The decision set Canada aflame.Lord Alverstone was denounced in unmeasured terms.From Atlantic to Pacific the charge was echoed that once more the interests of Canada had been sacrificed by Britain on the altar of Anglo-American friendship.The outburst was not understood abroad.It was not, as United States opinion imagined, merely childish petulance or the whining of a poor loser.It was against Great Britain, not against the United States, that the criticism was directed.It was not the decision, but the way in which it was made, that roused deep anger.The decision on the main issue, that the line ran back of even the deepest inlets and barred Canada from a single harbor, though unwelcome, was accepted as a judicial verdict and has since been little questioned.The finding that the boundary should follow certain mountains behind those Canada urged, but short of the ten league line, was attacked by the Canadian representatives as a compromise, and its judicial character is certainly open to some doubt.But it was on the third finding that the thunders broke.
The United States had contended that the Portland Channel of the treaty makers ran south of four islands which lay east of Prince of Wales Island, and Canada that it ran north of these islands.
Lord Alverstone, after joining in a judgment with the Canadian commissioners that it ran north, suddenly, without any conference with them, and, as the wording of the award showed, by agreement with the United States representatives, announced that it ran where no one had ever suggested it could run, north of two and south of two, thus dividing the land in dispute.The islands were of little importance even strategically, but the incontrovertible evidence that instead of a judicial finding a political compromise had been effected was held of much importance.After a time the storm died down, but it revealed one unmistakable fact:
Canadian nationalism was growing fully as fast as Canadian imperialism.
The relations between Canada and the United States now came to show the effect of increasingly close business connections.The northward trek of tens of thousands of American farmers was under way.United States capitalists began to invest heavily in farm and timber lands.Factory after factory opened a Canadian branch.
Ten years later these investments exceeded six hundred millions.
In the West, James J.Hill was planning the expansion of the Great Northern system throughout the prairie provinces and was securing an interest in the great Crow's Nest Pass coal fields.
Tourist travel multiplied.The two peoples came to know each other better than ever before, and with knowledge many prejudices and misunderstandings vanished.Canada's growing prosperity did not merely bring greater individual intercourse; it made the United States as a whole less patronizing in its dealings with its neighbor and Canada less querulous and thin-skinned.
In this more favorable temper many old issues were cleared off the slate.The northeastern fisheries question, revived by a conflict between Newfoundland and the United States as to treaty privileges, was referred to the Hague Court in 1909.The verdict of the arbitrators recognized a measure of right in the contentions of both sides.A detailed settlement was prescribed which was accepted without demur in the United States, Newfoundland, and Canada alike.Pelagic sealing in the North Pacific was barred in 1911 by an international agreement between the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Russia.Less success attended the attempt to arrange joint action to regulate and conserve the fisheries of the Great Lakes and the salmon fisheries of the Pacific, for the treaty drawn up in 1911 by the experts from both countries failed to pass the United States Senate.
But the most striking development of the decade was the businesslike and neighborly solution found for the settlement of the boundary waters controversy.The growing demands for the use of streams such as the Niagara, the St.Lawrence, and the Sault for power purposes, and of western border rivers for irrigation schemes, made it essential to take joint action to reconcile not merely the conflicting claims from the opposite sides of the border but the conflicting claims of power and navigation and other interests in each country.In 1905 a temporary waterways commission was appointed, and four years later the Boundary Waters Treaty provided for the establishment of a permanent Joint High Commission, consisting of three representatives from each country, and with authority over all cases of use, obstruction, or diversion of border waters.Individual citizens of either country were allowed to present their case directly before the Commission, an innovation in international practice.Still more significant of the new spirit was the inclusion in this treaty of a clause providing for reference to the Commission, with the consent of the United States Senate and the Dominion Cabinet, of any matter whatever at issue between the two countries.With little discussion and as a matter of course, the two democracies, in the closing years of a full century of peace, thus made provision for the sane and friendly settlement of future line-fence disputes.
The chief barrier to good relations was the customs tariff.
Protectionism, and the attitude of which it was born and which it bred in turn, was still firmly entrenched in both countries.
