38 THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON. 
time, as in the example of the imperfect or guas? war 
between the United States and France in the closing 
years of the last century, can it be denied that the 
injuries done to either nation*by such hostilities on 
the se@ involve direct national as well as private 
injuries 2 
On first impression, therefore, it might seem that 
the British Government and British opinion ran wild 
in the chase of shadows, and combated a creature of 
mere imagination in quarreling with this part of the 
American Case at all, and, still more, in contending 
that on this account Great Britaih could be justified 
in revoking the arbitration agreed upon,—that is, in 
effect, violating the Treaty. 
The Treaty referred to the Tribunal of Arbitration, 
in terms unequivocal, all claims of the United States 
growing out of the acts committed by certain vessels, 
and generically known as “Alabama Claims.” It 
might need to go outside of the Treaty into antece- 
dent or contemporaneous diplomatic correspondence 
in order to ascertain the meaning of the phrase “_Ala- 
bama Claims;” but, in so doing, it would incontro- 
vertibly appear, at every stage of such correspond- 
ence, that national as well as individual claims were 
comprehended, and were all confounded together, and, 
indeed, without mention of individual claims, in the 
designation of “claims on the part of the United 
States.” 
"Whether any of the claims so preferred on the part 
of the United States were for losses indirect or conse- 
quential would be an ordinary question of jurispru- 
