tendency in our foreign relations. At the beginning of England's
seizure of American merchantmen carrying cargoes to neutral European
countries, the State Department lodged individual protests, but no heed
was paid to them by the London officials. Then the United States made
public the negotiations seeking to accomplish by publicity what a
previous exchange of diplomatic notes failed to do.

Discussing this action of the President in an editorial on "Diplomacy
in the Dark," the New York _World_ said:

"President Wilson's protest to the British Government is a clear,
temperate, courteous assertion of the trade rights of neutral countries
in time of war. It represents not only the established policy of the
United States but the established policy of Great Britain. It voices
the opinion of practically all the American people, and there are few
Englishmen, even in time of war, who will take issue with the
principles upheld by the President. Yet a serious misunderstanding was
risked because it is the habit of diplomacy to operate in the dark.

"Fortunately, President Wilson by making the note public prevented the
original misunderstanding from spreading. But the lesson ought not to
stop there. Our State Department, as Mr. Wickersham recently pointed
out in a letter to the _World_, has never had a settled policy of
publicity in regard to our diplomatic affairs. No Blue Books or White
Books are ever issued. What information the country obtains must be
pried out of the Department. This has been our diplomatic policy for
more than a century, and it is a policy that if continued will some day
end disastrously."

Speaking in Atlanta in 1912, President Wilson stated that this
government would never gain another foot of territory by conquest.
This dispelled whatever apprehension there was that the United States
might seek to annex Mexico. Later, in asking Congress to repeal the
Panama Tolls Act of 1912, the President said the good will of Europe
was a more valuable asset than commercial advantages gained by
discriminatory legislation.

Thus at the outset of President Wilson's first administration, foreign
powers were given to understand that Mr. Wilson believed in the power
of public opinion; that he favoured publicity as a means of
accomplishing what could not be done by confidential negotiations; that
he did not believe in annexation and that he was ready at any time to
help end the war.

III

Before the