s obstacle to a just and honorable
solution by amicable agreement.

A long unsettled dispute as to the extended boundary between the
Argentine Republic and Chile, stretching along the Andean crests from
the southern border of the Atacama Desert to Magellan Straits, nearly a
third of the length of the South American continent, assumed an acute
stage in the early part of the year, and afforded to this Government
occasion to express the hope that the resort to arbitration, already
contemplated by existing conventions between the parties, might prevail
despite the grave difficulties arising in its application. I am happy to
say that arrangements to this end have been perfected, the questions of
fact upon which the respective commissioners were unable to agree being
in course of reference to Her Britannic Majesty for determination.
A residual difference touching the northern boundary line across the
Atacama Desert, for which existing treaties provided no adequate
adjustment, bids fair to be settled in like manner by a joint
commission, upon which the United States minister at Buenos Ayres has
been invited to serve as umpire in the last resort.

I have found occasion to approach the Argentine Government with a view
to removing differences of rate charges imposed upon the cables of an
American corporation in the transmission between Buenos Ayres and the
cities of Uruguay and Brazil of through messages passing from and
to the United States. Although the matter is complicated by exclusive
concessions by Uruguay and Brazil to foreign companies, there is strong
hope that a good understanding will be reached and that the important
channels of commercial communication between the United States and the
Atlantic cities of South America may be freed from an almost prohibitory
discrimination.

In this relation I may be permitted to express my sense of the fitness
of an international agreement whereby the interchange of messages over
connecting cables may be regulated on a fair basis of uniformity.
The world has seen the postal system developed from a congeries of
independent and exclusive services into a well-ordered union, of which
all countries enjoy the manifold benefits. It would be strange were the
nations not in time brought to realize that modern civilization, which
owes so much of its progress to the annihilation of space by the
electric force, demands that this all-important means of communication
be a heritage of all people