NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE Washington Treaty has been a topic almost as harassing as the vacillating accounts of the Prince of Wales's and a good deal more tedious. However, at last there seems some chance that the process of " defervescence," as the doctors grandly -call the fall of temperature, has begun, and that on the main point of the "Indirect Claims," at all events, the parties are agreed. Lord Granville read a letter from General Schenck Fin the House of Lords on Thursday, officially stating, on the authority of a communication from Mr. Fish, that if the Supplemental Article was ratified, there would be a final end of the Indirect Claims, and the only real question now temaining is whether or not the two Governments can agree on the recitals in the Supplemental Article. In this, the last phase of the controversy, the American Government ha a swung back to Its old position of the champion of Neutral rights, while Great Britain appears to hesitate lest she should give up in too broad and -unqualified a manner the defence of Belligerent rights. How- ever, it is hardly credible that now that the nation's point is gained, legal considerations of the kind we have indicated .should come in to prevent the settlement of our differences.
