Thus, we have made a laborious and patient journey through the incidents of a long dispute, to find at last a peaceful rest. As we look back over the road we have traversed, and view again the incidents we have passed on our way, some may be surprised that this controversy was so long chronic, and yet, in the end, yielded so easily to pronounced treatment. I know that occasionally some Americans of a certain sort, who were quite un-American when the difficulty was pending, have been very fond of lauding the extreme forbearance and kindness of England toward us in our so-called belligerent and ill-advised assertion of American principle. Those to whom this is a satisfaction are quite welcome to it. My own surprise and disappointment have arisen more from the honest misunderstanding and the dishonest and insincere misrepresentation, on the part of many of our people, regarding the motives and purposes of the interference of the Government of the United States in this affair. Some conceited and doggedly mistaken critics have said that it was dreadful for us to invite war for the sake of a people unworthy of our consideration, and for the purpose of protecting their possession of land not worth possessing. It is certainly strange that any intelligent citizen, professing information on public affairs, could fail to see that when we aggressively interposed in this controversy it was because it was necessary in order to assert and vindicate a principle distinctively American, and in the maintenance of which the people and Government of the United States were profoundly concerned. It was because this principle was endangered, and because those charged with administrative responsibility would not abandon or neglect it, that our Government interposed to prevent any further colonization of American soil by a European nation. In these circumstances neither the character of the people claiming the soil as against Great Britain, nor the value of the lands in dispute, was of the least consequence to us; nor did it in the least concern us which of the two contestants had the best title to any part of the disputed territory, so long as England did not possess and colonize more than belonged to her--however much or however little that might be. But we needed proof of the limits of her rights in order to determine our duty in defense of our Monroe Doctrine; and we sought to obtain such proof, and to secure peace, through arbitration.