AS MINISTER TO RUSSIA- 1892-1894 17 



now began to understand the fact which had so long 

 puzzled our State Department namely, that Russia did 

 not make common cause with us, though we were fighting 

 her battles at the same time with our own. But I struggled 

 on, seeing the officials frequently and doing the best that 

 was possible. 



Meantime, the arbitration tribunal was holding its ses 

 sions at Paris, and the American counsel were doing their 

 best to secure justice for our country. The facts were on 

 our side, and there seemed every reason to hope for a 

 decision in our favor. A vital question was as to how 

 extensive the closed zone for the seals about our islands 

 should be. The United States showed that the nursing 

 seals were killed by the Canadian poachers at a distance of 

 from one to two hundred miles from the islands, and that 

 killing ought not to be allowed within a zone of that ra 

 dius; but, on the other hand, the effort of the British 

 counsel was to make this zone as small as possible. They 

 had even contended for a zone of only ten miles radius. 

 But just at the nick of time Sir Eobert Morier intervened 

 at St. Petersburg. No one but himself and the temporary 

 authorities of the Russian Foreign Office had, or could 

 have had, any knowledge of his manceuver. By the means 

 which his government gave him power to exercise, he in 

 some way secured privately, from the underlings above 

 referred to as in temporary charge of the Foreign Office, 

 an agreement with Great Britain which practically recog 

 nized a closed zone of only thirty miles radius about the 

 Russian islands. This fact was telegraphed just at the 

 proper moment to the British representatives before the 

 tribunal; and, as one of the judges afterward told me, 

 it came into the case like a bomb. It came so late that 

 any adequate explanation of Russia s course was impos 

 sible, and its introduction at that time was strenuously 

 objected to by our counsel; but the British lawyers thus 

 got the fact fully before the tribunal, and the tribunal 

 naturally felt that in granting us a sixty-mile radius 

 double that which Russia had asked of Great Britain for 



II.-2 



