In a two-hours’ talk on that February day Mr. Cleveland had reviewed some of the chief acts of his administration, and I asked him to tell me, as far as he felt free to do so, the reasons that had called forth his Venezuela message. He spoke at length upon the subject, and with much freedom. Expressing in substance the impression his words made upon me, I wrote at the time as follows of the message and of Mr. Cleveland’s part in bringing the dispute to a settlement:
These words sounded like war, but they insured peace. How can anybody who reads them with his eyes fully open fail to understand what had happened—or rather was about to happen? No gentle and ladylike remonstrance would have changed the course of proximate events. The ponderous Executive fist had to come down with a thump that made people leap to their feet, and it did. The blow was heard and heeded. First there was a British blue book showing a decent respect for the opinions of mankind. Then there were negotiations. Now Venezuela and her powerful co-disputant have honorably come together in a treaty, and the long controversy goes to arbitration.
“But we were in danger of war, there was a panic, and stock exchange values shrank four hundred millions.” Let the Stock Exchange think on its mercies. A war averted does not shrink values a tenth part as much as a war fought.
It will be well to say in the beginning that the merits of the boundary dispute and the immediate results of the arbitration are not particularly under examination in this article. The finding of the Paris tribunal was a compromise. The extreme contentions of both disputants were denied, although those of Venezuela were abridged much more than the claims of Great Britain. But had England obtained at Paris every square mile of territory to which, in the ultimate stretch of her audacity, she had asserted right and title, the triumph of President Cleveland and of the Monroe Doctrine would have been in no wise dimmed.
The vital essence of that triumph lay in this, that under the constraint laid upon her by Mr. Cleveland’s message of December 17, England submitted to a judicial determination of her title to territory which for more than half a century she had sought to wrest without due proof of ownership from a country too weak to resist her continuing encroachments.
“If a European Power by an extension of its boundaries takes possession of the territory of one of our neighboring republics against its will, and in derogation of its rights,” said Mr. Cleveland in his message, “it is difficult to see why, to that extent, such European Power does not thereby attempt to extend its system of government to that portion of this continent which is taken,” and this, the message continued, “is the precise action which President Monroe declared to be ‘dangerous to our peace and safety.’”
For Great Britain to take territory on this continent before proving title was an act of which the United States by its President complained as “a willful aggression upon its rights and interests.” Great Britain heeded the protest, yielded to our demand for a judicial examination and finding, and Venezuela had her day in court, and that, not the actual and precise position of the boundary line as finally traced, was the whole point of the matter so far as the United States and the Monroe Doctrine were involved in it. That was our triumph.
Historically, the dispute over the boundary between British Guiana and Venezuela dates from the discovery of America and the Spanish occupation. Following in the track of Columbus, who in his third voyage, in 1498, had sailed along the Orinoco delta, his first sight of the mainland of America, the Spaniards, early in the sixteenth century, had explored the country in search of gold. The El Dorado of fable was supposed to lie somewhere in the region between the upper waters of the Orinoco and Essequibo. By right of discovery, exploration, and settlement, for settlements were established later, the Spaniards gained the right to call Guayana their own, for that name was at first given to the South American shore of the Caribbean Sea.
