Jasper County Democrat, Volume 8, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 November 1905 — WASHINGTON LETTER. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON LETTER.

Political and General Gossip of the National Capital. Special Correspondence to The Democrat: The State Department remains very uncommunicative on thesubBct of the appointment of Mr. H. . Pierce as Minister to Norway. All that the Department would vouch, safe through its mouthpiece, Mr. Bacon, was that there was nothing to communicate, but the department would like to know how the story got afloat anyhow. Which is a fair indication that the report had some foundation in fact. The truth is the American government is not anxious to offend Sweden by being too precipitate in accrediting a representative to the newly established seceding state. But one of the old attaches of the Department was unkind enough ito say that they intended to get the third assistant secretary out

of the building as soon as they could find a hole small enough for him to fit in. Such phrasing of it was not complimentary to Norway, but he will in all probability go there in the course of a few months. t ft It is also said that there is to be an exchange of compliments between Japan and the United States by raising Mr. Griscom, the minister at Tokyo, and Mr. Takahira, the minister at Washington, to the rank of ambassadors. Of course if one is raised the other must be, and Japan has sounded the state Department on the subject and has received a favorable response. It is a mutual step under the circumstances, as Japan would hardly be content with a minister in Washington since she has assumed the rank of a first class power. Also it is a compliment to the United States and shows that the Mikado bears no ill will for the part that the United States had in bringing the war to a close. t t t Back of that there is a little whispered but as yet unwritten history. That is that Japan was on the brink of exhaustion when the war was finally wound up and would have been forced to make terms, perhaps much leas advantageous than she received if the war had gone on a few months more. The correspondents who stayed in Manchuria to the end of the fight, not the exponents of high class literature who quit and come home after Haicheng, but the men who were doing the work at the front, say that the last levies of the Japanese showed the dfain the war was making on the country and were by no means up to the standard of the first armies. Reuter’s War correspondent in the far east who was with Kuroki for the best part of two years, passed through Washington last week, and he said that while the Japanese probably would have won several more big battles, had the war continued, that they were becoming rapidly physically and financially exhausted and could not have kept up a winning fight many months longer. t tt The representatives of the hardware trade in the United States who have been in session in Washington for almost a week missed a golden opportunity for doing a good stroke of business for them*

selves. There were a thousand representatives of the manufacturers and the jobbers in two separate conventions and both of them passed resolutions, almost identical in form recommending the reorganization of the consular service, with a view to extending America’s foregin markets. There they stopped. Both resolutions read “reorganization on business lines.” There was not a single recommendation as to what the manufacturers wanted of the consuls and no suggestion for the State Department to take hold of. Now it happens that the State Department is much interested just now in the reorganization of the consular service with this very end in view, the extension of American markets abroad. It is to be supposed that the hardware men. who are an important body, had some idea as to foreign trade. But if they had kept them carefully concealed and left the situation for the state Department to deal with as best it can. Now was the time if ever that the Department would have welcomed a rational suggestion. But the manufacturers let the occasion go by. t t t There was an interesting little happening at the reception given the hardware men at the White House. They were received by President Roosevelt and all of them had a chance to shake hands with him. Just before they went to the executive mansion some of them had been discussing the newspaper stories of the Presient’s memory for names and faces and Col. Nutting of Davenport, lowa, who was the chairman of the committee, said he wondered if the President would recollect him, having seen him but twice before. He very soon got a chance to find out. When he got up to the President and his name was announced, Mr. Roosevelt exclaimed, “Oh, I know Col. Nutting alright. How are all my friends out in Davenport, Colonel? And especially how is Miss French, (Octave Thanet)? There is a woman for you. The things she knows about things are simply remarkable. Tell her when you get back that I read everything she writes and enjoy it, too.” t t t As has been said, the President had met Col. Nutting but twice, and the last time was two years ago.