is time, any
more than at the other time. The Commission went to work, and, after
investigating the facts, decided in our favor.

Our list of boundary episodes finished, I must touch upon the affair
with the Kaiser regarding Venezuela's debts. She owed money to Germany,
Italy, and England. The Kaiser got the ear of the Tory government under
Salisbury, and between the three countries a secret pact was made
to repay themselves. Venezuela is not seldom reluctant to settle her
obligations, and she was slow upon this occasion. It was the Kaiser's
chance--he had been trying it already at other points--to slide into a
foothold over here under the camouflage of collecting from Venezuela her
just debt to him. So with warships he and his allies established what he
called a pacific blockade on Venezuelan ports.

I must skip the comedy that now went on in Washington (you will find it
on pages 287-288 of Mr. Thayer's John Hay, Volume II) and come at once
to Mr. Roosevelt's final word to the Kaiser, that if there was not an
offer to arbitrate within forty-eight hours, Admiral Dewey would sail
for Venezuela. In thirty-six hours arbitration was agreed to. England
withdrew from her share in the secret pact. Had she wanted war with us,
her fleet and the Kaiser's could have outmatched our own. She did not;
and the Kaiser had still very clearly and sorely in remembrance what
choice she had made between standing with him and standing with us a few
years before this, upon an occasion that was also connected with Admiral
Dewey. This I shall fully consider after summarizing those international
episodes of our Civil War wherein England was concerned.

This completes my list of minor troubles with England that we have had
since Canning suggested our Monroe Doctrine in 1823. Minor troubles, I
call them, because they are all smaller than those during our Civil War.
The full record of each is an open page of history for you to read at
leisure in any good library. You will find that the anti-English
complex has its influence sometimes in the pages of our historians, but
Professor Dunning is free from it. You will find, whatever transitory
gusts of anger, jealousy, hostility, or petulance may have swept over
the English people in their relations with us, these gusts end in a
calm; and this calm is due to the common-sense of the race. It revealed
itself in the treaty at the close of our Revolution, and it has been the
ultimate controlling factor in