Peace With Honor.

New York Times 100 years ago today, January 2, 1913:
In discussing the celebration of the hundred years of peace between Great Britain and the United States. The London Spectator says:

    It is quite impossible for any one to reflect on this question of peace throughout the English-speaking world without sadly remembering that at this moment a shadow lies across the relations of Great Britain and the United States.

The "shadow" comes from the actual and probable course of the United States Government with regard to the Panama Canal tolls — the actual violation of the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, and the probable refusal of the Senate to refer the question to arbitration. The material question involved is not important. The favors snatched by our Government for the coastwise monopoly are not only not needed, but are not worth much. The added cost to the operation of British shipping through the canal will be relatively small. "Whatever happens, our shipping," says The Spectator, "will survive it." But the real issue lies in the effect of our action upon our reputation.

    The issue is whether Englishmen shall be able or not able to feel that the United States can be trusted to abide by its undertakings in the highest, most honorable, and most scrupulous sense that can be placed on any form of words. * * * In any case, there will not be war. It is unthinkable that we should ever fight again with our kinsmen. But a peace which is preserved on insecure grounds of suspicion and mistrust will be no true peace. We must be able to trust unquestioningly any American Government that may happen to be in power if we are to construct the edifice of confidence and good-will which is the dream of those who are planning the celebrations for 1914. The peace that we hope to celebrate must be firmly based on the highest mutual respect, which admits no suspicion that the spirit of international agreements can ever be sacrificed to the letter. If that is not to be the relation between the two countries we shall have lost infinitely more than the mere sum of money which may be paid in extra canal tolls by our shipping.

    It is plain, however, that whatever Great Britain would lose through this undermining of confidence in the word of our Nation, we should lose very much more. It is difficult to deal with a man who has shown that he cannot fully be trusted. It is very much harder for a man who has won and deserved good repute to feel that his repute is injured, that his word cannot be taken, that he is the object of suspicion which is warranted and which he cannot disarm or resent. This is the present situation of the United States, and it will be still worse if we fail to submit to arbitration the action we have so far taken. We have broken one treaty — we should then have broken another. We should have committed a second and more flagrant offense to save ourselves from the just consequences of the first. Instead of saving ourselves from such consequences, we should have incurred others still more galling and hard to endure.
    The humiliation and the disadvantage to which we are exposing, or are about to expose, ourselves, are all the greater because, as a Nation, we have, from the very organization of the Government, taken very high ground, not only as to National good faith, but as to the honorable and peaceful adjudication of all differences involving good faith.
    We have been the leader in every movement for replacing the arbitrament of the sword by the deliberate, just and mutually friendly adjudication of an impartial tribunal. Our professions have been lofty, and we have urged the principles we professed insistently, and sometimes a little proudly, upon other Nations. It was in the development of this noble policy that only a year ago President Taft negotiated the treaties of general arbitration with Great Britain and with France. He was strengthened in doing so by our experience with Great Britain. For almost a hundred years, often amid conditions of great difficulty, peace had been maintained because that policy had been steadfastly followed.
    And now, for the luxury of a little sharp practice, for the petty gain to be got from a pettifogging construction of a bargain, we are proposing to enter the new century of peace discredited, distrusted, and, to put it plainly, a little despised. Our close friends in England and in other countries will make all allowances. They will recognize the risks and difficulties of our democratic methods and machinery. They will credit the more intelligent part of the Nation with the opposition that has been offered to this miserable business. But after all, if our Government does not rescind the action of last session, and if we refuse to arbitrate, the fact will remain that we have deserved distrust. Nor will that fact influence only our relations with Great Britain. It will affect the mind and the attitude of every Nation with which we have to deal. In every transaction we may need to propose we shall be conscious that our word will not and cannot be taken without question. Such costly and mortifying and enduring disadvantage must be avoided if it be possible, and though the immediate prospect is not promising, we shall not give up hope.