Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1895 — MUST ARBITRATE OR FIGHT. [ARTICLE]

MUST ARBITRATE OR FIGHT.

Alleged Ultimatum by Olney to Knj- gland in the Veneznela Affair. Nothing hns been done by our Government with reference to the Venezuela boundary controversy since’ Secretary Gresham forwarded Minister Bayard a copy of the resolution passed by the late Congress urging Britain to submit the disputed question to arbitration. It is said, however, that Secretary Olney has prepared a note for Mr. Bayard to lay before Lord Salisbury that contains a more forcible expression of the views of the United States on this subject than has yet been officially uttered. This dispatch is of a positive and most unequivocal nature. As soon as it shall be placed befbre the British Government it will raise a question which can be settled only by the retreat of one or the other Government The stand taken by the United States in this dispatch is one which involves the oldest and most sacred tradition of the Government —the enforcement of the Monroe doctrine. Secretary Olney’s dispatch is in substance a declaration in the most positive language that the United States will never consent to British occupation of the disputed territory in Venezuela unless that nation's right thereto is first determined by arbitration. While this declaration is substantially the same as that which was made some months ago, and to which the British Foreign Office replied with a statement that the English right to a part of the territory in question could be submitted to arbitration, the right to another part of the region in question could not be submitted to such arbitration. When Great Britain took this ground the question which President Cleveland and his advisers had to decide wns whether the United States is bound by tho Monroe doctrine and by her dignity to insist that all the territory in dispute should be submitted to arbitration, or whether by conceding England’s contention we should virtually abandon the field and leave Venezuela to tight it out alone. Few more serious questions huve presented themselves to the American administration within recent years. The decision of the President and his Cabinet advisers, after careful discussion and painstaking investigation, is that a bold and consistent policy shall be adopted, and this policy has been tormulated in the dispatch which Ambassador Bayard will lay before the British Government ns soon as he returns from his present journey to Scotland. The dispatch meets England’s rejoinder with a reaffirmation of the principle of original contention expressed in phrases which leave no possibility of doubt as to the meaning and earnestness of the United States. It does more. In polite, but firm nnd significant words. Secretary Olney declares it to be the belief of the United States that the territorial claims which Great Britain lias set up in Venezuela are in the nature of nn attempt to seize territory on the American continent to which she has no legal right.