Show THAT ALASKAN GIF Tho strip of land referred In 1 tho Porcupine Por-cupine district nbout twenty miles wluo and IW miles long Two thousand squaro miles of American territory t turned over lo Jphn Bull without any consideration that can bo discovered from tho record This Ifl n statement by our morning contemporuty of something of which It knows nothing something which it has picked up from an Eastern paper that knew nothing of what It was writing and entirely unconscious of the fact apparently that It is not in the power of the Secretary of State to cede away American territory or to bind our Government to a surrender oC territory ter-ritory at any future time The best that can be done In the absence of the Senate Is to make provisional arrange I mentii What has been done Is that tho surveyors employed by the United I States and the British Government I l have been running some lines There is a large tract of territory In I dispute that Is there Is a dispute where the line between Alaska und Bltlsh Columbia Colum-bia should run This provisional line I which 1 the surveyors have made Is for temporary convenience and Is not permanently per-manently binding on either t party I was all foreshadowed by the modus vivendl of last October There has been no treaty but should this lIne be permanently per-manently established It would give to the United States nlnetecntwen Ueths o i the land In dispute Despite the facts the Journal New York has been howling for a week that there has been a surrender to John Bull a giving up without consideration oC moat valuable territory Just because Great Britain asked It I a line should bo fixed permanently where this temporary tempo-rary line has been run then all ute papers of the Dominion would be Insisting In-sisting that the British Minister had surrendered to the United States nine tcentwcntleths of the British claim and so It gObs Vheio the object la I E simply to find fault and to condemn It takes very little On which to fpund an article of denunciation By the nyhre Is a statement of facts regarding what has been done made by the Cleveland Ohio Plain Dealer an able Domocratlc newspaper There docK not yeom to bo aliy occasion for frothing nillid I mouth over the I trnclng of a provisional boundary line In Alaska which Is claimed to have thrown n Id of American mintis and their claims Itito Cal lla Political capItal cannot be made out of It by Democratic campaigners ami Republican Jingoes who nro threatening wur with Great Britain miles1 s tho line Is placed where these t Interested miners want It may us well subside Tho lino now being traced by United States and Canadian surveyors IB the one agreed unpn tsa modus vlvencjl 1 by the twb Governments after the failure of the high joint commission to como to an agreement on tn permanent boundnrs 1 IB the ono proposed by thr United States Government and reluctantly agreed to by tho British Government in behalf of Canada I was carefully drawn to keep Canadians away from tho tideway tide-way which they are anxious to reach that they may have a e3 outlet for their Yukon territory and which It 1ms boon I the main purpose of our Government to protect for obvious reasons While the temporary line IB necessarily a compromise compro-mise one and therefore apparently surrender sur-render something of the extreme claim of the United States cast no practical change la mado In tho position of tho miners on the ground Everything will Domain as before until the final delimits lon or the permanent boundary when over that may lake place except that thero will bo no more quarreling between tho cuslomsoCclals of the two Govern |