408 MISCELLANEOUS 



ers clean of the responsibility. These men will have been as much 

 assaulted or murdered, as if slashed with knives or killed with bullets. 



It is to be hoped that the Government, that is to say Sir Robert 

 Bond, will hearken to the dignified prayer of our hardy Herring 

 fishers, and make their lives a little easier and their risks less hazard- 

 ous. If he refuses, on him the awful responsibility must rest. 



In connection with the whole vexed question the accompanying 

 extract from the New York Times makes instructive reading: 



"The singular thing about the present situation is that as indi- 

 viduals both Americans and Newfoundlanders are eager to accom- 

 modate each other. It is mainly the governments which are con- 

 tending, and they contend from stubbornness regarding their duties 

 as trustees for the subjects of their respective nations. The New- 

 foundland fishermen are as eager to be hired as American skippers 

 are to hire them. Sir Robert Bond forbids them to take acceptable 

 wages, or to sell at good prices. The United States Government 

 forbids Americans to buy the fish they want, although they are will- 

 ing that the American skippers should make the bargains Sir Robert 

 Bond forbids. He does not do this from any animosity, but because 

 he wishes to put pressure upon the United States to ratify commer- 

 cial reciprocity, which Americans want, but are not allowed to have, 

 lest the removal of a single brick should imperil the entire tariff 

 structure ". 



An unpatriotic craving for an unwanted reciprocity with an alien 

 nation is the alpha and omega of the whole business, and it is our 

 fishermen, our fellow-countrymen, British subjects, one and all, who 

 have to bear the brunt. 



Editorial in the Plaindealer, pub. St. John's, Newfoundland. 



OUR TIGHT WITH THE AMERICANS! 



[January 27, 1909.] 



Ever since our Government took up the gauntlet to fight the 

 Americans on the fishery question, four years ago, we have been losing 

 ground and getting the worst of it, but the knock out blow is evi- 

 dently yet to come as the result of arbitration treaty terms about to 

 be submitted at the Hague Tribunal. Hon. J. M. Kent is supposed 

 to have gone to Washington to look out for our interests. We have 

 a premonition that the people of Newfoundland, when all is said and 

 done, will come out at the small end of the horn. This country was 

 doing very well out of the American fishermen up to the time that 

 the Premier took up the senseless policy of punishing the Ameri- 

 cans for refusing to ratify the Bond-Hay treaty. 



It was just as well to try to put out the sun by fanning it with a 

 peacock's feather as to attempt to force the American Senate to fall 

 in with the wishes of our Government by retaliatory measures. 

 When our Government put the Foreign Fishing Vessels' Act into 

 practice, in order to keep out the American fishermen, it was, as the 

 result has shown, as foolish a piece of legislation as ever was enacted ; 

 and the end is not yet. The West Coast fishermen, from Barnlieu 

 to Bonne Bay, who were accustomed to supply the Americans with 



