74 o UNITED STATES HISTORY 



the result of suggestions made by President Taft, general arbitration treaties between 

 the United States on the one side and Great Britain and France on the other were 

 signed at Washington. Questions of national honour were brought with- 

 ^ n ^ e scope of the treaties; all " justiciable " disputes which could not be 

 settled by diplomacy were to be submitted to the Hague Tribunal or 

 some other body. In some quarters the treaties were regarded as heralding the dawn 

 of universal peace; in others as a dangerous step in advance of public opinion, likely to 

 breed friction and misunderstandings. Mr. Roosevelt opposed them. The Senate 

 committee on Foreign Relations asserted that they would rouse into malign and danger- 

 ous activity a series of disputes now happily set at rest. Amendments were adopted in 

 1912 which left the Senate free in each case to determine whether the matter were 

 justiciable or not, and which altogether excluded from arbitration under the treaty the 

 alleged indebtedness of the states and other questions. Thus devitalised, the treaties 

 remained unratified. 



In the autumn of 1912 a controversy arose with England which remained unsettled 

 at the end of the year, but seemed likely to raise the question of arbitration in a concrete 

 form. The matter at issue depended upon the interpretation of the Hay- 

 Pauncefote treaty. Congress passed on August 16, 1912, a bill providing 

 for the government and regulating the use of the Panama Canal. The 

 bill empowered the President to fix and alter tolls, admitted free of tolls American 

 ships engaged in the coastwise trade, gave the Interstate Commerce Commission author- 

 ity to exclude ship lines financially affiliated with railroads, and admitted to free registry 

 under the American flag foreign-built ships owned exclusively by Americans. The 

 English government protested while the bill was before Congress, urging that a subsidy 

 calculated especially with reference to the use of the canal would not be in accordance 

 with treaty obligations, and that it would be impossible to frame regulations for the 

 exemption of ships in the coast-wise trade which would not constitute a preference to 

 American shipping and therefore an infraction of the Hay-Pauncefote treaty. President 

 Taft, however, signed the bill. Opinion in the United States was sharply divided both 

 on the question itself and on the procedure adopted; but without doubt a large part of 

 the American people held either that, as the President believed, the terms of the treaty 

 were being observed or that the circumstances attending the construction of the canal 

 were so different from those contemplated in the treaty that the treaty itself should be 

 regarded as having practically lapsed. 



American relations with the Latin-American Republics have been complicated by 

 revolutionary movements in Mexico, Nicaragua, Cuba, and elsewhere. So serious did 

 the disturbances become in Mexico during the early part of 1911, that an 

 army of 20,000 was for a time mobilised on the frontier to prevent viola- 

 republlcs. tion f neutrality and protect American interests, should occasion arise. 

 Again, a year later, several regiments had to be despatched to patrol the 

 border; and in September 1912, when armed bands of revolutionists came into conflict 

 with the troops on American soil, the situation became exceedingly critical. Only the 

 forbearance of President Taft saved the country from the perils of intervention. In 

 May 1912 several hundred marines were hurried to Cuba, where a negro insurrection 

 had assumed serious proportions. But again intervention proved unnecessary, Pres- 

 ident Gomez showing himself able to suppress the rebels. In October marines were 

 landed in Santo Domingo to protect the customs houses, some of which had been seized 

 by revolutionists. The collection of the customs revenue on that island has been super- 

 vised by agents of the United States Government for the past five years. In order to 

 restore the finances of Honduras and Nicaragua in the same way President Taft nego- 

 tiated treaties with them in 191 1, under which the United States would make arrange- 

 ments for a loan, supervise the customs service, and apply a certain part of the receipts 

 to the payment of the foreign debt. Although the Senate refused to ratify the treaties, 

 some of their provisions were carried out informally, an American being placed in charge 

 of the Nicaraguan customs and a considerable loan being made by American bankers. 



