d into a joint agreement with
Great Britain, Japan, and Russia, which is actually serving as a sort of
international game law. The problems of Alaska that remain are therefore
those of internal development.

Diplomacy, however, is not concerned solely with sensational episodes.
American ministers and the State Department are engaged for the most
part in the humdrum adjustment of minor differences which never find
their way into the newspapers. Probably more such cases arise with Great
Britain, in behalf of Canada, than with any other section of the globe.
On the American continent rivers flow from one country into the other;
railroads carry goods across the border and back again; citizens labor
now in one country, now in the other; corporations do business in
both. All these ties not only bind but chafe and give rise to constant
negotiation. More and more Great Britain has left the handling of
such matters to the Canadian authorities, and, while there can be no
interchange of ministers, there is an enormous transaction of business
between Ottawa and Washington.

While there has of late years been little talk of annexation, there have
been many in both countries who have desired to reduce the significance
of the boundary to a minimum. This feeling led in 1911 to the
formulation of a reciprocity agreement, which Canada, however, was
unwilling to accept. Yet, if tariff restrictions were not removed, other
international barriers were as far as possible done away with. In 1898 a
commission was appointed to agree upon all points of difference. Working
slowly but steadily, the commissioners settled one question after
another, until practically all problems were put upon a permanent
working basis. Perhaps the most interesting of the results of this
activity was the appointment in 1908 of a permanent International
Fisheries Commission, which still regulates that vexing question.

Another source of international complication arose out of the Atlantic
fisheries off Newfoundland, which is not part of Canada. It is off
these shores that the most important deep-sea fishing takes place. This
fishery was one of the earliest American sources of wealth, and for
nearly two centuries formed a sort of keystone of the whole commercial
life of the United States. When in 1783 Great Britain recognized
American independence, she recognized also that American fishermen
had certain rights off these coasts. These rights, however, were not
suffic