To his friend Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, about to sail for an English holiday, Roosevelt wrote a private letter privately to be shown to Mr.Balfour, Mr.Chamberlain, and certain other Englishmen of mark.

He said: "The claim of the Canadians for access to deep water along any part of the Alaskan coast is just exactly as indefensible as if they should now suddenly claim the Island of Nantucket." Canada had objected to our Commissioners as being not "impartial jurists of repute." As to this, Roosevelt's letter to Holmes ran on: "I believe that no three men in the United States could be found who would be more anxious than our own delegates to do justice to the British claim on all points where there is even a color of right on the British side.

But the objection raised by certain British authorities to Lodge, Root, and Turner, especially to Lodge and Root, was that they had committed themselves on the general proposition.

No man in public life in any position of prominence could have possibly avoided committing himself on the proposition, any more than Mr.Chamberlain could avoid committing himself on the ownership of the Orkneys if some Scandinavian country suddenly claimed them.

If this embodied other points to which there was legitimate doubt, I believe Mr.
Chamberlain would act fairly and squarely in deciding the matter; but if he appointed a commission to settle up all these questions, I certainly should not expect him to appoint three men, if he could find them, who believed that as to the Orkneys the question was an open one.