. . . think their Empire still
Is the Bank and Holborn Hill.
Curiously enough, the United States is fast becoming a Mother Country, and those who were originally colonists are becoming "home people" having colonial kith and kin of their own.
The Stars and Stripes at the Panama Canal has become the flag of Empire. It is the flag flying at the outposts of English-speaking America. It is more rousing and significant there than anywhere else at this time. It may droop at Washington; it may look ridiculous in the hands of Mr. Babbitt; but at Panama it is the flag of America's inevitable destiny, the flag of her sway and of the triumph of her language, her character, and her business.
Even the mere commercial mind has grasped something of the significance of the Panama Canal. It is the greatest advertisement of America in the world. Its construction was a super-human task, and its achievement shed a light of glory on those who carried it through. It is true that the French started the work and failed, and that Ferdinand de Lesseps and the French nation have grandiose monuments erected to them in Panama City. Frenchmen say Lesseps failed for lack of capital, but every one who has studied the work of the French there has understood that the French could never have succeeded in cutting through the Isthmus. It was not only capital the French lacked, but character and imagination. America began her great national task in a spirit of human kindness by a magnificent effort to save the health of the workers. She made the Canal, but she overcame the forces of death first. She overcame the idea of the white man's grave. She rolled away the stone from the sepulchre.
What was one of the most pestilential swamps in the world is now something like a health resort. Not only is the mosquito a rarity but also the domestic fly. After a myriad flies and two Tanglefoots a day, it was strange to arrive in an even hotter latitude and find no flies. I was told, "If you find a mosquito in your room at the hotel, telephone the office."
Not only are there no flies, but no smells, no decaying fruit. You may be arrested if you drop a banana skin in the street. The Chinamen and the "Spigs" and the Jamaicans who live in rows of double-story frame buildings, the sort of ramshackle places always associated with filthy living, have been terrorized into cleanly living. Hygiene has been forced on them at the point of the bayonet. Even the red-light streets are clean, and all those places of low pleasure designed to empty the pockets of seamen are at least sterilized. The women are also under control. The consequence is that the Panama Canal Zone is now a remarkably safe and healthy place. In fact, a memorandum was sent recently from Washington, part of an economy campaign, asking that the expenses on sanitary work in the zone be cut down somewhat until the death-rate reached that of the general average of the States.
American sanitary science has shown the world that any pest-hole can be cleaned up. The sad fact is that few nations have the energy to prosecute such a work of sanitation—Greeks at Salonika, Russians on the Black Sea littoral, Negroes on the Gold Coast, Cubans at Habana. America has a passion for "cleaning up." She is the self-constituted universal cleanser, Babbitt in excelsis.
It cannot be denied, however, that the United States is the home of graft. America has a long-time reputation for graft. Votes are bought in blocks. Police, jurymen, judges know the meaning "In God we trust; others pay cash." But, paradoxically enough, the standard of American character is high. Compared with the personal character of Mexicans, Panamanians, Cubans, it is lifted into an exalted sphere. The Latin-Americans stand around waiting for cash—that is their curse, and they are ready to sell rights, liberties, lands, children—everything for cash down.
Truth to say, if America were so eaten up with graft as her reputation says, the Panama Canal would never have been constructed. It was too big a job to be carried through by people of debauched wills. It is a monument of America's executive power, of her technical knowledge, and of her readiness to use that knowledge and stake millions upon it.