further regard to the attitude of England and Canada. If I paid
attention to mere abstract rights, that is the position I ought
to take anyhow. I have not taken it because I wish to exhaust
every effort to have the affair settled peacefully and with due
regard to England's honor.'*

* W. R. Thayer: John Hay, II, 209, 210.


In due time the Commission gave a decision in favor of the
American contention. Lord Alverstone, who voted with the
Americans, was suspected of having been chosen by the British
Government because they knew his opinion, but I do not believe
that this was true. A man of his honor, sitting in such a
tribunal, would not have voted according to instructions from
anybody.

Roosevelt's brusque way of bringing the Alaska Boundary Question
to a quick decision, may be criticised as not being judicial. He
took the short cut, just as he did years before in securing a
witness against the New York saloon-keepers who destroyed the
lives of thousands of boys and girls by making them drunkards.
Strictly, of course, if the boundary dispute was to be submitted
to a commission, he ought to have allowed the other party to
appoint its own commissioners without any suggestion from him.
But as the case had dragged on interminably, and he believed, and
the world believed, and the Canadians themselves knew, that they
intended to filibuster and postpone as long as possible, he took
the common-sense way to a settlement. If he had resolved, as he
had, to draw the boundary line "on his own hook," in case there