de was the act of Congress in
accepting the President's statement that the repeal of the Panama
discrimination was a necessary preliminary to the success of American
foreign policy. Mr. Wilson's declaration, that, unless this legislation
should be repealed, he would not "know how to deal with other matters of
even greater delicacy and nearer consequence" had puzzled Congress and
the country. The debates show the keenest curiosity as to what the
President had in mind. The newspapers turned the matter over and over,
without obtaining any clew to the mystery. Some thought that the
President had planned to intervene in Mexico, and that the tolls
legislation was the consideration demanded by Great Britain for a free
hand in this matter. But this correspondence has already demolished that
theory. Others thought that Japan was in some way involved--but that
explanation also failed to satisfy.

Congress accepted the President's statement trustfully and blindly, and
passed the asked-for legislation. Up to the present moment this passage
in the Presidential message has been unexplained. Page's papers,
however, disclose what seems to be a satisfactory solution to the
mystery. They show that the President and Colonel House and Page were at
this time engaged in a negotiation of the utmost importance. At the very
time that the tolls bill was under discussion Colonel House was making
arrangements for a visit to Great Britain, France, and Germany, the
purpose of which was to bring these nations to some kind of an
understanding that would prevent a European war. This evidently was the
great business that could not be disclosed at the time and for which the
repeal of the tolls legislation was the necessary preliminary.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 44: The Committee to celebrate the centennial of the signing
of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812. The plan to make
this an elaborate commemoration of a 100 years' peace between the
English-speaking peoples was upset by the outbreak of the World War.]

[Footnote 45: This was the designation Mr. Bryan's admirers sometimes
gave him.]

[Footnote 46: The reference is to President Roosevelt's speech at the
Guildhall in June, 1910.]

[Footnote 47: This refers to the declination of the British Government
to be represented at the San Francisco world exhibition, held in 1915.]

[Footnote 48: John Bassett Moore, at that time the very able counsellor
of the State Department.]

[Footnote