Those who were alarmed about what he might do had also suggested that with his combative propensities he was likely to involve the country in war. Yet there never has been an administration, as afterwards appeared, when we were more perfectly at peace with all the world, nor were our foreign relations ever in danger of producing hostilities. But this was not due in the least to the adoption of a timid or yielding foreign policy; on the contrary, it was owing to the firmness of the President in all foreign questions and the knowledge which other nations soon acquired that President Roosevelt was a man who never threatened unless he meant to carry out his threat, the result being that he was not obliged to threaten at all. One of his earliest successes was forcing the settlement of the Alaskan boundary question, which was the single open question with Great Britain that was really dangerous and contained within itself possibilities of war. The accomplishment of this settlement was followed later, while Mr. Root was Secretary of State, by the arrangement of all our outstanding difference with Canada, and during Mr. Root's tenure of office over thirty treaties were made with different nations, including a number of practical and valuable treaties of arbitration. When Germany started to take advantage of the difficulties in Venezuela the affair culminated in the dispatch of Dewey and the fleet to the Caribbean, the withdrawal of England at once, and the agreement of Germany to the reference of all subjects of different to arbitration. It was President Roosevelt whose good offices brought Russia and Japan together in a negotiation which closed the war between those two powers. It was Roosevelt's influence which contributed powerfully to settling the threatening controversy between Germany, France, and England in regard to Morocco, by the Algeciras conference. It was Roosevelt who sent the American fleet of battleships round the world, one of the most convincing peace movements ever made on behalf of the United States. Thus it came about that this President, dreaded at the beginning on account of his combative spirit, received the Nobel prize in 1906 as the person who had contribute most to the peace of the world in the preceding years, and his contribution was the result of strength and knowledge and not of weakness.