arbitration treaty thus arranged between Great Britain and
Venezuela under the auspices of the United States submitted the
whole disputed area to judicial decision but adopted the rule
that fifty years of occupation should give a sufficient title for
possession. The arbitration tribunal, which met in Paris in 1899,
decided on a division of the disputed territory but found that
the claim of Great Britain was, on the whole, more nearly correct
than that of Venezuela.

Cleveland's startling and unconventional method of dealing with
this controversy has been explained by all kinds of conjectures.
For example, it has been charged that his message was the product
of a fishing trip on which whisky flowed too freely; on the other
hand, it has been asserted that the message was an astute
political play for the thunder of patriotic applause. More
seriously, Cleveland has been charged by one set of critics with
bluffing, and by another with recklessly running the risk of war
on a trivial provocation. The charge of bluffing comes nearer the
fact, for President Cleveland probably had never a moment's doubt
that the forces making for peace between the two nations would be
victorious. If he may be said to have thrown a bomb, he certainly
had attached a safety valve to it, for the investigation which he
proposed could not but give time for the passions produced by his
message to cool. It is interesting to note in passing that delay
for investigation was a device which that other great Democrat,
William Jennings Bryan, Cleveland's greatest political enemy,
sought, during his short term as Secretary of State under
President Wilson, to make universal in a series of arbitration
treaties--treaties which now bind the United States and many
other countries, how tightly no man can tell.