3H VENEZUELA AND AFTER 



and by cable great streams of protest against 

 rupture in fact or in feeling. Friendly re 

 sponses from America came promptly in reas 

 suring volume. Influential groups on both sides 

 of the ocean demanded that, no matter how 

 tight and tangled the knot made by diplomacy, 

 it be opened by the methods of peace, not of 

 war. Arbitration for the settlement of disputes 

 between the kindred peoples became within a 

 few weeks the theme of an extremely energetic 

 and wide-spread agitation, guided by co-operat 

 ing leaders of the intellectual classes of both 

 nations. 



While this unofficial sentiment was taking 

 active shape, there was much uneasiness lest the 

 diplomatists should not see their way, after so 

 peremptory a disagreement, to a dignified re 

 sumption of intercourse about the Venezuelan 

 question. A counter-irritant to oversensitive- 

 ness on this ground in the British Foreign Office 

 was found in the acute conditions that arose in 

 a far distant part of the empire less than a fort 

 night after Cleveland s disturbing message was 

 published. Jameson s ill-starred raid into the 

 Transvaal met its humiliating end on January 

 2, 1896, and on the following day the German 

 Emperor s congratulatory despatch to the Boer 



