the Senate upon this plan of reciprocity, because I have put my best efforts into this French treaty, and if it is not to be ratified, of course there is no propriety in my going and making Government embarrassments in this respect. If this highly advantageous treaty cannot be approved, I consider it vain to attempt any other in Europe."

"Government embarrassment!" indeed; not merely involving his own Government but the unlucky foreigner who has been devoting his time and thought in all good faith to the negotiation of a treaty, which, after being signed, sealed, and delivered, he finds to his surprise and indignation, is not worth the paper it is written on! Who would be an American diplomatist? How exhausting must be those explanations to European Powers who believe that a treaty between two foreign ministers is a treaty and not merely a pourparler or a protocol !1

It is hardly necessary to recall here all the incidents of the regrettable attempts to abrogate the ClaytonBulwer treaty.

It affected the American imagination as something grand and heroic to stand at the mouth of the canal, sword and pistol in hand, and defy the nations of the earth to attack it. But a simple agreement with the Powers to refrain from attacking it was too tame and pacific to afford them any interest.

The absolute impossibility of inducing certain Americans to look at any international subject on the basis of international usages is shown conclusively by

1 Hamilton predicted the future "instability in foreign policy, due to changes in the executive and in public sentiment, and rendering necessary the participation of a comparatively small council or senate in the management of this department."

one writer in speaking of "brutal British obstruction of the Isthmian canal."

That continuity of policy and the identification of the nation with itself throughout all epochs fails of comprehension by the masses, and of commendation by many Americans who ought to know something of international honour, is only too clear. Take such a recent utterance of Mr. Josiah Quincy, a Massachusetts statesman, as the following, concerning Cuba, not delivered, be it known, in the haste of platform speaking or to a newspaper reporter, but penned soberly in black and white in the pages of a leading review :

"In spite of the solemn resolution, we are not bound to exclude any policy which may be found for the best interest both of the people, of the island, and of ourselves. If annexation is the outcome indicated by every dictate of statesmanship, and of mutual interest, the dead hand of the Fifty-fifth Congress cannot hold us back from it."

What, we may ask this scion of an honourable name, what do the nations of the earth know about the Fiftyfifth Congress? What do Cuba and the Cubans know of the Fifty-fifth Congress? What is the Fifty-fourth Congress? or the Twenty-fourth? or the Eighty-sixth ? It was not the Fifty-fifth Congress that bound itself by solemn bond and covenant, but the American people, through its assembled representatives. Covenants may be broken, resolutions may be annulled, but this is worse than cynicism.

Indeed, we may very well question whether the political habits of Americans fit them for success in the sphere of world-politics. Their long freedom from

"entangling alliances;" their irresponsibility for the moral effect of their own words; their reckless contempt for foreign Powers, who are not on their own scale of prosperity or population, has been a bad training-school of diplomacy. And at home the same spirit is witnessed in the popular indifference to purity and effectiveness in official administration. As we shall see in another chapter, the idea of a trained service of strict business methods, and the absence of personal or party favouritism in the administration of government, is only in embryo in America.

If America is to be a world-power, it is obvious that she must exercise her powers as these are exercised by other nations.

She must, as one of her citizens advises, "wheel into line, and follow the droit commun, the common law of all civilized peoples." The day of experiments in general government is past; let America reserve her ingenuity for legislation. She must acquiesce in the jus gentium, or law of nations.

Naturally after the Chinese episode all Europe was anxious to see America continue her international policy so auspiciously begun. They seek to egg on to Quixotic feats of arms in which she would surely be out of her element. Look at this strain from the redoubtable M. Urbain Gohier. He wants America to interfere in

Turkey, and as he declaims every Chancellerie in Europe shrieks with ribald laughter.

"The American Navy is powerful, while a Turkish Navy scarcely exists. Where is the possibility of war? There must be two to make a fight. To show the blood-stained Sultan a few battle-ships, and warn him that every human head that

falls with the knives of his assassins will be paid for by the destruction of one of his palaces, this would not be the work of a conqueror, but the action of a noble heart.

"For the great American Nation the rush would be nil, the cost insignificant, and the glory infinite. It would show that its prodigious material wealth has not stifled its feeling of chivalry; it would," etc.

Come on, America; come on, and mingle with us, fight with us, sink with us. Our caudal appendages have been incontinently severed; say, why should yours wag pendant?

Mr. Hay, as we have just seen, was ill-advised enough to take up the challenge.

Imperialism will inevitably demand that Congress shall support the policy of the Executive, and the latter must possess large powers of initiative. Otherwise it would be impossible to maintain the secrecy and reserve frequently indispensable to diplomatic success. Lack of continuity in America's foreign policy must place her at a disadvantage when dealing with other Powers whose diplomacy suffers no such arbitrary breaks.

The goal towards which the Expansionists are leading America is the Cabinet system of Government, which is inevitable for the country if she is to have wide-spread international relations.

But although American diplomacy is operative under great difficulties, there are now many Americans who are piously ready to cry, "Better a thousand times the perils of intimacy with other nations, and with the race at large, than the perils of isolation or of detachment from the race at large."

CHAPTER VII

THE MONROE POLICY

HAVING displayed Mr. Hay and his well-meant struggles to establish the New Diplomacy, let us now turn to a grave inconsistency in America's foreign relations which, if persisted in, threatens danger to the republic.

The Continent of Europe has a deep cause of offence against America in her dog-in-the-manger policy towards South America.

They see from afar a vast continent, thinly peopled, suitable to Europeans, full of natural resources, in short, one of the prizes of colonization in the world, which America coolly announces she will neither occupy herself nor let anybody else occupy.

Now, Germany is already a powerful physical factor in Brazil, and would like political paramountcy; Italy, whose sons are already settled in vast numbers in Argentina, casts longing eyes on that country; France desires ardently the control of Guiana; Austria-Hungary wishes Uraguay. Not for selfish purposes; not in order to press the yoke of tyranny upon the necks of the people, but in order to find an outlet for their surplus population and energies, in obedience to that normal twentieth-century law of which I have spoken.

Is it, then, surprising that certain statesmen should