368 CONCLUSION 



at each end of it was in the eighties stirred with 

 conflict. On the Atlantic the inshore fisheries 

 again caused trouble; on the Pacific the fur- 

 seals of Alaska. Both disputes were duly set 

 tled by rational administration and finally by 

 arbitration. Then came the successive man 

 ifestations of American self-consciousness in 

 connection with Samoa, Hawaii, Chile, Cuba. 

 A restless, sensitive condition of the popular 

 mind was discernible to an acute observer. 

 The British Foreign Office for some reason failed 

 to note this phenomenon. Likewise unno 

 ticed was the coincidence of a high-strung and 

 irritable chief executive at Washington with a 

 cynical quondam Saturday Review essayist as 

 foreign minister in Downing Street. The in 

 ternal politics of both nations contributed con 

 ditions that favored an explosion, and the 

 explosion duly occurred. 



Cleveland s policy as to the Venezuelan 

 boundary announced to the world, with seismic 

 suddenness and violence, that the American 

 democracy was of age. Its cherished Monroe 

 Doctrine was declared the basis of much the 

 same authority that European powers were 

 assuming in Africa and Asia through the doc 

 trines of Hinterland and &quot;sphere of influence.&quot; 



