Rensselaer Republican, Volume 28, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 October 1895 — MUST ARBITRATE OR FIGHT. [ARTICLE]

MUST ARBITRATE OR FIGHT.

Alleggif" Ultimatum by Olney to England in the Venezuela Affair. Nothing has been done by our Government with reference to the Venezuela boundary controversy since Secretary Gresham forwarded Ministcr Bayard * copy of the resolution passed by the date Congress urging Great 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 before 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 posiiive language that the United States will never consent to British occupation of tjie 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 bo 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 was whether the United States is bound by the Monroe doctrine and by her dignity ts> insist that all the territory-in tfispute should Ire submitted to arbitration, or whether by conceding England’s contention we should virtually abandon the field and leave Venezuela to fight it out alone. Few more serious questions have presented themselves to the American administration within recent years. The decision of the President and his £abinet advisers, after careful discussion and painstaking investigation, is that a bold and consistent policy shall be adopted, and this policy has been formulated in the dispatch which Ambassador Bayard will lay before the British Government as 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 eamestneste of the United States. It does more. In polite, but firm and significant words, Secretary Olney declares it to be the belief, of the United States that the territorial claims which tireat-Britain has set up iii -Venezuela are in the nature of nil attempt to seize territory on the American continent to which she has no legal”right.