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Government have committed the United States to the principle of arbitration irrevocably, unequivocally, and we have urged it in season and out of season on the rest of mankind.

Sir, I can not detain the Senate by more than beginning upon the expressions that have come from our Government upon this subject, but I will ask your indulgence while I call your attention to a few selected from the others.

On the 9th of June, 1874, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations reported and the Senate adopted this resolution:

Resolved, That the United States having at heart the cause of peace everywhere, and hoping to help its permanent establishment between nations, hereby recommend the adoption of arbitration as a great and practical method for the determination of international difference, to be maintained sincerely and in good faith, so that war may cease to be regarded as a proper form of trial between nations.

On the 17th of June, 1874, the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House adopted this resolution:

Whereas war is at all times destructive of the material interests of a people, demoralizing in its tendencies, and at variance with an enlightened public sentiment; and whereas differences between nations should in the interests of humanity and fraternity be adjusted, if possible, by international arbitration: Therefore, Resolved, That the people of the United States being devoted to the policy of peace with all mankind, enjoining its blessings and hoping for its permanence and its universal adoption, hereby through their representatives in Congress recommend such arbitration as a rational substitute for war; and they further recommend to the treaty-making power of the Government to provide, if practicable, that hereafter in treaties made between the United States and foreign powers war shall not be declared by either of the contracting parties against the other until efforts shall have been made to adjust all alleged cause of difference by impartial arbitration.

On the same 17th of June, 1874, the Senate adopted this resolution:

Resolved, etc., That the President of the United States is hereby authorized and requested to negotiate with all civilized powers who may be willing to enter into such negotiations for the establishment of an international system whereby matters in dispute between

different Governments agreeing thereto may be adjusted by arbitration, and, if possible, without recourse to war.

On the 14th of June, 1888, and again on the 14th of February, 1890, the Senate and the House adopted a concurrent resolution in the words which I now read:

Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That the President be, and is hereby, requested to invite, from time to time, as fit occasions may arise, negotiations with any Government with which the United States has, or may have, diplomatic relations, to the end that any differences or disputes arising between the two Governments which can not be adjusted by diplomatic agency may be referred to arbitration and be peaceably adjusted by such means.

This was concurred in by the House on the 3d of April, 1890.

Mr. President, in pursuance of those declarations by both Houses of Congress the Presidents and the Secretaries of State and the diplomatic agents of the United States, doing their bounden duty, have been urging arbitration upon the people of the world. Our representatives in The Hague conference of 1899, and in The Hague conference of 1907, and in the Pan American conference in Washington, and in the Pan American conference in Mexico, and in the Pan American conference in Rio de Janeiro were instructed to urge and did urge and pledge the United States in the most unequivocal and urgent terms to support the principle of arbitration upon all questions capable of being submitted to a tribunal for a decision.

Under those instructions Mr. Hay addressed the people of the entire civilized world with the request to come into treaties of arbitration with the United States. Here was his letter. After quoting from the resolutions and from expressions by the President he said:

Moved by these views, the President has charged me to instruct you to ascertain whether the Government to which you are accredited, which he has reason to believe is equally desirous of advancing the principle of international arbitration, is willing to

conclude with the Government of the United States an arbitration treaty of like tenor to the arrangement concluded between France and Great Britain on October 14, 1903.

The treaties made by Senate because of the

That was the origin of this treaty. Mr. Hay were not satisfactory to the question about the participation of the Senate in the make-up of the special agreement of submission. Mr. Hay's successor modified that on conference with the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate, and secured the assent of the other countries of the world to the treaty with that modification. We have made 25 of these treaties of arbitration, covering the greater part of the world, under the direction of the Senate of the United States and the House of Representatives of the United States and in accordance with the traditional policy of the United States, holding up to the world the principle of peaceful arbitration.

One of these treaties is here, and under it Great Britain is demanding that the question as to what the true interpretation of our treaty about the canal is shall be submitted to decision and not be made the subject of war or of submission to what she deems injustice to avoid war.

In response to the last resolution which I have read, the concurrent resolution passed by the Senate and the House requesting the President to enter into the negotiations which resulted in these treaties of arbitration, the British House of Commons passed a resolution accepting the overture. On the 16th of July, 1893, the House of Commons adopted this resolution:

Resolved, That this house has learnt with satisfaction that both Houses of the United States Congress have, by resolution, requested the President to invite from time to time, as fit occasions may arise, negotiations with any government with which the United States have or may have diplomatic relations, to the end that any differences or disputes arising between the two governments which can not be adjusted by diplomatic agency may be referred to arbitration and peaceably adjusted by such means, and that this house, cordially sympathizing with the purpose in view, expresses the hope that Her Majesty's Government will lend their

ready coöperation to the Government of the United States upon the basis of the foregoing resolution.

Her Majesty's Government did, and thence came this treaty. Mr. President, what revolting hypocrisy we convict ourselves of, if after all this, the first time there comes up a question in which we have an interest, the first time there comes up a question of difference about the meaning of a treaty as to which we fear we may be beaten in an arbitration, we refuse to keep our agreement? Where will be our self-respect if we do that? Where will be that respect to which a great nation is entitled from the other nations of the earth?

I have read from what Congress has said.

Let me read something from President Grant's annual message of December 4, 1871. He is commenting upon the arbitration provisions of the treaty of 1871, in which Great Britain submitted to arbitration our claims against her, known as the Alabama claims, in which Great Britain submitted those claims, where she stood possibly to lose but not possibly to gain anything, and submitted them against the most earnest and violent protest of many of her own citizens. Gen. Grant said:

The year has been an eventful one in witnessing two great nations speaking one language and having one lineage, settling by peaceful arbitration disputes of long standing and liable at any time to bring those nations into costly and bloody conflict. An example has been set which, if successful in its final issue, may be followed by other civilized nations and finally be the means of returning to productive industry millions of men now maintained to settle the disputes of nations by the bayonet and by broadside.

Under the authority of these resolutions our delegates in the first Pan American conference at Washington secured the adoption of this resolution April 18, 1890:

ARTICLE 1. The Republics of North, Central, and South America hereby adopt arbitration as a principle of American international law for the settlement of the differences, disputes, or controversies that may arise between two or more of them.

And this:

The International American Conference resolves that this conference, having recommended arbitration for the settlement of disputes among the Republics of America, begs leave to express the wish that controversies between them and the nations of Europe may be settled in the same friendly manner.

It is further recommended that the Government of each nation herein represented communicate this wish to all friendly powers.

Upon that Mr. Blaine, that most vigorous and virile American, in his address as the presiding officer of that first Pan American conference in Washington said:

If, in this closing hour, the conference had but one deed to celebrate we should dare call the world's attention to the deliberate, confident, solemn dedication of two great continents to peace and to the prosperity which has peace for its foundation. We hold up this new Magna Charta, which abolishes war and substitutes arbitration between the American Republics, as the first and great fruit of the International American Conference. That noblest of Americans, the aged poet and philanthropist, Whittier, is the first to send his salutation and his benediction, declaring, "If in the spirit of peace the American conference agrees upon a rule of arbitration which shall make war in this hemisphere well-nigh impossible, its sessions will prove one of the most important events in the history of the world."

President Arthur in his annual message of December 4, 1882, said, in discussing the proposition for a Pan American conference:

I am unwilling to dismiss this subject without assuring you of my support of any measure the wisdom of Congress may devise for the promotion of peace on this continent and throughout the world, and I trust the time is nigh when, with the universal assent of civilized peoples, all international differences shall be determined without resort to arms by the benignant processes of arbitration.

President Harrison in his message of December 3, 1889, said concerning the Pan American conference:

But while the commercial results which it is hoped will follow this conference are worthy of pursuit and of the great interests they have excited, it is believed that the crowning benefit will be found in the better securities which may be devised for the maintenance of peace among all American nations and the settlement of all contentions by methods that a Christian civilization can approve.

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