OPENING OF THE PANAMA CANAL A.D. 1914
COL. GEO. W. GOETHALS BAMPFYLDE FULLER
As was told in a previous volume, the United States acquired possession of the Panama Canal territory in 1903. Actual work on the Canal was begun by Americans in 1905 with the prediction that the Canal would be finished in ten years, 1915. The engineers have been better than their word. The difficulties with Mexico rendered the Canal suddenly useful to the United States, and Colonel Goethals reported that he would have the "big ditch" ready for the passage of any war-ship by May 15, 1914. That promise he carried out. The Canal is still in danger of being blocked by slides of mud in the deep Culebra Cut, and probably will continue exposed to this difficulty for some years to come. But the work is practically complete; ships passed through the Canal under government orders in 1914. The greatest engineering work man ever attempted, the profoundest change he has ever made in the geographical face of the globe, has been successfully accomplished.
Honor where honor is due! The man chiefly responsible for the success of this great work has been Colonel Goethals. We quote here by his special permission a portion of one of his official reports on the Canal. We then show the work "as others see us," by giving an account of the Canal and the impression it has made on other nations, written by one of the most distinguished of its recent British visitors, the Hon. Bampfylde Fuller.