tle for possession.
The arbitration tribunal, which met in Paris in 1899, decided on a
division of the disputed territory but found that the claim of Great
Britain was, on the whole, more nearly correct than that of Venezuela.

Cleveland's startling and unconventional method of dealing with this
controversy has been explained by all kinds of conjectures. For example,
it has been charged that his message was the product of a fishing
trip on which whisky flowed too freely; on the other hand, it has been
asserted that the message was an astute political play for the thunder
of patriotic applause. More seriously, Cleveland has been charged by one
set of critics with bluffing, and by another with recklessly running
the risk of war on a trivial provocation. The charge of bluffing comes
nearer the fact, for President Cleveland probably had never a moment's
doubt that the forces making for peace between the two nations would be
victorious. If he may be said to have thrown a bomb, he certainly had
attached a safety valve to it, for the investigation which he proposed
could not but give time for the passions produced by his message to
cool. It is interesting to note in passing that delay for investigation
was a device which that other great Democrat, William Jennings Bryan,
Cleveland's greatest political enemy, sought, during his short term as
Secretary of State under President Wilson, to make universal in a series
of arbitration treaties--treaties which now bind the United States and
many other countries, how tightly no man can tell.

While, however, Cleveland's action was based rather on a belief in peace
than on an expectation of war, it cannot be dismissed as merely a
bluff. Not only was he convinced that the principle involved was worth
establishing whatever the cost might be, but he was certain that the
method he employed was the only one which could succeed, for in no other
way was it possible to wake England to a realization of the fact that
the United States was full-grown and imbued with a new consciousness of
its strength. So far was Cleveland's message from provoking war that it
caused the people of Great Britain vitally to realize for the first time
the importance of friendship with the United States. It marks a change
in their attitude toward things American which found expression not only
in diplomacy, but in various other ways, and which strikingly revealed
itself in the international politics of the next few year