第69章 World Relationships (2)

* The second article in these treaties read: "In each individual case the high contracting parties, before appealing to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, shall conclude a special agreement defining clearly the matter in dispute."President Taft was perhaps more interested in this problem than in any other.His Secretary of State, Elihu Root, reopened negotiations and, in 1908 and 1909, drew up a large number of treaties in a form which met the wishes of the Senate.Before the Administration closed, the United States had agreed to submit to arbitration all questions, except those of certain classes especially reserved, that might arise with Great Britain, France, Austro-Hungary, China, Costa Rica, Italy, Denmark, Japan, Hayti, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Paraguay, Spain, Sweden, Peru, San Salvador, and Switzerland.

Such treaties seemed to a few fearsome souls to be violations of the injunctions of Washington and Jefferson to avoid entangling alliances, but to most they seemed, rather, to be disentangling.

It was, indeed, becoming increasingly apparent that the world was daily growing smaller and that, as its parts were brought together by rail and steamships, by telegraph and wireless, more and more objects of common interest must become subject to common regulation.General Grant can hardly be regarded as a visionary, and yet in 1873 in his second inaugural address, he had said:

"Commerce, education, and rapid transit of thought and matter by telegraph and steam have changed all this....I believe that our Great Maker is preparing the world in His own good time, to become one nation, speaking one language, and when armies and navies will be no longer required."Quietly, without general interest, or even particular motive, the United States had accepted its share in handling many such world problems.As early as 1875 it had cooperated in founding and maintaining at Paris an International Bureau of Weights and Measures.In 1886 it joined in an international agreement for the protection of submarine cables; in 1890, in an agreement for the suppression of the African slave trade; in 1899, in an agreement for the regulation of the importation of spirituous liquors into Africa; in 1902, in a convention of American powers for the Arbitration of Pecuniary Claims.In 1903 it united with various American powers in an International Sanitary Convention; in 1905it joined with most countries of the world in establishing and maintaining an International Institute of Agriculture at Rome.It would surprise most Americans to know that five hundred pages of their collection of "Treaties and Conventions" consist of such international undertakings, which amount in fact to a body of international legislation.It is obvious that the Government, in interpreting the injunction to avoid entangling alliances, has not found therein prohibition against international cooperation.