At the Newcastle Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday a letter
was read from Sir Edward Grey stating that the Government were making representations to the United States on the subject of the Panama Canal Act. We are very hopeful of the prospects of arbitration. We do not see how Mr. Taft, with his record as the champion of arbitration for all purposes, could resist a demand for it in this very obvious case. And we have to remem- ber that an immense volume of American opinion is on the British side. When Austria-Hungary acted as though the Treaty of Berlin did not exist, Englishmen were shocked, not by the mere annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but by the thought that a nation which had been regarded as the type of trustworthiness should have presented itself as the exponent of all that is incalculable and unstable. The shock would be infinitely greater to the English-speaking world if we were compelled to entertain such thoughts about the United States. We decline to contemplate the possibility of such a thing. The issue concerns much more than the pocket of the United States or of ourselves.
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