condemned in the Cassiar District of British Columbia, for some act committed in Canadian territory, from the place where he was convicted to the place where he was to be imprisoned, Canadian constables crossed the Stickine River. They encamped with Martin at a point some thirteen miles up the river from its mouth. There Martin attempted unsuccessfully to escape, and made an assault on an officer. Upon his arrival at Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, he was tried and convicted for his attempted escape and attack upon the constable; and the court sentenced him. Our Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, protested vigorously against this infringement of the territorial sovereignty of the United States in the Territory of Alaska. After an investigation into the facts of the case, the Dominion Government acknowledged the justness of Secretary Fish's protest by "setting Peter Martin at liberty without further delay;" and thus recognized that the Canadian constables who had Martin in their charge when they encamped on the Stickine thirteen miles up from the mouth of the river, were on United States soil, and so that Canada's jurisdiction in that region did not extend to tide-water.

A striking truth of what the best official geographers of the British Government thought was the true boundary, is "Admiralty Chart No. 787" of the British Admiralty, that gives the northwest coast of America from "Cape Corrientes, Mexico, to Kadiak Island." This was prepared in 1876 by F. J. Evans, R. N., published in 1877, and corrected up to April, 1898, only a few months before the opening of the Quebec Conference. On this chart of the British Admiralty,

the frontier of the United States descends the one hundred and forty-first degree of longitude west from Greenwich, and then, advancing on the Continent, but passing around the sinuosities of the coast so as to give a continuous lisière of territory cutting off the Dominion of Canada from all contact with any of the fiords or sinuosities that bulge into the continent between Mount Saint Elias and the Portland Canal, the frontier is drawn to the head of the Portland Canal at about fifty-six degrees, and then down that sinuosity, striking Dixon's Entrance at fifty-four degrees forty minutes. Thus the British Admiralty itself upholds the territorial claims held and maintained by both the Russian and the United States Governments.

It is one thing to ask the United States to agree, as Mr. Fish was willing to do in 1872, to have a joint survey to examine the country in the interior in order to locate exactly where the frontier runs. But it is quite another thing to ask the United States to submit to arbitration their right to all the sinuosities of the coast in their entirety above fifty-four degrees forty minutes, and the unbroken strip of territory round these sinuosities, which Great Britain recognized, from 1825 to 1867, as a part of Russia, and, since then, until recently, as a part of the United States. The more the subject is examined, the more evident does it become that there is nothing in the proposition of Canada and England which the United States should refer to arbitration.

PHILADELPHIA, January 27, 1902.

T. W. BALCH.

(The argument must close here.-ED. Nation.)

18

LETTERS AND PAPERS RELATING TO

WASHINGTON, D. C., March 17, 1902.

T. W. Balch, Esq., Philadelphia:

DEAR SIR:-I have received your book, "The AlaskoCanadian Frontier," and read it with much interest. I was especially attracted to your new maps.

I have not given the boundary question any attention since I read my paper before the Geographic Society and the details have largely passed out of my mind. I think there is some reference to the “Dryad" in one of H. H. Bancroft's books; also in some of the manuscript papers belonging to the Joint High Commission, but to these I do not have ready access.

Yours truly,

JOHN W. FOSTER.

NEW YORK, March 19th, 1902.

Thomas Willing Balch, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa.:

MY DEAR SIR:-I am very greatly obliged to you for the copy of your interesting monograph on the Alasko-Canadian Frontier. It seems to me that your argument is absolutely unanswerable.

*

No

cause has greater reason to pray to be delivered from its friends than that of international arbitration. It received its severest blow in the Behring Sea controversy and it would be fatally discredited if applied to such a question as this about the frontier.

I have good reason to believe that the statesmen of Great Britain understand this perfectly well but they are in great terror on account of the Canadian politicians. Under these circumstances there is nothing for this country to do but to stand firm and your advice in this direction is invaluable.

ALASKAN BOUNDARY.

REASONS WHY UNITED STATES MUST SUBMIT TO ARBITRATION.

CONCESSIONS MADE IN PAST NEGOTIATIONS PRECLUDE THIS GovERNMENT Now FROM RIGID ATTITUde.

To the Editor of The Evening Star:

A printed paper on "The Alasko-Canadian Frontier" by Thomas Willing Balch, of Philadelphia, is today circulated in the official and legislative circles of Washington by its author. Mr. Balch has summed up the claim of the United States admirably. He has also added several new and valuable items of information which have hitherto not been clearly and forcibly brought forward in behalf of our case by any one since the dispute first arose over this question in 1877 between Great Britain and ourselves.

But Mr. Balch has closed this publication of March, 1902, above cited, with these words: "The United States should never consent to refer such a proposition (the delimitation of the Alasko-Canadian boundary) to arbitration." Mr. Balch is not acquainted with certain mistakes made by high officials of our government in 1892, and again in 1897, over this subject. If he was, he would not have made use of the words quoted; he would have understood their futility and have left them unsaid.

What have our high officials done in the premises?

"The Star, Washington, D. C., March 26, 1902.

For the information of Mr. Balch, and the officials and legislators in especial who are getting his book, and the public generally, note the following facts:

On the 26th of August, 1892, the then Secretary of State John W. Foster, and the British minister, Sir Julian Pauncefote, entered into a "convention between the United States of America and the united kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland for the delimitation of the boundary line between the United States and the Dominion of Canada, dividing Alaska from British Columbia."

The terms of this convention created a joint commission to do that work-one commissioner for us and one for Canada. They were directed to examine into and agree upon a report on or before the expiration of two years from the date of their appointment. They failed to agree and their time was extended to the last day of 1895. Then they came to an agreement in so far as the location of the 141st meridian of west longitude was concerned, but they utterly failed to agree upon the line of the "thirtymile strip," and where only the shadowy ground for dispute has arisen or could arise.

The agreement of this commission as to the final location of the 141st meridian where it bisects our "thirty-mile strip," on the summit of Mt. St. Elias, was, for our case, a mischievous one; and when the light was turned on to it, March 12, 1897, the Senate refused to ratify the treaty confirming it, which was sent in by Richard Olney, January 30, 1897; and it is still hung up in the senate committee of foreign relations. This mischievous little boundary treaty con