ner in which she should settle a difference
with another country. Salisbury declined. On December 17th Cleveland
announced to England that the Monroe Doctrine applied to every stage of
our national Life, and that as Great Britain had for many years refused
to submit the dispute to impartial arbitration, nothing remained to us
but to accept the situation. Moreover, if the disputed territory was
found to belong to Venezuela, it would be the duty of the United
States to resist, by every means in its power, the aggressions of Great
Britain. This was, in effect, an ultimatum. The stock market went to
pieces. In general American opinion, war was coming. The situation was
indeed grave. First, we owed the Monroe Doctrine's very existence to
English backing. Second, the Doctrine itself had been a declaration
against autocracy in the shape of the Holy Alliance, and England was not
autocracy. Lastly, as a nation, Venezuela seldom conducted herself or
her government on the steady plan of democracy. England was exasperated.
And yet England yielded. It took a little time, but arbitration settled
it in the end--at about the same time that we flatly declined to
arbitrate our quarrel with Spain. History will not acquit us of
groundless meddling and arrogance in this matter, while England comes
out of it having again shown in the end both forbearance and good
manners. Before another Venezuelan incident in 1902, I take up a burning
dispute of 1903.

As Oregon had formerly been, so Alaska had later become, a grave source
of friction between England and ourselves. Canada claimed boundaries in
Alaska which we disputed. This had smouldered along through a number of
years until the discovery of gold in the Klondike region fanned it to
a somewhat menacing flame. In this instance, history is as unlikely
to approve the conduct of the Canadians as to approve our bad manners
towards them upon many other occasions. The matter came to a head in
Roosevelt's first administration. You will find it all in the Life of
John Hay by William R. Thayer, Volume II. A commission to settle
the matter had dawdled and failed. Roosevelt was tired of delays.
Commissioners again were appointed, three Americans, two Canadians,
and Alverstone, Lord Chief Justice, to represent England. To his friend
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, about to sail for an English holiday,
Roosevelt wrote a private letter privately to be shown to Mr. Balfour,
Mr. Chamberlain, and certain other