It was then that President Cleveland, patient, but knowing that patience has its bounds, loving peace, and willing to make the full measure of sacrifice to that high end, but with firm conviction that our interposition in the controversy was necessary and could not longer be delayed, sent to Congress the special message of December 17, 1895. That message fixed the attention of the civilized world upon the Venezuela boundary dispute, a matter which had up to that time held only small place in the thoughts of men other than the immediate official participants; for President Cleveland’s plain words brought clearly into view the possibility of war--war between the United States and Great Britain. Christmas was at hand. At that season nobody was thinking of war, and war between the English and ourselves had long been held to be at any and all seasons unthinkable. The civilized world was startled; it is not too much to say that some men of large affairs and international dealings were stunned. “The crime of the century,” was the phrase applied to the message by some whose alarm at the possibility of war was equaled by their ignorance of the long series of disturbing events which led Mr. Cleveland to perpetrate that “crime.” It was no crime; it was a saving act, a step that made for peace, and removed a source of long-standing irritation that was a menace to peace. The pen of Richard Olney was the one to set forth the legal basis of our demand--the pen of a great lawyer, not too much cramped by the circumstance that it was also the pen of a diplomat. Mr. Cleveland’s strong hand was the one to write the words that proclaimed the Nation’s duty. The Monroe Doctrine has never had a sturdier defender or a sounder defense. Lord Salisbury’s amusingly English and almost sneering references to the doctrine as one “to be mentioned with respect on account of the distinguished statesman to whom it is due,” but having no relation to the affairs of the present day, evoked that memorable sentence in Mr. Cleveland’s message, in which he said that the Monroe Doctrine “was intended to apply to every stage of our National life, and cannot become obsolete while our Republic endures.”