ial decision their disputes, even those closely
touching honor, and this habit kept them steady.

In accepting arbitration in 1892, the United States practically gave up
her case, although Blaine undoubtedly believed it could be defended, and
in spite of the fact that it was ably presented by John W. Foster from
a brief prepared by the American counsel, Edward J. Phelps, Frederic R.
Coudert, and James C. Carter. The tribunal assembled at Paris decided
that Bering Sea was open and determined certain facts upon which a
subsequent commission assessed damages of nearly half a million against
the United States for the seizure of British vessels during the period
in which the American claim was being asserted. Blaine, however, did not
lose everything. The treaty contained the extraordinary provision that
the arbitration tribunal, in case it decided against the United States,
was to draw up regulations for the protection of the seal herds. These
regulations when drafted did not prove entirely satisfactory, and bound
only the United States and Great Britain. It required many years and
much tinkering to bring about the reasonably satisfactory arrangement
that is now in force. Yet to leave to an international tribunal not
merely the decision of a disputed case but the legislation necessary
to regulate an international property was in itself a great step in the
development of world polity. The charlatan who almost brought on war by
maintaining an indefensible case was also the statesman who made perhaps
the greatest single advance in the conservation of the world's resources
by international regulation.

CHAPTER IV. Blaine And Pan-Americanism

During the half century that intervened between John Quincy Adams and
James G. Blaine, the Monroe Doctrine, it was commonly believed, had
prevented the expansion of the territories of European powers in the
Americas. It had also relieved the United States both of the necessity
of continual preparation for war and of that constant tension in which
the perpetual shifting of the European balance of power held the nations
of that continent. But the Monroe Doctrine was not solely responsible
for these results. Had it not been for the British Navy, the United
States would in vain have proclaimed its disapproval of encroachment.
Nor, had Europe continued united, could the United States have withstood
European influence; but Canning's policy had practically destroyed
Metternich's dream of unit