cent foreign
policy could not prevent foreign complications. Growing anti-Japanese
sentiment in California led to the passage of a State law against
Japanese land holdings. There was much resentment in Japan, and protest
was made to the Federal Government. Mr. Bryan, as Secretary of State,
had to make a personal trip to Sacramento to intercede with the
Californians; and at one time (May, 1913) military men appeared to feel
that the situation was extremely delicate. But the crisis passed over,
the Californians modified the law, and though in its amended form it
suited neither the Californians nor the Japanese, the issue remained in
the background during the more urgent years of the war. Toward the very
end of the Wilson Administration it was to come back into prominence.

Another question which caused much disturbance to the new
Administration was the question of Panama Canal tolls. An act passed in
1912 had exempted American coastwise shipping passing through the canal
from the tolls assessed on other vessels, and the British Government
had protested against this on the ground that it violated the
Hay-Pauncefote treaty of 1901, which had stipulated that the canal
should be open to the vessels of all nations "on terms of entire
equality." Other nations than England had an interest in this question,
and there was a suspicion that some of them were even more keenly if
not more heavily interested; but England took the initiative and the
struggle to save the exemption was turned, in the United States, into a
demonstration by the Irish, Germans and other anti-British elements.
Innate hostility to England, the coastwise shipping interests, formed
the backbone of the opposition to any repeal of this exemption, but the
Taft Administration had held that the exemption did not conflict with
the treaty (on the ground that the words "all nations" meant all
nations except the United States), and British opposition to the
fortification of the canal, as well as the attitude of a section of the
British press during the Canadian elections of 1911, had created a
distrust of British motives which was heightened by the conviction of
many that the Hay-Pauncefote treaty had been a bad bargain.

It was understood early in President Wilson's Administration that he
believed the exemption was in violation of the treaty, but not until
October did he make formal announcement that he intended to ask
Congress to repeal it. The question did not come i