432 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



loss of them as the result of an arbitration cannot appreciably 

 affect her honor or her power. Thus, she has arbitrated the 

 extent of her colonial possessions twice with the United States, 

 twice with Portugal, and once with Germany, and perhaps in 

 other instances. The Northwest Water Boundary arbitration of 

 1872 between her and this country is an example in point and 

 well illustrates both the effect to be given to long-continued use 

 and enjoyment and the fact that a truly great power sacrifices 

 neither prestige nor dignity by reconsidering the most emphatic 

 rejection of a proposition when satisfied of the obvious and intrin- 

 sic justice of the case. By the award of the Emperor of Ger- 

 many, the arbitrator in that case, the United States acquired San 

 Juan and a number of smaller islands near the coast of Van- 

 couver as a consequence of the decision that the term " the chan- 

 nel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island," as 

 used in the treaty of Washington of 1846, meant the Haro chan- 

 nel and not the Rosario channel. Yet a leading contention of 

 Great Britain before the arbitrator was that equity required a 

 judgment in her favor because a decision in favor of the United 

 States would deprive British subjects of rights of navigation of 

 which they had had the habitual enjoyment from the time when 

 the Rosario Strait was first explored and surveyed in 1798. So, 

 though by virtue of the award the United States acquired San 

 Juan and the other islands of the group to which it belongs, the 

 British Foreign Secretary had in 1859 instructed the British 

 Minister at Washington as follows: 



" Her Majesty's Government must, therefore, under any circum- 

 stances, maintain the right of the British Crown to the Island of 

 San Juan. The interests at stake in connection with the reten- 

 tion of that Island are too important to admit of compromise and 

 Your Lordship will consequently bear in mind that, whatever 

 arrangement as to the boundary line is finally arrived at, no set- 

 tlement of the question will be accepted by Her Majesty's Gov- 

 ernment which does not provide for the Island of San Juan being 

 reserved to the British Crown." 



Thus, as already intimated, the British demand that her right 

 to a portion of the disputed territory shall be acknowledged be- 

 fore she will consent to an arbitration as to the rest seems to 

 stand upon nothing but her own ipse dixit. She says to Vene- 

 zuela, in substance : " You can get none of the debatable land 

 , by force, because you are not strong enough ; you can get none 

 V by treaty, because I will not agree ; and you can take your chance 

 of getting a portion by arbitration, only if you first agree to aban- 



