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During his recent conversations with you, President Roosevelt came to the conclusion that however unjust it might be on the part of Germany to declare war under the present circumstances, it was nevertheless possible, and that it should be avoided by the use of conciliation, and that among the concessions which we might make a conference would without doubt be the least undesirable.

When communicating to the President our reply to the German note, be good enough to tell him that his ideas and advice inspired it.

Thus it was that the Conference of Algeciras was arranged. It met early in the following year, and established a régime for Morocco which solved the crisis for the next few years. In the biography of the President, written at the end of the Great War by his friend, Mr. W. M. Thayer, there is just a hint that if the President had known as much about Germany as Spring-Rice told him later, perhaps he would have let events take their course when the Kaiser first demanded the Conference. He may have thought a little wistfully of a message sent by King Edward VII. "You may remember," the President wrote to Mr. Taft during the Moroccan Affair, "the King's message to me through Harry White, and his earnest warning to me that I should remember that England was our real friend and that Germany was only a makebelieve friend." To Whitelaw Reid, Ambassador in London, he wrote just after the Algeciras Conference: "I am immensely amused at the European theory (which cannot, however, be the theory of the French Government) that I am taken in by the Kaiser." His own view was that "in this Algeciras matter . . . while I was most suave and pleasant with the Emperor, yet when it became necessary at the end I stood him on his head with great decision." He added: "I am very polite to him, but I am ready on an instant's notice to hold my own." 3

2

1 Theodore Roosevelt, an Intimate Biography, by W. M. Thayer (1919), p. 228.

Bishop, op. cit., I, 473.

The Life of Whitelaw Reid, by Royal Cortissoz, II, 332-3.

CHAPTER XXVIII

YEARS OF QUIET

President Roosevelt did not offer himself for election in 1908, but supported the candidature of William Howard Taft, who had been his Secretary for War. Mr. Taft was born at Cincinnati in 1857; his father was a distinguished graduate of Yale College, who ultimately became United States Attorney-General (under President Grant) and Minister to the Court of Austria, and, afterwards, of Russia. William H. Taft also graduated at Yale, and thereafter went from success to success, doing everything well that he touched, whether in his profession of the law, or in politics and administration, until he became, with Mr. Root, after the death of John Hay, President Roosevelt's right-hand man. History will class him with that select group of eminent public servants who, as the historian Tacitus said of the Emperor Galba, by the the judgment of all men would have been called capable of rule if they had never ruled. Mr. Taft by his ability, experience and achievements was marked out for the Presidency; yet, when his time came, he did not prove to be one of the great Presidents. On the other hand, except over the Panama Canal Tolls, he made no serious mistakes in foreign affairs; and relations with Great Britain were, on the whole, excellent. The British Ambassador at Washington in the years 1907-12 was James Bryce, afterwards Lord Bryce, an eminent politician and man of letters, the author of the best book on The American Commonwealth. In this work, which is replete with knowledge and judgment, the author described the United States with deep sympathy and appreciation; and the roseate hue which he cast over it all naturally evoked a congenial atmosphere around him at Washington. While Ambassador he frequently lectured in different large centres. Belonging to the Liberal or Whig school of politics, he undoubtedly did much to familiarise the American public with the ideals of modern British public life, of which he was the most voluminous exponent. In

1913 he was succeeded at the Embassy by Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, a professional diplomatist, imbued with the best traditions of the Foreign Office, having been early trained under Lord Granville himself.

Throughout all this time the London Embassy was held by Whitelaw Reid, whose life dated back to the year 1837, who had seen some service in the Civil War, and had succeeded the great Horace Greeley (in 1872) as editor of the New York Tribune. Whitelaw Reid was, in some ways, the public man most like John Hay. He was not a great statesman indeed, but he was a man of the world in the best sense: he had a European outlook, he was wealthy, cultured, influential. Before he came to Great Britain as regular Ambassador in 1905, he had been twice on Special Mission (in 1897 to the Jubilee Celebrations of Queen Victoria, and in 1902 to the Coronation of King Edward VII), and had been Minister to Germany and to France.

Reid came to his Embassy in London in June, 1905. The United States provided no quarters for its diplomatic representative, but Reid's ample means procured him a splendid home, Dorchester House, the stateliest of the Park Lane mansions. Some people in the United States thought that the magnificent household of their Ambassador in London was rather undemocratic, but President Roosevelt wholly approved. He wrote to Reid (November 13, 1905):

As for those criticisms upon your method of life-all I hope is that they bother you as little as they bother me. I think a man should live in such a position as he has been accustomed to live. It is as it is with my Cabinet here. If I found just the right man for a given Cabinet position and he happened to be a poor man, I should not in the least object to his living in the hall bedroom of a boarding-house. On the contrary, I should be rather pleased at it. On the other hand, as Root can afford a big house and can afford to entertain, I think it would be rather shabby, rather mean, if he lived in a way that would be quite proper for others that would, for instance, be quite proper for me if I were in the Cabinet. I never feel in the least embarrassed because at Sagamore Hill, at my own house, we have a maid to wait on the table and open the door, instead of having a butler.1

So Whitelaw Reid continued to dispense magnificent hospitality, with an appropriate retinue of butler and footmen. When not

1 The Life of Whitelaw Reid, by Royal Cortissoz (1921), II, 303. For an account and criticism of the British and American Diplomatic Services, cp. J. D. Whelpley, British-American Relations (1924), chaps. XI-XIII.

entertaining guests at Dorchester House he was doing so at the country seat which he rented from Lord Lucas, Wrest Park, Bedfordshire. It was one of England's stately homes, with timbered park, a herd of deer, magnificent gardens, the house itself a grand pile, with a picture-gallery of Sir Joshua Reynolds and the old English masters.

Mr. Reid seems to have felt thoroughly at home in Great Britain. He took the line that among the Powers of Europe Great Britain was the natural friend of the United States. The truth seems to me that our relations with England are of far greater importance to us than those with Germany-there being more points at issue, more chances of friction. . . . I cannot personally see anything to be gained from unusually good relations with Germany which would compensate us for the least jar in our relations with Great Britain, since I know of no serious question we have to settle with Germany, while there are certainly a good many with Great Britain still unsettled." 1

The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs who was in office when Reid entered upon his Mission was the Marquis of Lansdowne. His relations with the American Embassy were wholly cordial. The Conservative Government, however, fell at the end of the year 1905. The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the new Liberal Government of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was Sir Edward Grey. His views on the necessity for harmony with America were the same as Whitelaw Reid's; for he put in his programme "friendship and good feeling between England and the United States, an alliance with Japan, and the maintenance of cordial relations with France." "2

Among the causes of friction between Great Britain and the United States, the North Atlantic Fisheries were the hoariest. Several Conventions concerning these had been made, had served their time, and had expired. Only the Treaty of October 20, 1818, stood firm, surviving every temporary Convention. This Treaty stipulated that "the inhabitants of the said United States shall have for ever, in common with the subjects of His Britannic Majesty, the liberty to take fish of every kind" on certain specified parts of the British North American coast; outside these specified parts, the United States renounced any claim to fish

1 To President Roosevelt, June 19, 1906, in Cortissoz, op. cit., II, 331. 2 Cortissoz, op. cit., II, 312.

within three marine miles of the British North American coast. The exercise of this liberty of fishing by subjects of the United States was a fertile source of friction, more especially as the policy of Protection for home industry became more and more the policy of both sides. The peoples of Canada and Newfoundland wished, quite naturally, to keep the benefits of fishing in their own waters as much as possible for their own members. The people of the United States, equally naturally, wished to make the most of the liberty, which was their right under the Treaty of 1818, while maintaining a highly protective tariff of their own against all foreigners. As the United States refused to give any reciprocal advantages (other than those stated in the Treaty of 1818), the Canadian and Newfoundland Governments, especially the latter, were careful to enforce all the regulations which they could, so as to secure the minimum advantages allowed by the Treaty to the United States, and the maximum to their own subjects. Whitelaw Reid stated the case against the Canadians and Newfoundlanders as follows:

Boiled down, the case hasn't a look they ought to take much pride in. We have certain fishing rights guaranteed to us by the Treaty of 1818 and absolutely undisputed. They wanted us to give them some privileges in our ports, which I personally (following Hay's lead) would have been glad to see them get, though the Senate thought differently. Because they don't get them, they turn around now and deliberately avow the purpose to avenge themselves by damaging, and, as far as they can, destroying, our rights under a treaty which has been respected for nearly a century.1

The Canadians and Newfoundlanders could reply that the Treaty of 1818 contained nothing against local regulations; some regulalations were obviously necessary. Against this it was contended that local regulations for the Fisheries in Treaty Waters and on the Treaty Coast would require the assent of the United States as one of the Contracting Parties.

From a consideration of these contentions it at once becomes clear that the Treaty of 1818 was being differently construed, quite honestly, by the two Parties who had made it. There was every reason, accordingly, to submit it to a third impartial party for a decision. The United States Secretary of State, Mr. Root, was one of the most eminent of international jurists, and he gladly 1 To Nicholas Murray Butler, (?) August, 1906, in Cortissoz, op. cit., II, 323.

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