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undergone gradual but great changes. Gentlemen, the foreign intercourse of former years was, as you are aware, really of narrow limits, being concerned with the relations between one country and another, or a few others. But now, through the enormous development of facilities of transportation and communication, and the close interaction of the world’s interests, foreign relations have been greatly transformed. In the affair between England and Venezuela you are aware that the dispute was about a narrow strip of marshy, uninhabited frontier territory, and that the parties to the controversy were, on the one side, England, the greatest Power in the world, with colonial possessions of over ten million square miles in area, and, on the other, the little South American Republic of Venezuela. But it was by no means so easy, for the United States of America immediately interfered. The affair was thenceforth no longer one between England and Venezuela alone, but between England and North and South America. The ground of that interference was the Monroe doctrine, which, as you are aware, was enunciated long ago with the object of averting the spread of European influence in North and South America. Thus the affair no longer concerned the two Americas and England alone; it became a general international question, for the exclusion of European influence from America was naturally a matter of grave importance to Europe, which has many colonial possessions in the New World. Thus a question that ordinarily concerned a small colony came to assume a general international character.

Take another instance, also relating to England. Last year a dispute arose between England and the Transvaal. It was due simply to an attempt by travellers, or employés of a company, to effect a revolution in the Transvaal. The affair itself was trivial, but though it arose in a little South African Republic—a country having almost the character of a British protected State—it gave rise to complications between Germany and England, and at one time threatened almost to involve the two Powers in war. This dispute between Germany and England was not confined for long to those two countries. It extended apparently to the German Triple Alliance and other Powers, and thus became also a general international affair. In truth, the limits of foreign intercourse have gradually widened to such an extent that a very small affair becomes of concern to the whole world. The war with China in the 27th and 28th year of Meiji originally concerned only Japan and China, and did not touch other Powers in any way. But even this led, in the latter year, to the interference of three of the most influential Powers of Continental Europe. Thus it also became a general international ques-