People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 December 1895 — THE BRITISH PRESS. [ARTICLE]

THE BRITISH PRESS.

Comments of the Lending: Pnpers on the Venezuelan Question. London, Dec. 18. —All of the papers devote more or less of their editorial space to a discussion of President Cleveland’s message on the Venezuelan question and to the merits of that question itself. The Dally Telegraph (liberal) publishes an editorial, contending that America has no concern in the Venezuelan dispute. The Daily Graphic says: “Does President Cleveland seriously think that we can admit the proposition that the frontiers of European colonies in the two Americas are to be held at the good pleasure of a committee of Washington gentlemen? What would the United States have said in 1848 if we, as an American power, had advanced the claim, based on this principle, to protect Mexico from a wantonly aggressive war by which President Cleveland’s predecessors settled the Texan boundary dispute.” The Times acknowledges the gravity of the difficulties which have arisen between Great Britain and the United Monroe, and proceeds to argue that the Monroe doctrine has never been recognized as international law and quotes Lord Salisbury’s admission that ainy disturbance of the existing teritorial distribution in the western hemisphere by any European state would be highly inexpedient.. The Times contends further that England is bound to resist the extended claim of Monroeism, and says: “A power which has command of the sea does not regard 3,000 miles of intervening ocean as severing it from its subjects.” The Daily News, the liberal organ, says: Neither Secretary Olney nor President Cleveland seems to realize that the Monroe doctrine cannot be quoted as authoratively in negotiations with a foreign power. The definition of Monroeism is a matter for Americans themselves. It binds nobody else. The Standard, the conservative organ, in an editorial on the message, says: “The position that President Cleveland assumes is preposterous. No American citizen would for a,moment dream of admitting its soundness in any analogous case in which the honor and interests of America were concerned. There can be but one answer. We decline to humiliate ourselves and we refuse to accept the decision of Washington in such matters altogether outside its jurisdiction. The remainder of the Standard’s article is an echo of Lord Salisbury’s argument and it concludes by saying: “Great Britain will reject the demand as indignantly as congress would if America were asked to submit her title to Alaska to the judgment of impartial umpires.”