MY RECOLLECTIONS OF BISMARCK- 1879 -1881 597 



of all three nations caused by the war then going on be- 

 tween Chile and Peru. 



My answer was that the United States could not join 

 other powers in any such effort; that our government 

 might think it best to take separate action; and that it 

 would not interfere with any proper efforts of other pow- 

 ers to secure simple redress for actual grievances ; but that 

 it could not make common cause with other powers in any 

 such efforts. To clinch this, I cited the famous passage 

 in Washington's Farewell Address against "entangling 

 alliances with foreign powers " as American gospel, and 

 added that my government would also be unalterably op- 

 posed to anything leading to permanent occupation of 

 South American territory by any European power, and 

 for this referred him to the despatches of John Quincy 

 Adams and the declarations of President Monroe. 



He seemed almost durnfounded at this, and to this day 

 I am unable to decide whether his surprise was real or 

 affected. He seemed to think it impossible that we could 

 take any such ground, or that such a remote, sentimental 

 interest could outweigh material interests so pressing as 

 those involved in the monkey-and-parrot sort of war going 

 on between the two South American republics. As he was 

 evidently inclined to dwell on what appeared to him the 

 strangeness of my answer, I said to him: "What I state 

 to you is elementary in American foreign policy; and to 

 prove this I will write, in your presence, a cable despatch 

 to the Secretary of State at Washington, and you shall see 

 it and the answer it brings. ' ' 



I then took a cable blank, wrote the despatch, and 

 showed it to him. It was a simple statement of the chan- 

 cellor 's proposal, and on that he left me. In the even- 

 ing came the answer. It was virtually my statement to 

 Bucher, and I sent it to him just as I had received it. 

 That was the last of the matter. No further effort was 

 made in the premises, so far as I ever heard, either by 

 Germany or Great Britain. It has recently been stated, 

 in an American magazine article, that Bismarck, toward 



