Theodore Roosevelt: Letter to Oliver Wendell Holmes

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I thank you very much for your letter, which I thoroughly enjoyed. There is one point on which I think I ought to give you full information, in view of [Joseph] Chamberlain’s remark to you. This is about the Alaska Boundary matter and if you happen to meet Chamberlain again you are entirely at liberty to tell him what I say, although of course it must be privately and unofficially. Nothing but my very earnest desire to get on well with England and my reluctance to come to a break made me consent to the appointment of a Joint Commission in this case; for I regard the attitude of Canada, which England has backed, as having the scantest possible warrant in justice. However, there were but two alternatives. Either I could appoint a commission and give a chance for agreement; or I could do as I shall of course do in case this commission fails, and request Congress to make an appropriation which will enable me to run the boundary on my own hook. As regards most of Great Britain’s claim, there is not, in my judgment, enough to warrant so much as a consideration by the United States; and if it were not that there are two or three lesser points on which there is doubt, I could not, even for the object I have mentioned, have consented to appoint a commission. The claim of the Canadians for access to deep water along any part of the Canadian coast is just exactly as indefensible as if they should now suddenly claim the island of Nantucket. There is not a man fit to go on the commission in all the United States who would treat this claim any more respectfully than he would treat a claim to Nantucket. In the same way the preposterous claim once advanced, but I think now abandoned by the Canadians, that the Portland Channel was not the Portland Channel but something else unknown, is no more worth discussing than the claim that the 49th Parallel meant the 50th Parallel or else the 48th.

But there are points which the commission can genuinely consider. There is room for argument about the islands in the mouth of the Portland Channel. I think on this the American case much the stronger of the two. Still, the British have a case. Again, it may well be that there are places in which there is room for doubt as to whether there actually is a chain of mountains parallel to the coast within the ten-league limit. Here again there is a chance for honest difference and honest final agreement. I believe that no three men in the United States could be found who would be more anxious than our own delegates to do justice to the British claim on all points where there is even a color of right on the British side. But the objection raised by certain Canadian authorities to Lodge, Root and Turner, and especially to Lodge and Root, was that they had committed themselves on the general proposition. No man in public life in any position of prominence could have possibly avoided committing himself on the proposition, any more than Mr. Chamberlain could avoid committing himself on the question of the ownership of the Orkneys if some Scandinavian country suddenly claimed them. If this claim embodied points as to which there was legitimate doubt, I believe Mr. Chamberlain would act fairly and squarely in deciding the matter; but if he appointed a commission to settle up all those questions, I certainly should not expect him to appoint three men, if he could find them, who believed that as to the Orkneys the question was an open one. Similarly I wish to repeat that no three men fit for the position could be found in all the United States who would not already have come to some conclusion as to certain features of the Canadian claim—not as to all of them.

Let me add that I earnestly hope the English understand my purpose. I wish to make one last effort to bring about an agreement through the commission, which will enable the people of both countries to say that the result represents the feeling of the representatives of both countries. But if there is a disagreement I wish it distinctly understood, not only that there will be no arbitration of the matter, but that in my message to Congress I shall take a position which will prevent any possibility of arbitration hereafter; a position, I am inclined to believe, which will render it necessary for Congress to give me the authority to run the line as we claim it, by our own people, without any further regard to the attitude of England and Canada. If I paid attention to mere abstract right, 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 dignity.