of the facts." Shortly afterwards, the conclusion of the treaty was officially announced. I must leave the Foreign Office and Mr. Ballard Smith to settle between them the rather delicate point involved. But I was greatly disappointed that this suggestion came to nought, for it really seemed to provide a simple solution. And how easily one arbitration arrangement can be enlarged to include another, is exhibited by the recent extension of the range of the Commission now sitting at Paris upon the Anglo-French Niger dispute. I had previously expressed the pleasure with which the American Government would see some British Commissioners appointed to join their own, but this suggestion also fell flat at the time, though there are now indications that it may possibly be accepted. The wording of Mr. Bayard's letter to Lord Salisbury, asking for the British case, should remove the last excuse for refusal to arbitrate. In one of my messages I expressed the opinion that the American people would unanimously support the Government in war on behalf of arbitration. As soon as this was read (my messages were reprinted daily in almost every paper in the United States), I began to receive by every post dozens of letters from total strangers in all parts of the Union, thanking me in the most earnest terms for making clear in England this vital kernel of the American attitude. In a weak moment I had said "Yes" to the request of the original Romeike to be allowed to send me newspaper cuttings referring to my work. He sent them by the thousand, and the bill I have to pay is a sharp lesson to suppress curiosity. And in every one of these this point about arbitration is enthusiastically supported. There seems, therefore, no reason to doubt the fact. What, then, is going to be done? Lord Salisbury, Mr. Balfour, and Mr. Chamberlain; Lord Rosebery, Sir William Harcourt, and Mr. Morley, have all taken occasion to use the most conciliatory language in public, and to announce, in more or less sweeping terms, the British acceptance of the Monroe Doctrine. The Schomburgk line has disappeared from the controversy, and the British Blue Book containing our case has been promised to the Commission. But I am sorry to say that, in ous one. my opinion, we are not much nearer a conclusion than before. The question is still a most serious and, I fear, even a dangerAnd if words are not soon followed by acts, all these expressions of amity will only have made the matter worse, if the American people have to realise that they mean no actual acceptance of arbitration. Lord Salisbury himself is believed to hold a view which I fear can only lead nowhither. That is, that the boundary dispute should be settled upon the basis of occupation. But Venezuela, now backed by the United States, has always expressly protested against this very occupation as being an invasion of her rights. The American Government will probably reply that their object in proposing arbitration, and, in its absence, conducting an investigation for themselves, is precisely to determine what should be the limits of the British occupation, and that to propose to substitute occupation for arbitration is simply to beg the whole question. Moreover, Sir William Harcourt has proved, out of the mouth of Lord Iddesleigh, that in 1887 England still regarded the Convention of 1850 as valid, and this expressly forbade occupation. Another view, held by a distinguished statesman, is that we should await the report of the Venezuelan Commission. Then, if it supports our claims, well and good. If not, that we should say, "Very well, this report is your case; ours is in this Blue Book; now let us submit them both to a third person." This proposal seems to ignore the terms of the President's Message, which were as follows: "When such report is made and accepted, it will, in my opinion, 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 appropriation by Great Britain of any lands, or the exercise of governmental jurisdiction over any territory which, after investigation, we have determined of right to belong to Venezuela.” There is but one way out. Let us face the fact. And if we will not take that way, we must fight. But let it be remembered that Britain would be divided against herself in such a war. I believe, and hope, that no government could live a day that would wilfully go to war with the United States over this Venezuela boundary. We have too bad a position. We have already offered to Venezuela too many compromises. The stake is too trivial. The repeated requests of the United States have been too reasonable. They are perfectly willing to see us take every inch of Venezuela that we are entitled to. Their attitude at Corinto and now over the Yuruan outrage is one of absolute correctness. The stronger our case is-and I believe it is very strong-the readier we ought to be, under the circumstances, to arbitrate. In a day, we could secure a wider and deeper goodwill in America than we have ever possessed. And it is well within the bounds of possibility that this very year may see us forced to defend our national existence against a real enemy. Some silly critic has described the English appeal for arbitration as "anti-English." It is in all respects the most pro-English attitude. To me, as I wrote long ago, as, I believe, to most of my fellow countrymen, the British Empire is the most important impersonal consideration upon earth. And to preserve that Empire we must be ready to fight anybody, at any moment. The fates, in their horrible perversity, might even compel us to fight those who speak our own language, live under our own law, stand with us and against all the rest of the world for Anglo-Saxon liberty, and who might even, if the gods be kind, join us some day in imposing peace upon all nations. But we will not fight them because they ask us to prove our claim to a few hundreds of miles of Venezuelan swamp and forest, inhabited by nobody knows how many negroes, coolies and gold-hunters, who settled there, according to one of our own officials, in great part while they still believed it to be Venezuelan ground—or over a question which, trifling to us, is rightly or wrongly regarded by the other branch of the Anglo-Saxon race as vital to its national policy and honour. To arbitration over such a matter, in some manner and along some road, we must come. "One man with God is a majority," said Arnold of Rugby. And a great nation demanding arbitration in nonessentials, is irresistible. In admitting the fact, even at the eleventh hour, Britain would be setting an example to the world worthy of herself, and in highest harmony with her national ideals. HENRY NORMAN. SUPERCILIOUS and solitary in the esteem of some, a Bohemian in that of others, Verlaine has had his fanatic disciples-his traducers, merciless. A Grand Seigneur for friend, the Philistines for executioners! A Montesquiou Fezensac, a descendant of Henri IV.'s comrade at Coutras, it was who draped the fold of his shroud to the music of the poet's own verses, dropped like flowers upon the bier. At the very moment the subscribers of the Temps (mostly all shareholders) were falling foul of "Society" for making the funeral of an "old offender" almost a matter of public sensation. No sooner spoken, the word "old offender" brought upon Verlaine a shower of inappropriate comparisons with Villon.* I say inappropriate advisedly, for, in their mutual play of dagger, there is no possible link to discover between the work of these poets; and the fact that a poet of the nineteenth century, like a poet of the fifteenth, once knifed a rival, forms no logical reason for proclaiming a resemblance between their verses. The dagger still not sufficing, there remained the disorderliness of his life, and then La Fontaine was called on the scene. Thus the most delicate of the soul's poets, Verlaine, is compared with Villon, one of the most sombre thinkers of our national poetry; because, like Villon, Verlaine did not call in the police to avenge the blows of the heart. And then, again, Verlaine, the subtle sentimentalist, is compared with the sanest of reasoners, the protagonist of common sense, simply because neither one nor the other had any tendency to domestic life. What a singular method of criticism! Because * Villon also settled his own moral troubles without the help of the police. a man, whose worldly wisdom and absence of enthusiasm wrap the gems of his work in the moral of an "old man," as Lamartine said; because such a one forgot his landlord-the truth being that he had no lodging whatever, living as he did on the hospitality of two of the most excellent women of his time is this a reason for hazarding a comparison between Verlaine and La Fontaine ? and still less, if possible, between their works. What similarity can be established between a writer who thus resumes his philosophy: "I owe all to myself, to my own care, to my talent for placing my money,' " and the sensitive writer of "Bon pauvre, ton vêtement est léger"? What relation is there between the ant who jeers at the good-natured grasshopper with her dry "chantez, maintenant,' chantez, maintenant," or between him who prompts the ant's harsh speech and the apologist of the beggar? "Ton boire et ton manger sont, je le crains, Tristes et mornes; Seulement ton corps faible a dans ses reins, Des forces d'abstinence et de refus très glorieuses, Et des ailes vers les cieux entrevues impérieuses." Whoever saw or felt "imperious" wings float from the verses of La Fontaine to the reader, and bear him and the poet away, and above life? These absurd comparisons have, however, their excuse. They furnish copy. On the very day a contemporary of mark is carried off from the ranks of human society, the public, excited by the hunt of news, must find a full account of his life in their daily paper. The journalist, inadequately supplied with documents, is compelled to fill up his pages as best he can at a moment's notice. He makes fuel of every kind of wood, and hence such conjunctions and pell-mell parallelscomparisons between talents so foreign, often based on the fact that there was a single point of resemblance between the men. Thus is the person classified by the exterior side of his life, while here, on the contrary, a close glance reveals above all the essential difference between Verlaine and La Fontaine. Fable de "L'Homme et l'Ingratitude." |