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162 when feelings were none too friendly, not inconceivably might have brought on a war between the two powers.

There were anxious moments for diplomats in Washington and London. Contrary to some popular notions, in this case at least the diplomats' anxiety was not to bring on hostilities but to prevent them. The cause of their anxiety was that, far away on the debated frontier, otherwise admirable servants of their governments displayed more patriotism than discretion, and were concerned more with possession than peace. The question was given a considerable proportion of space in one of President Buchanan's annual messages on the state of the nation, where it jostled with affairs that are better remembered, as, for instance, the wild doings in Kansas of one John Brown; and in private notes and correspondence among statesmen an ominous word occurred and recurred, if only to be spoken of as denoting a state of things highly undesirable and to be avoided if at all consistent with national self-respect. The strain was soon over and high politicians breathed freely again. A temporary settlement brought composure, though the final disposition was not made for a dozen years or so. The scene of the final stage of this diplomatic war is Berlin in the year eighteen hundred and seventy-one. In Berlin, the capital of a brand new Empire, the sovereign destiny of little San Juan was discussed by scholars and statesmen of the United States, Great Britain, and Germany. It was decided by the Emperor himself while yet the gilt of his crown had lost none of its bright newness. If on the face of it this does not seem to allow self-determination to San Juan, let me hasten to say that the 7, decision awarding the territory to the United States was hailed with joy by the settlers and proclaimed to be an act of justice. If the matter was comparatively trivial to statesmen seeking a solution, peaceful or otherwise, of such problems as slavery in these States and Territories, and the possible consequences to European relations of an Italian war of liberation, with the complications of Louis Napoleon's adventures in that connection, it was of some importance to the handful of pioneer