tter be
referred to the judgment of the tribunal at The Hague.

Alluding to the use made of the liberties won in the struggle for
emancipation from Spain by the native land of Miranda, Bolivar, and
Sucre, on the part of the country which had been in the vanguard of
the fight for freedom from a foreign yoke, a writer of Venezuela once
declared that it had not elected legally a single President; had not put
democratic ideas or institutions into practice; had lived wholly under
dictatorships; had neglected public instruction; and had set up a large
number of oppressive commercial monopolies, including the navigation
of rivers, the coastwise trade, the pearl fisheries, and the sale of
tobacco, salt, sugar, liquor, matches, explosives, butter, grease,
cement, shoes, meat, and flour. Exaggerated as the indictment is and
applicable also, though in less degree, to some of the other backward
countries of Hispanic America, it contains unfortunately a large measure
of truth. Indeed, so far as Venezuela itself is concerned, this critic
might have added that every time a "restorer," "regenerator," or
"liberator" succumbed there, the old craze for federalism again broke
out and menaced the nation with piecemeal destruction. Obedient,
furthermore, to the whims of a presidential despot, Venezuela
perpetrated more outrages on foreigners and created more international
friction after 1899 than any other land in Spanish America had ever
done.

While the formidable Guzman Blanco was still alive, the various
Presidents acted cautiously. No sooner had he passed away than disorder
broke out afresh. Since a new dictator thought he needed a longer term
of office and divers other administrative advantages, a constitution
incorporating them was framed and published in the due and customary
manner. This had hardly gone into operation when, in 1895, a contest
arose with Great Britain about the boundaries between Venezuela and
British Guiana. Under pressure from the United States, however, the
matter was referred to arbitration, and Venezuela came out substantially
the loser.

In 1899 there appeared on the scene a personage compared with whom
Zelaya was the merest novice in the art of making trouble. This was
Cipriano Castro, the greatest international nuisance of the early
twentieth century. A rude, arrogant, fearless, energetic, capricious
mountaineer and cattleman, he regarded foreigners no less than his
own countryfolk, it would seem, as obje