The Panama Canal

by Frederic J. Haskin

For years the United States was inclined to favor a canal cut through Nicaragua, rather than one at Panama, and, after 1898, when the American nation had made up its mind to build a canal somewhere, the partisans of the Panama and Nicaragua routes waged a bitter controversy.

Congress finally decided the issue by giving the President authority to construct a canal at Panama, with the proviso that should he be unable to negotiate a satisfactory treaty with Colombia, which then owned the Isthmus, he should proceed to construct the canal through Nicaragua. Under this threat of having the scepter of commercial power depart forever from Panama, Colombia negotiated a treaty, known as the Hay-Herran treaty, giving the United States the right to construct the canal. This treaty, however, failed of ratification by the Colombian Congress, with the connivance of the very Colombian President who had negotiated it.

But President Roosevelt was most unwilling to accept the alternative given him by Congress—that of undertaking the canal at Nicaragua—and this unwillingness, to say the least, encouraged a revolution in Panama. This revolution separated the Isthmus from the Republic of Colombia, and set up the new Republic of Panama. As a matter of fact, Panama had had but the slenderest relations with the Bogota Government, had been for years in the past an independent State, had never ceased to assert its own sovereignty, and had been, indeed, the theater of innumerable revolutions.

The part the United States played in encouraging this revolution, the fact that the United States authorities prevented the transit of Colombian troops over the Panama Railway, and that American marines were landed at the time, has led to no end of hostile criticism, not to speak of the still pending and unsettled claims made by Colombia against the United States. Mr. Roosevelt himself, years after the event and in a moment of frankness, declared: "I took Panama, and left Congress to debate it later."

Whatever may be the final outcome of our controversy with Colombia, it may be confidently predicted that history will justify the coup d'état on the theory that Panama was the best possible site for the interoceanic canal, and that the rupture of relations between the territory of the Isthmus and the Colombian Republic was the best possible solution of a confused and tangled problem.

These diplomatic entanglements, however, as the canal is completed, leave two international disputes unsettled—the one with Colombia about the genesis of the canal undertaking, and the other with Great Britain about the terms of its operation.

Congress, in its wisdom, saw fit to exempt American vessels engaged exclusively in coastwise trade—that is to say, in trade solely between ports of the United States—from payment of tolls in transit through the canal. This exemption was protested by Great Britain on the ground that the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, which took the place of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, provided that the canal should be open to all nations on exact and equal terms. The future holds the termination of both these disputes.

Congress, that never begrudged an appropriation, indulged in many disputes concerning the building and operation of the canal. First, there was the controversy as to site, between Nicaragua and Panama. Next, came the question as to whether the canal should be at sea level or of a lock type. Then there was the question of tolls, and the exemption of American coastwise traffic. But, perhaps the most acrimonious debates were on the question as to whether or not the canal should be fortified. Those who favored fortification won their victory, and the canal was made, from a military standpoint, a very Gibraltar for the American defense of, and control over, the Caribbean. That this was inevitable was assured by two facts: One that the trip of the Oregon in 1898 crystallized public sentiment in favor of constructing the canal; and the other that the canal itself was wrought by Army engineers under the direction of Colonel Goethals. Colonel Goethals never for a moment considered the possibility that Congress would vote against fortifications, and the whole undertaking was carried forward on that basis.

If the military idea, the notion of its necessity as a feature of the national defense, was the determining factor in initiating the canal project, it remains a fact that its chief use will be commercial, and that its money return, whether small or large, nearly all will be derived from tolls assessed upon merchant vessels passing through it.