Page:Dramatic Moments in American Diplomacy (1918).djvu/48

28 so much a negotiator as a mediator. His conduct, diametrically opposite to that popularly supposed to be correct for an ambassador—with his demands and his dignity and his country's honour and paramount interests and the rest of it—was that of a just and tolerant neighbour rather than that of an attorney for the plaintiff.

We shall see how this tremendous conception became eventually responsible for the healing of the breach in the Anglo-Saxon family, and the foundation of America as a world-power knit to a rejuvenated and liberated England, instead of a seaboard province hemmed in by the colonies of the Bourbons.

He arrived with instructions to make a commercial treaty with France—and to obtain such recognition as he could for the new Republic. Joined with him in this enterprise were Deane and Lee, supernumeraries in a hindering capacity. The French were by no means ready to come out into the open with active assistance. So while diplomacy languished this humorous