COL. GOETHALS’ HOUSE AT CULEBRA
As is fitting, “The Colonel’s” house tops the highest hill in Culebra, looking down the cut
Preparations are being made to make Balboa a quarantine station of world-wide importance. The mere proximity of the date for opening the Canal has caused discussion of its effect upon the health of civilized nations. At Suez an International Board exists for the purpose of so guarding that gateway from the East that none of the pestilences for which the Orient has an ill-fame can slip through. No suggestion has been made of international control at Panama. In fact such of the foreign articles as have come under my eye have been flattering to us as a nation, asserting, as they all do, that in sanitary science the United States is so far ahead that the quarantine service may be safely entrusted to this nation alone. Despite this cheerful optimism of Europe, there has not yet been a very prompt acquiescence by Congress in the estimates presented by Col. Gorgas for the permanent housing and maintenance of the quarantine service. Since the United States is to give the Canal to the world, it should so equip the gift that it will not be a menace to the world’s health.
ELECTRIC TOWING LOCOMOTIVES ON A LOCK
CHAPTER XX
DIPLOMACY AND POLITICS OF THE CANAL
Having built the Panama Canal at a heavy cost of treasure and no light cost of life, having subdued to our will the greatest forces of nature and put a curb upon the malevolent powers of tropical miasma and infection, we are about to give the completed result to the whole world. It stands as a free gift, for never can any tolls that will be imposed make of it a commercial success. It was the failure to recognize this inevitable fact that made it impossible for the French to complete the task. It will be a national asset, not because of the income gathered at its two entrances, but because of the cheapening of freight rates between our two coasts and the consequent reduction of prices to our citizens. But this advantage will accrue to peoples who have not paid a dollar of taxation toward the construction of the Canal. There is absolutely no advantage which the Canal may present to the people of New England that will not be shared equally by the people of the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario if they desire to avail themselves of the opportunity. Our gulf ports of Mobile, New Orleans and Galveston expect, and reasonably so, that the volume of their traffic will be greatly increased by the opening of the Canal. But if Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Ayres and Montevideo have products they desire to ship to the Orient or to the western coast of their own continent of South America the Canal is open to them as freely as to our ships.
Having given to the world so great a benefaction, it will be the part of the international statesmen of the United States, the diplomatists, to see to it that the gift is not distorted, nor, through any act of ours, divided unequally among those sharing in it. Upon the diplomacy of the United States the opening of the Canal will impose many new burdens and responsibilities.
