AS VENEZUELA COMMISSIONER- 1895-1896 125 



obliged to maintain the strictest secrecy. To have allowed 

 our conclusions to get out would have thwarted the whole 

 purpose of the investigation; but a person who claimed 

 to represent one of the leading presses in Washington 

 seemed to think that consideration of no special impor 

 tance, and came to our rooms, virtually insisting on re 

 ceiving information. Having been told that it could not 

 be given him, he took his revenge by inserting a sensa 

 tional paragraph in the papers regarding the extrava 

 gance of the commission. He informed the world that we 

 were expending large sums of public money in costly 

 furniture, in rich carpets, and especially in splendid sil 

 verware. The fact was that the rooms were furnished 

 very simply, with plain office furniture, with cheap car 

 pets, and with a safe for locking up the more precious doc 

 uments intrusted to us and such papers as it was impor 

 tant to keep secret. The &quot; silverware consisted of two 

 very plain plated jugs for ice-water ; and I may add that 

 after our adjournment the furniture was so wisely sold 

 that very nearly the whole expenditure for it was returned 

 into the treasury. 



These details would be utterly trivial were it not that, 

 with others which I have given in other places, they indi 

 cate that prostitution of the press to sensation-mongering 

 which the American people should realize and reprove. 



While I have not gone into minor details of our work, I 

 have thought that thus much might be interesting. Of 

 course, had these reminiscences been written earlier, this 

 sketch of the interior history of the commission would 

 have been omitted ; but now, the award of the Paris tri 

 bunal having been made, there is no reason why secrecy 

 should be longer maintained. Never, before that award, 

 did any of us, I am sure, indicate to any person what our 

 view as to the line between the possessions of Venezuela 

 and Great Britain was ; but now we may do so, and I feel 

 that all concerned may be congratulated on the fact that 

 two tribunals, each seeking to do justice, united on the 

 same line, and that line virtually the same which one of 



