Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/276

 and even then it is justifiable only when every expedient of statesmanship to avert it has been thoroughly exhausted.

I shall not discuss now whether those who honestly think that our present difference with Great Britain would, as to cause or object, justify war, or those who think the contrary, are right. I expect them both to coöperate in an earnest endeavor to encourage those expedients of statesmanship by which war may be averted in either case. Confronting a grave emergency, we must, as practical men, look at the situation, not as it might have been or ought to be, but as it is. For several years our Government has been seeking to bring a boundary dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana to a friendly settlement but without success. Last summer, the President, through the Secretary of State, in a despatch reviewing the case at length, and containing an elaborate disquisition on the Monroe doctrine, asked the British Government whether it “would consent or decline to submit the Venezuela question in its entirety to impartial arbitration,” calling for “a definite decision.” Lord Salisbury, after some delay, replied, in a despatch also discussing the Monroe doctrine from his point of view, that the Venezuela question might be in part submitted to arbitration, but he refused so to submit it in its entirety as asked for. Thereupon President Cleveland sent a message to Congress recommending appropriations for a commission to be appointed by the Executive, which commission “shall make the necessary investigation” of the boundary dispute, and report to our Government; and when such report is made and accepted, it will, in the President's opinion, “ be the duty of the United States to resist, by every means, the appropriation by Great Britain of any lands, or the exercise of any governmental jurisdiction over any territory, which, after investigation, we have determined of