The secrecy observed by the Tribunal at Geneva appears to
be very unsatisfactory to our newspaper correspondents, who send very long telegrams about the order in which the members of the Tribunal arrive and depart, the companions they choose for their confidential conversations, the friendliness with which they greet each other, the excursions they go,—or don't go, but would have liked to go,—the apparent length of the despatches they receive and send off, the shape and size of the Arbitration-room, and the antechamber in which the correspondents bewail their newsless fate, and everything in short that can't be of any earthly interest to any political human being, but nothing that is. All that is really known of the Tribunal is, that it met on Saturday ; that the American Agent presented his summary of the United States' argument, together with a mass of papers under which a porter could only just stagger into the room,—that the British Agent did not present the summary of the British argument, stating, as Lord Granville had described in his despatch, that the misunderstanding as to the Indirect Claims not having been yet cleared up, it was impossible for him to do so, although the sum- mary was ready for presentation in his hands at the time ; but that he hoped if reasonable time were given for communication with the American Government, these preliminary difficulties would be cleared out of the way, and the Arbitration enabled to go on ; and that the Court, after adjourning first to Monday and then to Wednesday, adjourned for a week, to give the British and American Governments time to come to an understanding, if that be possible. The American Agent appears to have interposed no obstacle to these delays.
