We must also appreciate that Cleveland’s act seemed to Godkin a base surrender to jingo elements in American politics which he had hitherto been opposing. As we have said, the Evening Post had lamented what it thought the defiant tone of Harrison’s foreign policy. This it attributed to Blaine’s desire to be a “brilliant” Secretary of State. When he held that position under Garfield, he had promptly embroiled the United States with Chile, and it had fallen to President Arthur to appoint a new Secretary and extricate the nation. Seven years later he had returned, and what had he done? He had made an effort to exercise the right of search on British vessels in the Bering Sea, had filled Harrison’s administration with the resulting controversy, and had maneuvered the United States into a position in which it was defeated in arbitration proceedings. Since Cleveland’s inauguration the editors of the Evening Post had constantly deplored the bellicose talk indulged in by a considerable group of Republicans. Henry Cabot Lodge in the spring of 1895 had predicted a war in Europe, hinted that we might be drawn into it, and said that the British fortifications at Halifax, Bermuda, Kingston, and Esquimault “threaten us.” The same month Senator Frye, at Bridgeport, had called for a strong navy, and declared: “We [the Republicans] will show people a foreign policy that is American in every fiber, and hoist the American flag on whatever island we think best, and no hand shall ever pull it down.” Senator Cullom wanted Cuba instantly annexed. Godkin was justified in writing (Feb. 13, 1895):
The number of men and officials in this country who are now mad to fight somebody is appalling. Navy officers dream of war and talk and lecture about it incessantly. The Senate debates are filled with predictions of impending war and with talk of preparing for it at once. With the country under the necessity for the most stringent economy, appropriations of $12,000,000 for battleships are urged upon Congress, not because we need them now, but because we shall need them “in the next great war.” Most truculent and bloodthirsty of all, the Jingo editors keep up a din day after day about the way we could cripple one country’s fleet and destroy another’s commerce, and fill the heads of boys and silly men with the idea that war is the normal state of a civilized country.
To the early stages of the controversy between Venezuela and England over the western boundary of British Guiana neither the Evening Post nor any other journal paid close attention. Mr. Godkin did not think that the Monroe Doctrine could properly be stretched to cover American interference in the quarrel; and when Secretary Olney asked Great Britain to submit the dispute to arbitration, and Lord Salisbury refused, Godkin defended Salisbury’s action upon the ground that we had tended to prejudge the case in Venezuela’s favor. As yet the editor was not disturbed, trusting the President implicitly. But suddenly, on Dec. 17, 1895, Cleveland sent Congress a message asking for the appointment of a commission to determine the boundary, and stating that it would be the duty of the United States “to resist by every means in its power, as a wilful aggression upon its rights and interests,” the taking by Great Britain of any lands that the commission assigned to Venezuela.
“I was thunderstruck,” Godkin wrote Charles Eliot Norton. He described the week that followed as “the most anxious I have known in my career.” For the first three days the United States seemed to rise in unanimous support of Cleveland. Republican newspapers like the Tribune, which had never said a good word for him, rushed to his assistance. The editor saw so much jingoism among even intelligent people, he said, “that the prospect which seemed to open itself before me was a long fight against a half-crazed public, under a load of abuse, and the discredit of foreign birth, etc., etc.”; but he never hesitated.
The first afternoon there was time to write only a paragraph editorial expressing consternation at the doctrine that the United States should “assert such ownership of the American hemisphere as will enable us to trace all the boundary lines on it to our own satisfaction in defiance of the rest of the world.” On the second day the Evening Post devoted both its column editorials to the subject. The first, “Mr. Cleveland’s Coup d’Etat,” drew a striking contrast between war, with all it involved of suffering, loss, and moral deterioration, and the triviality of the possible cause, a wrangle about an obscure boundary line. The second reviewed the Venezuela correspondence, and attempting to refute Cleveland’s arguments, said that his message “humiliates us by its self-contradictions,” and characterized his proposal for a boundary commission as “ludicrously insulting and illogical.”
In later issues the Evening Post mingled invective with calm, sound argument. It tried to show that Salisbury’s claims in British Guiana had been, in the main, supported by incontestable evidence. It traced the history of our relations with Venezuela, and demonstrated that the little republic had missed few opportunities to treat us insolently. It declared that a commission of inquiry might be proper, but that it was indefensible to create one as a hostile proceeding, with a threat of war behind it. Months earlier, during the Nicaragua dispute, the Evening Post had issued in pamphlet form an essay by John Bassett Moore upon the Monroe Doctrine, showing that it gave the United States no right of interference in such affairs, and this it now sold in large quantities. Godkin unfortunately prejudiced his case by two errors—he failed to allow for the strong sentiment of most Americans in favor of a flexible interpretation of the Doctrine, and he unjustly hinted that Cleveland was eyeing a third term.
But the editor’s fears that he would stand alone were at once dissipated. The World lost no time in denouncing the belligerent message as “A Great Blunder,” and so did the Journal of Commerce. Among prominent Democratic newspapers which took their stand with the Evening Post were the Charleston News and Courier, Wilmington Every Evening, Memphis Commercial, and Louisville Post. The Cleveland Plain Dealer summed up the view of a multitude of thoughtful men in a little jest: “Teacher:—Johnny, now tell us what we learn from the Monroe Doctrine. Johnny:—That the other fellow’s wrong.” Prof. J. W. Burgess of Columbia contributed to the Evening Post a column article, in which he said: “On the whole, I have never read a more arrogant demand than that now set up by President Cleveland and Secretary Olney, in all diplomatic history.” Half a dozen times in the next fortnight the Post filled one or two columns with letters of congratulation and support. Its circulation rose materially. “In fact,” wrote Godkin when it was all over, with a touch of his eternal irony, “our course has proved the greatest success I have ever had and ever known in journalism.”
As every one knows, Lord Salisbury finally accepted arbitration, and the result was that the British obtained practically all the territory for which they had contended. The peaceful ending of the episode, and the gratification of the public over the President’s assertion of the national dignity, as most men viewed it, left Cleveland with increased prestige. The editors of the Evening Post never changed their opinion, but the incident, of course, did not materially shake their esteem of Cleveland. When he went out of office, the newspaper reviewed his eight years as the most satisfactory since the Civil War, praised his plain speech, courage, and honesty highly, and declared that he had made “a deeper mark upon the history of his time than any save the greatest of his predecessors.”