Before the Administration closed, the United States had agreed to submit to arbitration all questions, except those of certain classes especially reserved, that might arise with Great Britain, France, Austro-Hungary, China, Costa Rica, Italy, Denmark, Japan, Hayti, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Paraguay, Spain, Sweden, Peru, San Salvador, and Switzerland.
Such treaties seemed to a few fearsome souls to be violations of the injunctions of Washington and Jefferson to avoid entangling alliances, but to most they seemed, rather, to be disentangling.

It was, indeed, becoming increasingly apparent that the world was daily growing smaller and that, as its parts were brought together by rail and steamships, by telegraph and wireless, more and more objects of common interest must become subject to common regulation.

General Grant can hardly be regarded as a visionary, and yet in 1873 in his second inaugural address, he had said: "Commerce, education, and rapid transit of thought and matter by telegraph and steam have changed all this....

I believe that our Great Maker is preparing the world in His own good time, to become one nation, speaking one language, and when armies and navies will be no longer required." Quietly, without general interest, or even particular motive, the United States had accepted its share in handling many such world problems.

As early as 1875 it had cooperated in founding and maintaining at Paris an International Bureau of Weights and Measures.