such as had from the first been pronounced by some prominent journals. On Sunday the pulpit thundered against the President, treating his message as a threat of war to England. And the clergymen were right in their construction. No amount of explanation and justification after the event can alter the meaning of Cleveland's uncompromising words. That war was possible, even probable, as a result of the President's ultimatum to England, was the belief of most thoughtful men. Perhaps the support of "the press and the public mainly" should be emphasized more than it is in Mr. Rhodes's sentences. The excitement which the message great nation can subject itself none are more to be deprecated or more to be shunned than those which follow from a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national honor and self-respect. That our request to Great Britain calls upon her for nothing more than justice and equity in her dealings with a weaker state, and that our honor and self-respect as well as our material interests are deeply concerned in her action upon such request, are matters which are fully set forth elsewhere and need not be here again discussed. I therefore invoke the earnest cooperation of Congress in support of the policy initiated by the Executive both through the specific measures already indicated and through such other additional measures as the wisdom and patriotism of Congress may dictate. Nothing will be wanting to the success of that policy, if Congress but rightly leads the way. In behalf of a cause which appeals to their sense of right, no loss and no sacrifice that may be exacted will be denied or begrudged by the American people." (Olney Coll.) aroused in the United States was fairly to be described as clamorous. Cleveland and Olney had unquestionably reckoned that their policy would enjoy popular support. But they had foreseen nothing like the boisterous acclaim which their critics described as a popular outburst of jingoism. Within three days a bill appropriating one hundred thousand dollars for the expenses of the President's Commission was passed by Congress.1 In the House not a vote was cast against it. The London Stock Exchange cabled to the New York Exchange (alluding sarcastically to the difficulties that had attended the recent international yacht races), "when our warships enter New York Harbor we hope that your excursion boats will not interfere with them." To which New York replied, "For your sake it is to be hoped that your warships are better than your yachts." The business world was finding fault with the Administration's 'tone,' but it could hardly be said that it set the Administration an example in fine manners. As a matter of economic history it is now clear that the break in the market which followed this message registered a depression which was due to occur for other reasons and upon any pretext; but it acted, none the less, like a dan 1 Peck, 425. This ex-parte Commission was pronounced by many people in England, and by some critics of the Administration in America, to be an impertinence and to be unrecognizable by Great Britain. Though Her Majesty's Government never directly recognized the Commission, it furnished documents for its use, upon request of the State Department, with amiability. (Foreign Relations, 1896, 242-44.) Olney's justification of the Commission is condensed into one sentence of dispatch no. 804: “Being entitled to resent and resist any sequestration of Venezuelan soil by Great Britain, [the United States] is necessarily entitled to know whether such sequestration has occurred or is now going on." (Foreign Relations, 1895, 1, 560.) See Noyes, Forty Years of American Finance, 250-51. ger signal to the country, and made the American public consider more soberly the fact that the English Foreign Office and the American Government had each expressed itself in a final manner. What step would be taken next and who could take it without sacrificing dignity? The English press behaved with exemplary moderation and echoed the views which were expressed by the Parliamentary leaders of both political parties, namely, that a collision between the two countries over such a small matter was unthinkable and would somehow be avoided. Olney seems to have been surprised by the violence of the explosion of jingo feeling and adopted the sensible course of saying no more until the storm could subside. Fortune favored him. Mr. Rhodes has made vivid what happened. The interval between December 17, 1895, and January 2, 1896 [he says], was a gloomy period.... I remember that on the evening of January 2, I asked General Francis A. Walker what way there was out of the situation when each nation had practically given the other an ultimatum. "One or the other," he said, "must crawl, but the news in to-night's paper shows the resolution of the difficulty." This was the report of Dr. Jameson's raid into the Transvaal.1 The German Emperor's astonishing telegram of sympathy to President Kruger, following the Jameson Raid, effectively diverted the attention of the English public to the prospect of a falling-out with Germany. On the 4th, President Cleveland appointed a commission to investigate the Venezuelan boundary under the law which Congress had passed for him. 1 Rhodes, History, VIII, 450. ΧΙ VENEZUELA - THE SUCCESSFUL SETTLEMENT HE first move in the direction of an adjustment was TH made by England. On the 12th of January, Lord Playfair, a former Liberal Member in the House of Commons who had recently been raised to the peerage in recognition of his many services to public philanthropy and education, a man of seventy-five years who had married an American wife and who was probably regarded as a promising agent because of his considerable personal acquaintance in the States, called at the American Embassy with certain suggestions from Salisbury and Chamberlain. The gist of these was that England found it difficult, first, to acquiesce vaguely in the large claims which had been advanced in the name of the Monroe Doctrine, and, second, to submit subjects who had established bona fide settlements to the jeopardies of an arbitration. Would the United States, Lord Playfair inquired, meet these difficulties by agreeing to a European conference on the Monroe Doctrine and to an arbitration of all disputed territory exclusive of "settlements"? A conference, to which the United States should invite all the European Powers who had interests in America, would, he urged, benefit the United States, for it would practically write a definition of the Doctrine into the law of nations. On the other hand, the exclusion of "settlements" from arbitration would enable England to stick to a policy which was obviously important to the Empire. Bayard immediately cabled a sum mary of this interview and expressed a strong personal endorsement of the conference proposal.1 But Olney cabled back: Suggestions coming through Lord Playfair highly appreciated, and desire for speedy, as well as rightful, adjustment of Venezuelan boundary controversy fully reciprocated. But the United States is content with existing status of Monroe Doctrine, which, as well as its application to said controversy, it regards as completely and satisfactorily accepted by the people of the Western Continents. It does not favor, therefore, proposed conference of powers.2 In this cable he also hinted that arbitration might be arranged on such terms that long-continued occupation of territory should be taken into account by the arbitrators. Playfair and Bayard continued, however, to discuss the other half of the English suggestion, and on the 20th Bayard cabled that settlements were said not to overlap the Schomburgk line anywhere, and that the British contended, as a point of principle, that settlements ought to be excluded from arbitration. He further reported, or proposed, "Definition of settlements to be arranged." a This narrowed the difference to a point at which Olney was invited to say, "Everything appears to be conceded except settlements; let's proceed to agree about settlements." But the difficulty was that Great Britain seemed to want to define them out of the arbitration; that is, to predetermine certain territory as settled and withhold it 1 Bayard to Olney, Jan. 13, 1896. Appendix IV. |