aties of extradition with Italy miscarriages
of justice have occurred owing to the refusal of that Government to
surrender its own subjects. Thus far our efforts to negotiate an amended
convention obviating this difficulty have been unavailing.

Apart from the war in which the Island Empire is engaged, Japan attracts
increasing attention in this country by her evident desire to cultivate
more liberal intercourse with us and to seek our kindly aid in
furtherance of her laudable desire for complete autonomy in her domestic
affairs and full equality in the family of nations. The Japanese Empire
of to-day is no longer the Japan of the past, and our relations with
this progressive nation should not be less broad and liberal than those
with other powers.

Good will, fostered by many interests in common, has marked our
relations with our nearest southern neighbor. Peace being restored along
her northern frontier, Mexico has asked the punishment of the late
disturbers of her tranquillity. There ought to be a new treaty of
commerce and navigation with that country to take the place of the one
which terminated thirteen years ago. The friendliness of the intercourse
between the two countries is attested by the fact that during this long
period the commerce of each has steadily increased under the rule of
mutual consideration, being neither stimulated by conventional
arrangements nor retarded by jealous rivalries or selfish distrust.

An indemnity tendered by Mexico as a gracious act for the murder in 1887
of Leon Baldwin, an American citizen, by a band of marauders in Durango
has been accepted and is being paid in installments.

The problem of the storage and use of the waters of the Rio Grande for
irrigation should be solved by appropriate concurrent action of the two
interested countries. Rising in the Colorado heights, the stream flows
intermittently, yielding little water during the dry months to the
irrigation channels already constructed along its course. This scarcity
is often severely felt in the regions where the river forms a common
boundary. Moreover, the frequent changes in its course through level
sands often raise embarrassing questions of territorial jurisdiction.

Prominent among the questions of the year was the Bluefields incident,
in what is known as the Mosquito Indian Strip, bordering on the Atlantic
Ocean and within the jurisdiction of Nicaragua. By the treaty of 1860
between Great Britain and Nicaragua t