Anglo-American Memories

by George W. Smalley

The Briton is so constituted that it is probable he admires Lord Alverstone, formerly Richard and then Sir Richard Webster, almost as much for his renown in sport as for his professional eminence, of which to be Tubman and then Postman in the Court of Exchequer was one part. He was, and is, an athlete, and used to win running races, and perhaps still could, being now only sixty-seven years of age. You used always to hear him spoken of as "Dick Webster." At Cambridge University he had such eminence in the study of mathematics as entitled him to be thirty-fifth Wrangler; and in the more humane letters so much proficiency as made him third-class classic. In the Schools, that is, he was less energetic than on the track.

But success at the Bar does not depend on the Differential Calculus or on Latin and Greek. Within ten years after being called he was Q.C., and having found a seat in Parliament, became Attorney-General in Lord Salisbury's Government in 1885-6. Within seventeen years he had reached the highest unjudicial place in his profession. He held the same office three times; then was made Master of the Rolls; the judge who in point of dignity comes next after the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice, and finally, in 1900, Lord Chief Justice of England. During his service at the Bar he had been a great patent lawyer; with an income which rumour put at £30,000, or $150,000; for this country perhaps the maximum, outside of the parliamentary Bar. Such is a bare outline of the career, in all respects distinguished, honourable, stainless, of the man on whom Canada poured out criticisms which did not stop short of vituperation. They need no answer. If they did, it is not my place to answer them. Not one human being in England believed Lord Alverstone capable of the dishonesty which the Canadian papers imputed to him.

I am afraid I must add that Sir Wilfrid Laurier was one of Lord Alverstone's critics. The feeling throughout Canada was so strong that he had perhaps no choice, or no choice but between that and either resignation or defeat. No pilot could weather that storm. The feeling of Canada was emotional. What he said, he said as Prime Minister. Yet whether as Prime Minister or as Sir Wilfrid Laurier he must have rejoiced in the settlement; even though it were at the expense of Canadian claims. I do not think Canada had any valid claims, or had a case which before any impartial tribunal could have been maintained. But whether she had or not, it was for her interest to see them once for all swept away and peace and good feeling established between her and her neighbour.

Our Canadian friends must have been aware at the time that they stood alone. In their attacks on Lord Alverstone they had no backing in England. No English newspaper ever suggested that Lord Alverstone had voted otherwise than according to his conscience. England knew him to be incorruptible and unassailable, and laughed at the suggestion that he did not understand the Canadian claims. It was because he understood them that he decided against them.

The English, it is true, have thought themselves unlucky in arbitrations, and have fallen into the habit of expecting an adverse decision from an arbitration tribunal. The Geneva tribunal instilled into them that reluctant expectation. But as this was not an arbitration but simply a Commission for determining the true boundary line of Alaska, they accepted in a sporting spirit the judgment of their own Lord Chief Justice. How could they do otherwise? On the constitution of the tribunal, and on the claims of Senator Lodge and Senator Turner to be impartial, they had remarks to make. On the other hand, were the Canadian members impartial?

There can be no harm now in saying that Sir Wilfrid looked upon the Alaskan situation with gloomy forebodings. So did everybody on both sides of the border; everybody who understood the situation and would give himself the trouble to think, and had a sense of responsibility. In the disputed belt of territory, Alaskan territory which the United States claimed and Canada claimed, gold might at any moment be discovered. There would come a rush from both sides. We all know what the gold-miners are—a rough lot, not always recognizing any law but the law of the strongest and the most covetous. They make laws for themselves, and even those they do not keep. Many of them are desperate, many ruined, many outlaws; many have no other hope than in finding gold somewhere and getting it anyhow. They are all armed. Revolvers are the arbitrators whose decisions they respect. In the presence of new-found gold, what are boundaries or titles or international relations? Inevitably they would cross the border into the debatable land, Canadians and Americans alike. What would the flag mean to bankrupt gamblers who saw once more the hope of riches? There would be disputes. There would be collisions. At any moment a shot might be fired, and then what? The risk was awful.

This, I have no doubt, was the risk Sir Wilfrid had in mind. It meant nothing less than the possibility of war between Great Britain and the United States. Gold once discovered, the possibility became a probability. Could a Canadian statesman, could an American statesman, think of that hazard and not be willing to do much, or even to concede much, in order to avert it? Yet of all the men of both nationalities with whom, then and after, I have talked about Alaska, Sir Wilfrid alone had a clear view of the danger, and he alone was willing to do what was absolutely necessary to make war impossible. For that reason he stands forth a great patriot, a great Canadian, a great Englishman. World-wide as is his fame he deserves a greater. It is not yet possible to do him full justice. It may never be. But his views and proposals and large wisdom, as they were set forth in these conversations, put him, in my opinion, in the very front rank of statesmen of his time. The impression they made on the President and Mr. Hay was profound. They too were statesmen but their hands were tied.

It is further to be borne in mind that the North-western border was in a ferment. That great belt of powerful States conterminous with Canada had long nursed its grievances. The Alaska question did not stand alone. It never has. There were questions of duties, of tariffs, of lumber rights, of the rights of lake and canal navigation, of fisheries, Atlantic and Pacific, and many others—thirteen specific subjects in all. They had once been all but settled. The High Commissioners in the last conference at Washington had come to terms on all but Alaska when, in an unlucky moment, Lord Herschell, believing he could force the hand of the Americans, put forth an ultimatum out of a blue sky. It must be all or none. There must be no settlement which does not include Alaska. Lord Herschell had been thought of a contentious mind all through. Americans bore with that, but to an ultimatum, an agreement at the mouth of a gun, we would not submit. So the whole went off. What was the result? There came a time when Sir Wilfrid himself had to announce that there would be no more pilgrimages to Washington. Nor have there been.