* The second article in these treaties read: "In each individual
case the high contracting parties, before appealing to the Permanent
Court of Arbitration, shall conclude a special agreement defining
clearly the matter in dispute."

President Taft was perhaps more interested in this problem than in any
other. His Secretary of State, Elihu Root, reopened negotiations and,
in 1908 and 1909, drew up a large number of treaties in a form which met
the wishes of the Senate. Before the Administration closed, the United
States had agreed to submit to arbitration all questions, except those
of certain classes especially reserved, that might arise with Great
Britain, France, Austro-Hungary, China, Costa Rica, Italy, Denmark,
Japan, Hayti, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Paraguay, Spain, Sweden,
Peru, San Salvador, and Switzerland.

Such treaties seemed to a few fearsome souls to be violations of the
injunctions of Washington and Jefferson to avoid entangling alliances,
but to most they seemed, rather, to be disentangling. It was, indeed,
becoming increasingly apparent that the world was daily growing smaller
and that, as its parts were brought together by rail and steamships, by
telegraph and wireless, more and more objects of common interest
must become subject to common regulation. General Grant can hardly
be regarded as a visionary, and yet in 1873 in his second inaugural
address, he had said: "Commerce, education, and rapid transit of thought
and matter by telegraph and steam have changed all this.... I believe
that our Great Maker is preparing the world in His own good time, to
become one nation, speaking one language, and when armies and navies
will be no longer required."

Quietly, without general interest, or even particular motive, the United
States had accepted its share in handling many such world problems. As
early as 1875 it had cooperated in founding and maintaining at Paris an
International Bureau of Weights and Measures. In 1886 it joined in an
international agreement for the protection of submarine cables; in 1890,
in an agreement for the suppression of the African slave trade; in 1899,
in an agreement for the regulation of the importation of spirituous
liquors into Africa; in 1902, in a convention of American powers for the
Arbitration of Pecuniary Claims. In 1903 it united with various American
powers in an International Sanitary Convention; in 1905 it joined
with most countries of the world in establi