[Footnote 19: Moore, Digest of Int. Law, Vol. VII, p. 20.]

In justification of the action of the President, in view of the popular
feeling that more urgent pressure might have been used to cause the
cessation of hostilities, Secretary Hay clearly showed that the United
States Government was the only one of all those approached by the
republics which had even tendered its good offices in the interest of
peace. He called attention to the fact that despite the popular clamor
to the contrary the action of the Government was fully in accord with
the provisions of the Hague Conference and went as far as that
Convention warranted. A portion of Article III of that instrument
declares: "Powers, strangers to the dispute, may have the right to offer
good offices or mediation, even during the course of hostilities," but
Article V asserts, "The functions of the mediator are at an end when
once it is declared either by one of the parties to the dispute or by
the mediator, himself, that the means of conciliation proposed by him
are not accepted."[20] Obviously any further action on the part of the
United States was not required under the circumstances, and Secretary
Hay seems fully justified in his statement that "the steps taken by the
President in his earnest desire to see an end to the strife which caused
so much suffering may already be said to have gone to the extreme limit
permitted to him." Moreover, had the President preferred not to present
to Great Britain the Republic's request for good offices, his action
could have been justified by the conditions under which the
representatives of the United States at the Hague signed that
convention. At that time the express declaration was made that "Nothing
contained in this Convention shall be so construed as to require the
United States of America to depart from its traditional policy of not
intruding upon, interfering with, or entangling itself with questions of
policy or internal administration of any foreign State."[21]