Nicaragua comes next. There again they were quite angry with us on top,
but controlled in the end by the persisting disposition of kinship. They
had land in Nicaragua with the idea of an Isthmian Canal. This we did not
like. They thought we should mind our own business. But they agreed with
us in the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty that both should build and run the canal.
Vagueness about territory near by raised further trouble, and there we
were in the right. England yielded. The years went on and we grew, until
the time came when we decided that if there was to be any canal, no one
but ourselves should have it. We asked to be let off the old treaty.
England let us off, stipulating the canal should be unfortified, and an
"open door" to all. Our representative agreed to this, much to our
displeasure. Indeed, I do not think he should have agreed to it. Did
England hold us to it? All this happened in the lifetime of many of us,
and we know that she did not hold us to it. She gave us what we asked,
and she did so because she felt its justice, and that it in no way
menaced her with injury. All this began in 1850 and ended, as we know, in
the time of Roosevelt.

About 1887 our seal-fishing in the Behring Sea brought on an acute
situation. Into the many and intricate details of this, I need not go;
you can find them in any good encyclopedia, and also in Harper's Magazine
for April, 1891, and in other places. Our fishing clashed with Canada's.
We assumed jurisdiction over the whole of the sea, which is a third as
big as the Mediterranean, on the quite fantastic ground that it was an
inland sea. Ignoring the law that nobody has jurisdiction outside the
three-mile limit from their shores, we seized Canadian vessels sixty
miles from land. In fact, we did virtually what we had gone to war with
England for doing in 1812. But England did not go to war. She asked for
arbitration. Throughout this, our tone was raw and indiscreet, while hers