The probability is that, when the President made this unfortunate reference to this clause in the Democratic programme, he had given the matter little personal investigation; it must be held to his credit that, when the facts were clearly presented to him, his mind quickly grasped the real point at issue--that it was not a matter of commercial advantage or disadvantage, but one simply of national honour, of whether the United States proposed to keep its word or to break it.
Page's contempt for the hair-drawn technicalities of lawyers was profound, and the tortuous effort to make the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty mean something quite different from what it said, inevitably moved him to righteous wrath.

Before sailing for England he spent several days in the State Department studying the several questions that were then at issue between his country and Great Britain.

A memorandum contains his impressions of the free tolls contention: "A little later I went to Washington again to acquaint myself with the business between the United States and Great Britain.

About that time the Senate confirmed my appointment, and I spent a number of days reading the recent correspondence between the two governments.

The two documents that stand out in my memory are the wretched lawyer's note of Knox about the Panama tolls (I never read a less sincere, less convincing, more purely artificial argument) and Bryce's brief reply, which did have the ring of sincerity in it.