If he may be said to have thrown a bomb, he certainly had attached a safety valve to it, for the investigation which he proposed could not but give time for the passions produced by his message to cool.

It is interesting to note in passing that delay for investigation was a device which that other great Democrat, William Jennings Bryan, Cleveland's greatest political enemy, sought, during his short term as Secretary of State under President Wilson, to make universal in a series of arbitration treaties--treaties which now bind the United States and many other countries, how tightly no man can tell.
While, however, Cleveland's action was based rather on a belief in peace than on an expectation of war, it cannot be dismissed as merely a bluff.

Not only was he convinced that the principle involved was worth establishing whatever the cost might be, but he was certain that the method he employed was the only one which could succeed, for in no other way was it possible to wake England to a realization of the fact that the United States was full-grown and imbued with a new consciousness of its strength.

So far was Cleveland's message from provoking war that it caused the people of Great Britain vitally to realize for the first time the importance of friendship with the United States.

It marks a change in their attitude toward things American which found expression not only in diplomacy, but in various other ways, and which strikingly revealed itself in the international politics of the next few years.