ton lectures are now republished in expanded form on the day of the dedication of the Graduate College he so strongly supported and did not live to see realized, and also the dedication day of the Cleveland Memorial Tower, erected by national subscription and built into the Graduate College for which he labored.

The lectures here reprinted are disclosures of the meaning of important happenings in our national history. They are even more; for they make clear as light that plain, strict, unswerving and unaffected honesty which was the vigorous central power in Grover Cleveland's life. It is well his words should be heard again at the time we gather to dedicate his national monument.

ANDREW F. WEST.

The Graduate College

Princeton University

October 22, 1913

THE VENEZUELAN BOUNDARY

CONTROVERSY

I

There is no better illustration of the truth that nations and individuals are affected in the same manner by like causes than is often furnished by the beginning, progress, and results of a national boundary dispute. We all know that among individuals, when neighbors have entered upon a quarrel concerning their division-line or the location of a line fence, they will litigate until all account of cost and all regard for the merits of the contention give place to a ruthless and all-dominating determination, by fair means or foul, to win; and if fisticuffs and forcible possession are resorted to, the big, strong neighbor rejoices in his strength as he mauls and disfigures his small and weak antagonist.

It will be found that nations behave in like fashion. One or the other of two national

I

neighbors claims that their dividing-line should be defined or rectified in a certain manner. If this is questioned, a season of diplomatic untruthfulness and finesse sometimes intervenes for the sake of appearances. Developments soon follow, however, that expose a grim determination behind fine phrases of diplomacy; and in the end the weaker nation frequently awakens to the fact that it must either accede to an ultimatum dictated by its stronger adversary, or look in the face of war and a spoliation of its territory; and if such a stage is reached, superior strength and fighting ability, instead of suggesting magnanimity, are graspingly used to enforce extreme demands if not to consummate extensive conquest or complete subjugation.

I propose to call attention to one of these unhappy national boundary disputes, between the kingdom of Great Britain and the South American republic of Venezuela, involving the boundary-line separating Venezuela from the English colony of British Guiana, which adjoins Venezuela on the east.

Venezuela, once a Spanish possession, declared her independence in 1810, and a few

years afterward united with two other of Spain's revolted colonies in forming the old Colombian federal union, which was recognized by the United States in 1822. In 1836 this union was dissolved and Venezuela became again a separate and independent republic, being promptly recognized as such by our Government and by other powers. Spain, however, halted in her recognition until 1845, when she quite superfluously ceded to Venezuela by treaty the territory which as an independent republic she had actually owned and possessed since 1810. But neither in this treaty nor in any other mention of the area of the republic were its boundaries described with more definiteness than as being "the same as those which marked the ancient viceroyalty and captaincygeneral of New Granada and Venezuela in the year 1810."

England derived title to the colony of Guiana from Holland in 1814, by a treaty in which the territory was described as "the Cape of Good Hope and the establishments of Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice." No boundaries of those settlements or "establishments" were given in the treaty, nor does it appear that